Booklets, Books, Card Decks, Journals, and Other Derivatives

Once I realized the necessity of having more than only a tips booklet in order to really expand my reach and my revenue, it became obvious that the other product possibilities were endless. This week it seems that many of my clients and colleagues are seeing it more clearly than ever, too.

Apparently our lead graphic designer was looking for some sorely needed insight in training the yappy puppy she and her husband adopted. She happened upon a card deck of tips to raise your puppy while she was looking around Amazon.com The author of the card deck is not one of our booklet people, however, our graphic designer has been creating product sheets for our booklet authors that include references to card decks for quite awhile now. The tips from your booklet can easily become a card deck. Talk with our designer, Victoria Vinton, at www.coyotepressgraphics.com She knows about card decks!

Someone else phoned today to ask if I'd received the book he created that was an expansion of a booklet he had done years ago.

While reviewing a book done by one of the participants in a Collection of Experts booklet, there were obvious ways I saw to leverage her content into a card deck of quotes that she included in her book, and the distinct possibility of using those same quotes on pages of a journal that would be a companion to the book.

Why does all of this matter one bit? Quite simple. When you give your buyer a choice of two or more formats of your material, you automatically increase the likelihood of making a sale, of providing the buyer something that best suits them. It shifts the whole thing away from "yes/no" to "which once of these?"

So, what is your first/next product to develop?

Until next time,

Paulette - who always enjoys real-life confirmations and affirmations

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

New LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets and Morphing

Have you been in business long enough for your business to have morphed, whether in reference to booklets or not?

My business seems to morph every few years. Some of the reasons that prompt this are:

• a new opportunity presents itself for a new market or new format
• a new trend shows up, which brings an opportunity with it
• previous products are no longer selling so new things must be created
• I need new direction to re-energize myself as a business owner to keep from being bored, much less broke
• the economy changes
• I want to make more money, spend less time, meet new people, meet fewer people, etc.

You may be like me that you do better with variety than with lots of repetition. Although this third career of mine has been the longest (almost 20 years), it has still been a theme and variation on booklets. It's the variation that lets me continue.

The biggest morph or product extension from tips booklets has been the Collection of Experts booklets. They look very much like the booklets on which this brand has been built. The big difference is that 14 people collectively write one booklet. It took four years to refine the product and the offer. Not only is it now quite popular, it looks like it is about to be a major part of the tipsbooklets.com business, with further embellishments to make that a reality.

I share this with you to encourage you to have the willingness to follow your gut if you are experiencing a leaning in a particular direction with your business, or a stuck-ness that is causing you to be bored, boring, broke, or all of that. And please, spare me the stuff about the economy. I did my booklet that started this whole thing in 1991, when the economy was "different" than it had been before that. Over a million copies later, and almost 20 years later, that booklet brought all kinds of wonderful things to all kinds of wonderful people...and still does.

What is calling you that you are hesitant to do? How can you bridge where you are in your business today with where you can take it next? The transition may be momentarily unsettling as transitions often tend to be. And then you're on the other side of it, gloating at what you've done. Go on, I dare you!

Until next time,

Paulette - realizing the past four years were necessary to get to a whole new place, and thinking you can probably morph faster and better than I did

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

New LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets - They Don't Know

Do you tend to assume that people who read your booklet or are prospective bulk booklet buyers know what you're talking about? Or that they already know the benefits of buying your booklet to help promote their business ? After all, it's completely and totally obvious to you, isn't it? And you believe you're dealing with intelligent people, right? So why wouldn't they already know?

Well guess what? They DON'T know a whole lot of what you haven't told them.

This all comes to light for me each and every time I do a revision of any of my instructional products. While I think I've been thorough and easy to understand the first (or last) time I wrote or revised the product, it becomes obvious that certain things need clearer or more in-depth explanation for someone first coming to the body of information.

That doesn't even include the matter of what has changed since the previous edition. Depending on your topic, there can be many changes. My tips booklet, however, is a great example of (accidentally) writing something that is known as an "evergreen." It is truly still as valid today as it was in 1991.

This is all the more reason to make your tips booklet the first approach people have to your information, and why the best way you can serve your people is by being as basic and simple as humanly possible. There is plenty of time to create more expanded products that take your reader/buyer to more advanced levels and your business' bottom line to greater heights.

Until next time,

Paulette - realizing the yet-untapped opportunities to dispel the ignorance

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets and Top Ten Lists

Whether you're a life coach who has been taught to create "top 10 lists," or a fan of the late-night television talk show host, Dave Letterman and enjoy his humorous "top 10 lists," there's something there to look at as a booklet author or would-be booklet author.

If you've already been busily creating those lists over time, you probably have ten or twelve of the lists, and have the makings of a tips booklet by combining them into one document. It may take some editing to make them tips, telling your reader what to do, or to bring the word count down per tip. Either way, you probably already have a booklet.

Or, you may have a booklet done, and are looking for ways to further leverage your content. You can break out the document into numerous Top 10 lists from among the booklets content you already have. Adding a paragraph at the beginning and another at the end, with your contact info for the "Resource box," and you've got articles to post far and wide all over sites on the Internet.

Either way, you've got easy access to more product from what you already have. Now THAT was easy, wasn't it?

Until next time,

Paulette - giving you at least two tips right there for your Top Ten List

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

Booklet Templates - False Economy Shortcut

People often ask for a template to do the design layout for their booklet, usually as a way to save money rather than having a professional graphic designer do the layout. My standard answer is that unless you are a professional graphic designer yourself, you will do much better by putting your word processing file into the capable hands of a professional who can make your words look good on the page and present your expertise in the manner it deserves to be presented.

