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Booklet Tips From Paulette

Writing, producing, and promoting tips booklets for marketing, motivating, and making money.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Booklets Worldwide

Do you view your booklet, business, and life as something that happens within a small range of zip codes or postal codes? It's almost impossible for that to be the case these days, whether you ever come out from behind your computer keyboard or not.

1994 was when I first got online. Within 3 days, a post on a forum jumped out from a guy in Italy. Several thousand dollars got wired directly to my checking account 18 months later to license my booklet into the Italian language. This past December, and again this past weekend, I met two different people from Italy at live workshop events I attended. Because the Italian language license had long expired, I was able to revisit the possibility of issuing another Italian license for that booklet. I have yet to visit Italy, though there are now some people to see when I do. My booklet, however, will be visiting Italy.

The same happened with a Dutch language license of the same booklet. A few years ago someone in Holland heard an archived audio file of an online radio interview I did. The Dutch person emailed to inquire about licensing the booklet into the Dutch language. This past weekend there was a different person from Holland attending the live workshop I attended, allowing us to discuss the possibility of a new Dutch language license for the booklet. While I've had the pleasure of visiting Holland once a couple years ago on vacation, these deals happened or may happen without ever getting on an airplane.

Someone was at the workshop this weekend from Singapore. I was able to make an introduction for that person to a client of mine who also lives in Singapore.

Think beyond, no matter where you are in your process. There's always more -- ALWAYS.

Until next time,
Paulette - open to possibilities worldwide

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

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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Booklets - Small Size, Huge Impact on Business

Many people have some level of interest in booklets. The interest level goes from ambivalence to over-the-top enthusiasm, and everything in between. The part that is often overlooked is the direct impact the booklets have on your business and on your clients' business. You'll be seeing more emphasis on this in weeks to come because that's really what this booklet phenom is all about and it's time to reinforce that.

So, for your business, the impact on your bottom line is both direct and indirect. Here's a few thoughts to jog your imagination some.

Direct
  • Sell booklets, one at a time, to people who hear you speak or want to know more about your business.
  • Sell booklets, many at a time, to companies who want to use them to promote their business.
  • Sell booklets, many at a time, to associations who want to use them as a member benefit or as an income generation for their group.
  • Sell rights to websites to use your booklet to drive more traffic and sales to their site.
  • Sell rights to companies, associations, and websites to have a different language version to use as a promotional tool.
Indirect
  • Position yourself as an expert so people will want to hire you as a speaker, trainer, consultant.
  • Help yourself build a platform for future sales of your products and/or services.
  • Allow you to donate a product for general publicity and good will.
Writing a booklet is the easy part of this, even if you view yourself as a non-writer. There are formulas to follow that make it do-able for even the most writing-challenged booklet author.

The most important part of this is not the size of the finished product or the small amount of time it took to write the booklet (compared to a book) or the small financial investment to get the booklet produced. The most important part is the impact the product has on your business' bottom line. That is huge.


Until next time,
Paulette - reminding you that small booklets have a huge impact on your bottom line

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

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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Booklet Formats - Variation on a Theme

Having a basic template for a booklet is often a good starting point, yet not the finish line. Tips booklets have had a distinct writing style and format for almost two decades. That said, some booklet authors have chosen to modify that writing style and overall format into a variety of presentations and for a variety of reasons.

Certain topics do better with illustrations to further explain the concepts presented in the text. That's one reason to change from text-only. Some booklet authors have made their booklet more interactive, with worksheet pages or checklists. That, too, works well for some subjects. Others have written in a more narrative writing style, which often moves away from being tips as much as philosophical statements. And now that the technology has advanced to the point it has, using more color is more affordable than it's ever been. The overall size of the booklet may merit something different than 4" x 9" if it's meant to be packaged with something that doesn't suit those dimensions.

Like any other business decision, modifying a basic template is a great idea when there's a strategic reason to do it. Does that apply to your booklet?

Until next time,
Paulette - who teaches the basics so they can then be tweaked to work best

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

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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Booklets - Now More Than Ever

As companies and associations realize the importance of "staying out there" with their marketing, booklets and the contents of the booklets are the perfect match to use as marketing tools. While many organizations have used books (ala 200-250 pages) in the past as premiums and incentives to prompt sales, tips booklets are a better solution than ever because:

  • They cost less than books
  • It's a faster read of valuable information than books
  • The content is easy to slice and dice into other formats, especially for digital delivery
Look at the associations, companies, and websites you think would be ideal matches for your content and talk to the folks who will find your booklet(s) and your content to be the ideal solution for them, right now and in the future.

