Booklets are Cheesy

Yes, some of them are. They have been poorly produced, their content is "ho-hum," or it's good content that wasn't professionally edited. And the booklet turned out cheesy for any or all those reasons, I agree.

However, if none of that is true, and you are comparing a booklet to a book when you say it's cheesy, then your perspective is limited.

* Susan Friedmann of www.thetradeshowcoach.com sold more than 250,000 of her booklets to a company who used them promotionally to increase their sales

* Peter Thomson of www.PeterThomson.com sold hundreds of thousands of his booklets to corporate clients who used them to increase their sales.

* I sold limited rights of a quarter million copies of my booklet to a then-major catalog company who increased their sales 13% by giving away the booklet free with any purchase in one of their catalog editions

And many, many booklet authors have had a wide range of positive results in using booklets as a marketing tool, income stream or both, regardless of whether they had a book to sell or not. 3,500 well-constructed words took less time and money to create, and served their readers and buyers (who are not always the same as each other) well.

Booklets cheesy? Depends on your point of view, doesn't it?

Until next time,
Paulette - who has made a living for 18 years on 3,500 words

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

Paper or Pixels?

"Paper or plastic" is a common question posed at the check out stand at many grocery stores. You are asked for your preference of containers to carry out your purchases, even in these times of bringing our own re-useable bags to the store.

There are numerous elements in that exchange that are relevant when it comes to tips booklets and your sales.

When was the last time you asked your buyers (whether single copy or large quantity buyers or even the media) if they wanted the paper or the pixel (PDF) version of your product? People typically have a preference, and sometimes for reasons you might not imagine. Here are just a few things that influence a choice of paper over pixels or pixels over paper:

• immediacy of delivery
• cost
• conservation
• focus on content more than container or other way around

The key thing here is to ask what someone wants. If it turns out more of your people want pixels rather than paper, you directly benefit in both time and money. It costs you less of each to take the buying conversation to the next level. And as for the folks who bring their own bag to the store, well, the parallel to that with booklets turns out to be the licensing deals, where the buyer gets permission from you to do the production themselves.

Until next time,
Paulette - delighted by how pixels are increasingly being chosen, yet paper still matters

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

Tell the Truth About Your Booklet

What value do you put on your booklet?I'm not only talking about the price you charge, I'm talking about how valuable you think it is in the life of those who receive it. In fact, the price you charge is often a reflection of how valuable you think it is to the recipient.

This week I got yet another phone call from a person who has called or emailed me at least once a year for about five years, a person who has yet to produce a booklet. This week she wanted to know if my prices had changed. She said she had written about 20 booklets in recent years (currently as Word documents, I believe), and still didn't have the several hundred dollars to have one, much less all of them, professionally edited and professionally designed. When I told her to start with one of those booklets and get a product sheet created to pre-sell the others before getting them edited and designed, it fell on deaf ears. I am sure of it from what I heard in her reply.

Now I am certain this person has had the several hundred dollars in question at various points in the past five years, as she told me about conferences she's attended and professional associations she's joined. What she hasn't had has been the courage or the commitment to move forward with her booklet.

She's been dishonest to herself with her story. The truth is that she's scared. She doesn't believe her booklets are valuable enough to bring the thousands and thousands of dollars they are likely to bring her once she starts talking to people who need and want what she's got. I'm not saying there is ever a guarantee in sales, because there isn't. What I am saying, though, is that this person is very unlikely to ever find out as she continues telling herself she doesn't have the several hundred dollars to move ahead.

What's your truth? What's your story? And, as Dr. Phil, the therapist on television is known to say, "How's that workin' for ya?"

Until next time,
Paulette - who loves most working with people who take action

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

Cut Corners and Cut Booklet Sales

• "I can edit and layout my booklet to make it more cost effective for me."
• "I have a friend/neighbor/relative who can edit and design my booklet."
• "My booklet is simple enough it doesn't need a graphic designer or editor."

