Fiction Books Can Become Tips Booklets, Too

"My topic doesn't fit into a how-to tips format."

That comment shows up periodically, and did again this week. Even when a person has written a novel, there are ways to create a tips booklet that can help market that novel plus become its own new source of revenue. THOSE are the purposes of a booklet.

A booklet is a way for the reader to test out the information of the author, to see if it's something that leads to wanting more of what the author's got. It's a way to gently approach a topic that may be otherwise overwhelming or brand new. It's one format of the material, which can then be embellished, expanded, or otherwise modified by the author.

A booklet is NOT the consummate reference on a given topic. A tips booklet, in particular, is NOT a narrative philosophical statement or observation of something. It's a tips booklet, with how-to's in it.

Let's say you wrote an historical novel about native Americans in the Midwest and you want to sell lots of copies of that novel, which common wisdom says is a challenge to do. One of the many ways to do it could be by writing a tips booklet about life lessons the characters learned (tips!) that are still relevant today. That would certainly give the reader of your book more of a connection to what your book is about, wouldn't it? That is especially true when you include some specific invitation that looks something like "for more about how humans find ways to adapt in life throughout history, you'll enjoy reading our book, "Tales of a Father and His Sons on the Prairie."

A similar approach would work if you are interested in featuring the accomplishments of some noteable people of current or historical times. Instead of a treatise about them, it could be very useful to create a tips booklet that includes guidance based on what those people did to accomplish what they accomplished, again, for others to mirror in their own lives.

Once in a rare while there is a topic that simply does not lend itself to a tips booklet. It's usually something in science or math and focused on theory. It's at that moment you'll see a glaze come onto my face. Otherwise, let's talk about what your tips booklet is and can be.

Until next time,

Paulette - who can usually find tips in just about anything

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
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Importance of Booklets or Paying Good Money Not to Listen

There's been some Tweets on Twitter lately by some people whom I regard highly. They talked about their amazement that clients paid them good money (a lot, in both cases) to talk more than listen during the consulting time, and then didn't implement the tried and tested wisdom the consultant imparted. Yes, it's hugely frustrating for the consultant. I can personally attest to that.

At least two things came to me out of the observation of those comments:

1. Products like tips booklets and other information products are the ideal format of knowledge for those people who would rather talk than listen.

2. The consulting price needs to be even higher to attract the people who truly value what the consultant is sharing and who will do more listening than talking.

Now, those two numbered points above are far from absolute. However, they become good starting points, don't you think? Remember, there's a place here for your comments below.

Until next time,
Paulette - who appreciated the confirmation from those two colleagues

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign

Get Your Stuff All Over the Place

A new booklet author took awhile to value the process of getting her booklet professionally edited, professionally designed, and expanded into audio and other formats. Now that she had that "aha" moment several months ago, there's no stopping her. She is doing everything she can to promote her booklet to a worldwide audience, which will also prime the pump for the book she is writing on the same topic. The book is expected out in a year or so. Here's just a few things she's jumped on to accomplish the results she now knows are possible.

* Joined www.PublishingProsperity.com to gain new knowledge and brainstorm with colleagues
* Signed up for Brian Jud's www.premiumbookcompany.com catalog that sells in bulk to corporations
* Got into Bob Erdmann's foreign rights catalog and offerings to have her booklet represented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany
* Registered to be in a collaborative booklet at www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Each of the well-targeted promotional efforts above involves a nominal fee, leading to the possibility of a huge return on that small financial investment. The bigger deal here is that this booklet author realizes all of this is available to her and took action.

Took action. Got that?

Do one thing. And then do another, and another. Do something. There are plenty of things you can do that require no financial investment. The above examples are highly targeted, in environments where people expect to buy. That is often the biggest difference.

Until next time,
Paulette - looking at my own opportunities to see what next action I'll take


www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign

Licensing Your Booklet to Web-Centric Companies

Imagine a sale done completely online, with no product inventory, nothing to ship, no check to deposit, at 100% profit since there is no cost of goods, and not a word spoken out loud between you and the buyer. The whole thing, all online. It is not only possible. It happens every day. And you have the ability to enjoy such experiences for yourself, just as I have.

There are more opportunities than ever before to license your booklet to companies whose business is largely online through their website. The PDF of your booklet can be offered in many of the same ways that a printed hard copy would be in the offline world. Here are a few of the many ways it can be positioned by the website owner to prompt more traffic and more sales:

* Gift with any purchase
* Thank you for subscribing to your newsletter
* Thank you for a referral - to an affiliate, for instance
* Gift for completing a survey or questionnaire
* Gift for opening a new account, buying a specific product, spending a certain amount
* Gift for the first X number of people who send feedback

Are you wondering what sites to approach, how to approach them, and how to structure the financial arrangements? Every deal is different. I have yet to see two licensing deals structured or charged the same because of the variables from one company to the next.

You can identify sites to approach based on your topic, your most favorite, or a Google search on relevant key words. You can also subscribe to a free newsletter I've been getting for ages called the Internet Retailer. It has great info in it about the business side of many large websites, just in case you run out of ideas!

Oh, and when you're ready to do some business licensing your booklet, you'll definitely want How to License Your Booklet for HUGE Profits

Until next time,
Paulette - loving the digital age for doing business

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign

I'll Start Marketing in April

The title of this post is a comment made this week by a new booklet author who already has a strong background in sales. Not only did the comment catch my ear and stop my in my tracks, well, I just couldn't help myself from jumping all over that one, and bringing it here to share with you.