Until next time,
Paulette - passing along what I know to be true

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

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Thursday, April 09, 2009

Tips Booklets Business - from the Outside Looking In

Talking with one of my mentors this morning, Adam Urbanksi, he drove home a point that was important to hear. Adam has known of my tips booklets work for years before we ever met this past December. During today's monthly laser consulting session that's part of the year-long mentoring program I'm doing with him, I asked him, point blank, what he would say to describe my business. After a slight pause to gather his thoughts, he said he's always known me as the tips booklets person, and that no one could touch me on that niche, and that lately, making reference to "information products" instead of only tips booklets may be diluting the strength of my brand.

He addressed something I'd been wondering for awhile, in fact. Had I fallen prey to trying to be all things to all people, losing my edge in the process? Of course that's the last thing in the world I'd want right now, since it's taken a steady 18 years to become the Booklet Queen and I'm not ready to shift gears into a different business yet. There's still so much more to do with tips booklets. He gave me some excellent suggestions about some things to do to keep that brand strong. You'll be seeing signs of his input shortly.

What Adam accomplished with me in that short time on the phone today is invaluable. It's a sampling of the great stuff I've gotten from him since December. And it's why I'm attending his InfoProfit Success Bootcamp this month. Several of my clients/colleagues are also going.

How about you? Will you be there? Here's a link to take you right to all the details to make it happen. Let me know you're going so I can give you a gift of my own -- some personalized laser consulting that will be as powerful for you as Adam's input is for me. http://budurl.com/8sh5

Until next time,
Paulette - experiencing a year of unprecedented growth

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

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Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Booklets, Books, and Bookstores - NOT

The traditional publishing model has been ailing for decades. You know, the one where you have a great idea for a book, find an agent, the agent shops the book around to traditional publishers, a publisher offers you an advance payment against future royalties so you can live while you write your book, the publication is at least a year away, the publisher prints and distributes the book to bookstores, the bookstores keep small quantities of your book on the shelf for a limited amount of time, they return the ones that didn't sell (which are most of them, in unresalable condition), and you make no money. Oh, and you also got to plan and deliver most of the publicity about the book yourself.

Yes, that publishing model.

In fact, most of the components of that process are now dead or at least drastically modified. Yet many authors continue approaching publishing expecting it to be as it was decades ago, sick then and sicker now.

It makes no sense to me. Does it make any sense to you?

The authors and publishers who are flourishing now are doing it all differently. They are selling their books and booklets and other formats of their content to non-bookstore markets -- to corporations, associations, the military, gift stores, websites, and just about anything BUT bookstores. And they sell them in very large quantities for use as a promotional item and/or to distribute to their employees or other constituents. They are making them available as downloads so people can have the content instantly anywhere in the world.

Next time you have even the most fleeting thought of a bookstore, ask yourself why. And then think about the thousands and thousands of other places and ways to bring your knowledge to those who want it.

Until next time,
Paulette - encouraging bigger thinking

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

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Thursday, April 02, 2009

Booklets - Where Do You Start Writing and Marketing?

Do you start your booklet prompted by what you determine as a need in the market place that you fill? Or do you start with expertise that you have, expecting to find buyers for it? Or is it a combination of both?

The reality is that it doesn't matter which of the above scenarios you choose. You can meet with challenges and meet with successes with each one of these approaches.

If you are a professional writer as your primary business, and do research as a way of life, you are likely to be prompted by what you see as a demand to fill. Your decision won't necessarily be driven by a passion about a particular topic as the motivating force for you to market what you've got.

You could be starting from the other end of the equation, with knowledge that you'll share with anyone, anytime, without being asked. And you want to get it all over everyone. You will succeed with that kind of enthusiasm, regardless of your topic. You want to write many booklets and put your information into other formats, to get your message as far as you can possibly reach.

And yes, in a perfect world, what your booklet is about is information that's in great demand, by buyers you can easily find and who easily find you.

The bottom line is that it really turns out not to matter where you start or what your motivation in writing tips booklets. There truly is a market for you.

Until next time,
Paulette - continuing to create "yes" answers

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

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