If you have thought or said any of the above three statements or any variation of them, you are at high risk of shooting yourself in the foot, one foot at a time. It is a difficult thing to edit your own work. In fact, the editors I refer booklet and other written work to actually hire other people to edit anything they themselves write. That's partly because there are numerous specialties within the discipline of editing and it's also because the person who created the document is too close to see it objectively. We're talking about more than only proofreading, though that's very important, too.

And about the layout, it is nothing short of penny wise and pound foolish to think you can do your content the justice it deserves with an amateurish attempt at using the features of Microsoft Word to create some numbered pages and a couple of columns, with some graphic elements thrown in. You may get a pardon in this rant if you are, in fact, already a graphic designer or very well versed with a publishing software product.

Otherwise, do yourself the service of hiring people who do these things every day of the world so your content is presented at the high level it deserves. You'll find referrals to our tried and tested excellent service providers at
http://www.tipsbooklets.com/index.php?page=vendors.htm
You will make more sales when your good content is presented as well as possible.

Until next time,
Paulette - who has seen fewer and fewer catastrophes over the years as people learned how important this is

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

Booklets Are Always About People

When you write your booklet and when you offer it up for sale or free distribution, it can sometimes be easy to lose track of the fact that people are involved in all parts of the process. The content reflects your experiences in some part of your life as a human being. The production touches the lives of your service providers. And ultimately, the booklet is intended to improve the lives of those who receive your booklet, whether it's distributors first and end users second, or directly to the end user.

I've had several experiences in the past few days where the human side of the interaction got lost in the shuffle, and where it made a big difference in anything beyond that. The first one truly surprised me. I tried out the services of a new massage therapist who came highly recommended to me. I've experienced professional massage for over 25 years, on 2 coasts, and as you can imagine, a wide range of experiences. This person never asked me a thing about whether there was any part of my body that needed extra attention or that she should avoid or if I preferred a stronger or lighter touch. Nothing. The sad part was that her technique as a massage therapist was fine, at about 85-90%, in fact. I will not be going back to her though.
We never connected as people.

Today I got an email from someone who had attended a fee-based teleclass and was looking for the recording and transcript that hadn't arrived. The person didn't include their proper name, just an email address. Um, I deal with people.

There are other examples I could offer, though I'm sure you got the point. Remember that you are always dealing with people every step of your booklet journey.

Until next time,
Paulette - who is 100% human

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

Booklets and Blunders

Have you ever goofed in your business? C'mon, even a small goof? If you think you haven't, you're either smoothing over something (aka telling yourself a bit of a story) or you're one of the very cautious people who takes as few risks as humanly possible once you've taken the risk of getting out of bed in the morning.

The fact is (and yes, it's a fact) that there are endless possibilities of ways you can blunder with booklets and, well, in your business overall. It can be everything from a typo, an upside down page at the bindery, a wrong color on a customized job, a misplaced whatever, and on and on. We need not spend more time or real estate focusing on what can go awry.

What matters and what will always matter is what happens next. How do you handle it? What do you do about the blunder? Some blunders provide the chance for a larger sale, a better relationship with the client, a new skill to be able to upgrade a product, a different way of streamlining your business.

Yes, things happen. What you do about them is really all that matters, even when you've done your best to have it all go smoothly in the first place.

Until next time,
Paulette - reminding myself that most things are forgotten and don't matter five years later

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

Blogs, Booklets, and PDF Tool

Two new resources to share with you today. One is about production and the other about promotion.

For production - www.mergePDF.net

It's a free and very, very, very easy tool to combine PDFs into one PDF, in about a quarter of a second. So, no cost, no time, no brainer. Why this is useful? What about bundling some of your booklets, special reports, or other products currently in PDF format to make one larger product -- one with a higher value and higher price? By the way, the topic of Bundling Your Products for Bigger Bucks is what our Expert Interview is about in July at www.PublishingProsperity.com However, I digress. Another reason to bundle your PDFs is that you can deliver multiple PDFs as one as a download through your shopping cart. I like that, and you will, too.