Whether you've started your first booklet or have a dozen of them completed, marketing is an ongoing event before you've written a single word. The bigger issue here is what you define as marketing.

Many people think of marketing as much more complicated and formal than it has to be. When you are telling a friend or colleague about your booklet that you are planning, have started, or completed, you are marketing. When you post a Tweet on Twitter, you are marketing. When you post an article you wrote on your topic onto a site like www.EzineArticles.com , you are marketing. When you are a guest on someone's teleclass, you're marketing. Yes, there are more complex methods, no question about that. However, if that's what's stopping you, think again.

Think about what you can do on any kind of regular basis to get the word out about your work, in ways that take you minimal time and effort. John Kremer of "1001 Ways to Market Your Book" fame, talks about a matrix of 5. He suggests doing 5 things every day to market your book, booklet, and your business. Those 5 things can be modified to 3 if that's more realistic for you, or doing a certain number of things a certain number of days of the week. Just do something!

By the end of the conversation with the new booklet author, there was a different song I heard, as the declaration shifted to "I'm going to start marketing right away." Yes, that's more like it.

Until next time,
Paulette - who can't imagine a day without marketing

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign

To Every 3rd Grader, 4th Graders Are Gods

When the title of this blog post showed up in the report of a conference Allison Nazarian sent out, it stopped me in my tracks. It really does speak volumes, doesn't it? It puts it into a very real context, too. And it's especially meaningful in the world of tips booklets. Lots and lots of booklet (and book!) authors undervalue their knowledge and experiences. It's almost a daily event, in fact.

The truth is that there are many, many people who don't know what you know. They may know pieces of what you know. They may think they know what you know. Think about the article you read or the conference or teleclass you attended or conversation you had -- any of which provided a single pearl of an idea or a perspective or a piece of information you just didn't have that you found very useful. It may or may not have been rocket science, and doesn't much matter as long as you found it useful.

Yes, your knowledge is valuable. I'll be sharing my own knowledge as part of a teleclass series you'll want to attend, which already started this week. You can find all the details by clicking here.

There are a lot of 3rd graders roaming around, wanting what you, the 4th grader has!

Until next time,
Paulette - glad to be a 4th grader again

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
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Great Time for Testing Ideas - with Others

Yes, I know I just wrote about this, and it bears repeating, so I am! :-)

This is a fabulous time to open conversations with individuals and companies to do joint ventures and cross marketing. As you know, it's a hardly a new concept. You bring something to someone else in complimentary business that they promote to their current/past/future clients, which has the ability to bring the joint venture partner more business in the process, while promoting you. That's the best of all possible worlds.

There are times the people you approach just won't get it. After a reasonable explanation from you, if they still don't see the benefit to them, thank them and move on. There's so many more people and organizations who will be delighted to work and play with you.

Sometimes this is seen as affiliate marketing since the Internet has latched onto it. And affiliate marketing, by the way, is really little more than the formerly-labeled "commissioned sales," paying a commission to whomever sold something once it's been sold.

Look around your online and offline world to see who a likely joint venture partner for you could be. Everyone has to benefit from the arrangement, or no one benefits. Tips booklets have been positioned as a incentive for people to make a purchase, or as a bonus added to something else -- among primary ways of selling booklets in bulk. And bonuses have been given by a business owner when someone brings in the purchase receipt from some joint venture partner as another way to go about this. "Provide the receipt from purchasing this book, and we'll give you a free ticket to our seminar" or "Bring your ticket stub from the basketball game [that we sponsored] and we'll give you a Denny's Grand Slam breakfast."

The possibilities are truly endless for joint venturing with other people and businesses right now. What ideas do YOU have? Leave your comments below so we can bounce them around some and increase your successes.

Until next time,
Paulette - who has launched some recent joint ventures and will be doing many more this year and beyond.

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign

What is Important In Publishing?

What is truly important when it comes to publishing your tips booklets? Is it the particular shade of a color on the cover? How about the weight of the paper? Is it the exact font used in laying out the interior text? Is it the size of the margins? What about a minor typo like repeating a word word? Maybe it's a sense of expecting every single word to be the pearl of wisdom, combined just right.

And maybe it's none of these things.

In fact, most of the things mentioned above matter minimally, if at all, in some cases. Before you get bent completely out of shape, thinking I am advocating mediocrity, carelessness, or sloppiness, take a breath. That's not at all what I'm saying. Your booklet needs to be presented as well as you can present it, by all definitions.

What this is about is taking a look at what results you want from your booklet, and what the return on your investment of time and money is about for you. There have been booklet authors who have labored over the title on the cover being a minuscule measurement off from what they want, or the shade of the ink being ever so slightly different than what matches everything else in their corporate image design of letterhead and business cards.

So what? Who cares? It doesn't matter! You have great content to share with people. You have a booklet that will market your business and make you some money. Your booklet can help other businesses make money. The more you delay the distribution over things that don't matter one iota, the less you serve everyone concerned.

Yes, I know this is heresy for the highly-detailed among you. However, this is the voice of almost two decades of experience talking. Your perfectionism that is causing you to procrastinate serves no one. Get on with it -- NOW!

Until next time,
Paulette - who is grateful for this platform for a periodic rant

www.CollectionOfExperts.com
www.PublishingProsperity.com
www.tipsbooklets.com
Follow me www.twitter.com/pauletteensign