Imagine this -- you've spent umpteen years in your field of knowledge, are viewed as an expert, and you want to share your message as widely as possible. That means selling your booklets in large quantities to companies and associations who will use your booklet as a promotional tool for their own products, services, or cause. How likely do you think you'll be in making those sales when your booklet looks anything less than professionally presented?

The return on your Investment of a few hundred dollars to have a professional graphic designer do the design work is huge. If you don't already know someone, contact ours. She knows all the nuances of what I teach as to what's important in the layout and the cover design. Go see examples of some of the booklets she's done for our clients over the years. Oh, and she (Victoria Vinton) is great to work with.

Until next time,

Paulette - who learned the hard way a zillion years ago and now wants you to do it better from the start

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

New LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets Garner Foreign Rights Sales in Indonesia

Two people from our tips booklet authors family, Doctors Marian Pobee and Pauline DeLozier, jointly submitted (for a fee) the following booklets to foreign rights agent Bob Erdmann for representation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is all about foreign rights sales. Bob's comments are included below the titles.

Marian and Pauline have happily accepted the offer. This is a first, that I'm aware of, for any Collection of Experts booklets.

* 65 Parenting Tips from a Collection of Experts

* 70 Tips: Thrive in Business in Any Economy - from a Collection of Experts

* 77 Secrets For Parenting Your Child to Succeed - by Marian Pobee

Bob Erdmann: "It’s a reasonably good offer for your small books, from a very good publisher in a developing country ravaged by natural disasters and terrorism. I recommend accepting. Please let me have your ok to accept and we’ll prepare the contracts."

Yes, they are accepting the offer. Just think of what a powerful effect this one effort has prompted by these booklet authors!

Downloads of these booklets are available at www.tipsbooklets.com in the ebooklet catalog.

Still thinking about writing a booklet or participating in a Collection of Experts? What are you waiting for? Big congrats to Marian and Pauline.

Until next time,

Paulette - thrilled by seeing these results since so many people benefit

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

New LinkedIn Discussion Group

Booklets - Best Next Steps to Promote Your Small Business

Your next best steps to use booklets to promote your business are likely to be different than someone else's next best steps to promote their small business. And how you measure success will also be different than how someone else measures success.

These two amazing grasps of the obvious have come up in recent booklet author client conversations. While I teach a variety of specific concepts for selling booklets and their spin-off formats based on my first-hand experiences, each booklet author must decide which way(s) are best for their business, their personality, and their life.

As for how much success is possible with tips booklets, the only answer to that is "how high is up?" What you define as success may be beyond the scope of what someone else can imagine as success, or vice versa. And you may define success by building one part of your business that does not exist in someone else's business. Someone who is primarily in a service business may use booklets to increase the client base or revenue from service clients, while someone else wants to shift their income to be a 50/50 split between products and services.

This all comes down to one thing and one thing only: You are the only one who can decide what your best next step is for promoting your business, and only you can define what success means to you. Have you come up with those answers yet, for today? After all, both of those are likely to change the longer you're in business.

Until next time,

Paulette - who, at one time, defined success as being able to pay the rent, and who now happily lives a mile from the beach in San Diego

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

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Booklets - Asking, Reminding, and Assuming

You know what assuming gets, right? It often closely relates to writing fiction, creating stories in your mind that can have little to do with reality. That comes into play when marketing your booklets and any other part of your business. You think you know what the client or prospective client wants, based on, uh, what? That they didn't reply to your email or voice mail? That they asked you questions about the booklet? That they didn't jump in instantly with a mega-size purchase?

Ok, now, put like that, I'm sure it looks more ridiculous than it felt when you pondered all of the above experiences.

How about this - they have other things going on in their life and your booklet was lower on the priority list. Or they didn't know the questions to ask you (as in they didn't know what they didn't know) , so they went silent.

Or the email didn't reach them.

Or they couldn't find your contact information.

Years ago I recall a colleague saying that sometimes when the phone didn't ring, all it meant was that the phone didn't ring, no matter how creative the story in our mind got about it.

So before you indulge yourself in such creative story telling, be the one to ask the questions of your client or prospective client. Ask them how they might use the booklet, as you guide the possibilities with your questions. Remind them of possibilities, of things they knew or never knew, including pricing and customization options. Do the part that is yours to do in the interaction.

Then serve them as best you can. What one thing can you change in how you've been approaching all of this up until now?

Until next time,

Paulette - who wrote this post as much as a reminder to herself as to you

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

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Booklets Are Passe

A long-time follower and colleague of mine bought one of the few remaining hard copies (ever!) of the 3rd edition of my "How to Promote Your Business with Booklets" yesterday. In her note to me, she said "I always thought booklets were passe until knowing you. You've re-kindled my interest in them."

She is a well-known expert in her field and has authored several traditionally published books. We've known each other for years and years. This week she decided it was time for her to do something about tips booklets. I can hardly wait to see her results, knowing what her highly successful track record has been with everything she's touched.

Do YOU think booklets are passe, too? Would you still think so after you sold hundreds of thousands, or even millions of them? I'm guessing you'd have a different opinion at that point.

Until next time,

Paulette - who is delighted to see people being open to possibilities

www.tipsbooklets.com

www.CollectionOfExperts.com

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