The other resource is for promotion. Since you're reading this blog, it means you have some level of interest in blogs, and, hopefully also about promotion. Cathy Stucker, the Idea Lady, has developed a great (also free) service related to blogs. You can be a guest blogger, request blog contributions, or ask for product reviews. Check it out for yourself at http://BloggerLinkUp.com

Until next time,

Paulette - who is very excited to discover both these resources because of the positive overall impact on business

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

What Part of Booklets Is Fun for You?

Over the years, it's become obvious that certain parts of the booklet journey are more interesting and enticing to booklet authors than others. And it really is a mixed bag, too, depending on how you (and I) are hard wired, what's going on in life at that moment, what you view as your current skills and those you're willing to learn, and numerous other variables.

It's not uncommon to hear you, the booklet author, say you like to write the booklets and want someone else to produce and/or market them. Or you may think of yourself as someone who can't/doesn't want to write, though you can and will market and sell just about anything. In a perfect world, you may be someone who does it all. That, however, is the big exception rather than the rule and, in fact, is probably not the best use of your time and talents on further examination.

Once you've determined what part of the experience really gives you the most joy, delegate the rest. Yeah, yeah, I know, you don't like to delegate because you can do it better than anyone else, and by the time you teach someone what you want you could have already done it. Uh huh, heard it before. You might as well shackle at least one ankle to the leg of your desk...permanently!

Keep yourself at the high-level decision-making position, and find others to do the implementation of the parts you don't enjoy or don't do as well. It works. It really truly works.

Until next time,
Paulette - who doesn't do floors, windows, graphic design, or lots of other things
www.tipsbooklets.com

Vendors Matter a Lot

The vendors you work with can make or break your business. Yes, this can sound like an amazing grasp of the obvious, yet one still worth mentioning.

Over the years, I've worked with numerous graphic designers and printers in different parts of the country. Like any business, some were better than others as far as general interaction, keeping their word, having high integrity, charging reasonable prices, and doing good work. When I find good vendors, I tell everyone I know, since it benefits all concerned.

My current lead printer, Jerry Kirkland of Kirkland Offset Printing, is someone I've continuously worked with for a few months shy of the 12 years I've lived in San Diego. He became a pivot point in how I did booklets, with a simple yet crucial suggestion of having a white cover so they would no longer be streaky like I had been suffering with other printers I left behind. He has continued to be a valuable friend and contributor to my business and the businesses of my clients.

One of the many contributions he's made was in introducing me to the person who has become my lead graphic designer, Victoria Vinton of Coyote Press Graphics. Everyone loves working with Victoria. All our current graphic designers are excellent. However, she distinguished herself by taking the initiative to put a page on her own site that shows booklets and product sheets she's designed for clients of Tips Products International.

Both these people know what I recommend as far as booklets are concerned, have already handled any learning curve, and are terrific human beings and business people. Don't just take my word for it. Go see the testimonials from some booklet authors who have shared their opinions at http://www.tipsbooklets.com/index.php?page=vendors.htm

If you have a contribution to make to those testimonials, and would like some additional exposure for your own business, you can email me or add your comments right here at this blog. We'll get your testimonial uploaded to the Vendors page as quickly as possible.

Until next time,
Paulette - who soooo appreciates our valued and cherished vendors
www.tipsbooklets.com

Expand Your Booklet with Print Size

I've lost track of the number of baby boomers in North America and beyond. What I do know is that I've been wearing disposable bifocal contact lenses for a few years now, as a card-carrying member of the booomer demographic. You may find an easy expansion of your product line to be having your graphic designer re-set your booklet in a larger font size. With rare exceptions, your content is likely to find a home among various age groups, so why not produce something boomers can read without squinting? Yes, your booklet will be more pages by doing that. It could be well worth it to you. Take a look at what you've got.

Until next time,
Paulette - drawn faster to what I can easily read
www.tipsbooklets.com

What to Do With Badly Edited/Produced Booklets

The conversation came up recently on a discussion group of the Publishers and Writers of San Diego (PWSD), where I happily serve as a Board Member, regarding what to with a print run of books that were badly edited and produced. The author thought she was dealing with a higher caliber of vendors than turned out to be the reality and was now considering trashing the entire print run, literally. My colleague and friend, Andrew Chapman (prez of PWSD) posted a helpful reply to the author. While it refers to books, there's some ideas that could be useful to you if you find yourself in a similar badly edited or badly produced circumstance with booklets. Or maybe you have a book to which this applies. I offer you Andrew's reply in full:

============

It seems to me from what you've written that this is not just a matter of a couple typos (which, yes, can happen with any professionally produced book). That being the case, I think you can tarnish your reputation more by putting it out there than you can benefit from it in some way.

So, what to do with them? I say make lemonade out of lemons and turn them into promotional tools for the revised version! You can do this by having large stickers printed that read:

ADVANCE READING COPY

Uncorrected proof - Not for sale

Below that text, put your website address and contact info. And this large sticker gets plastered right on the covers of your books. Then send those stickered books to:

1. Media for review (industry pubs like PW and Kirkus should be sent anytime between now and September; other media sent to in August-December)

2. Celebrities, personalities, other authors, and anyone whom you think would be ideal for a blurb or testimonial for the revised book and other promo materials, including your website

3. Places that takes book donations: libraries, Goodwill, Salvation Army, community centers, schools, places of worship, shelters, senior centers, etc.

4. Retail outlets that may be interested in carrying the revised version

5. Any other connection with whom you may benefit in the future when your revised version comes out and who can help spread the word about your book

Publishers send out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of advance reading copies of books (and uncorrected galleys) to promote coming books -- think of this inventory as being your stock of the same thing. As you see from #1 above, you can start doing this right away. Others will be sent out later in the year as the Christmas buying season starts in October.

I'm glad you asked the question, since I hate to see things go to waste. Hopefully, this will re-ignite your passion for the book and spark you to move forward with the revised version. Just make sure to get a professional's help this time!

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Andrew Chapman

President, Publishers & Writers of San Diego

www.PublishersWriters.org

Ask the Publishing Pro

www.AskThePublishingPro.com

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

=========================

Until next time,
Paulette - who has spent a lifetime making lemonade out of lemons
www.tipsbooklets.com

Booklet Surprises

Being in the booklet biz since 1991, you can imagine I've seen a lot of things happen -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. It made me wonder about what I did NOT know about. What kinds of things have happened surrounding booklets that just never made it back to me?

• What happy surprises happened with your booklet? - outstanding sales, production looking better than you expected, an introduction to someone because of your booklet, or anything else.

• What bad things happened? I'll leave that up to you to fill in the blanks.

• What out and out ugly things appeared? One digit of your phone number wrong in a print run of 2500 booklets, a large delivery that got lost along the way, or anything else?

Post your entries here at this blog. Something good will happen once you do.

Until next time,
Paulette - whose stream of consciousness takes her all kinds of places
www.tipsbooklets.com

I Can't Use 1,000 Booklets

When a booklet authors asks how many booklets to print, I advise 1,000 as the magic number. 1,000 booklets sounds like a lot to a first-time booklet author. That's usually because the idea of bulk sales is so new to most booklet authors. Selling 100 copies to one person isn't as uncommon as you might think. 10 of those sales, and there's your 1,000 copies -- and that leaves you no copies to send as samples to the companies and associations who are likely to buy thousands and thousands of copies at a time from you.

The difference in price between printing 500 copies and 1,000 copies is usually so small that it makes no sense to print 500. Printing more than 1,000 copies for your house inventory is also not a good idea, especially in your very first print run. The odds are high that there's some "oops" in there or you discover something you reeeeeally want to add in that you forgot about, or something that just doesn't sit right with you. Having a couple cartons of that booklet that you don't feel 100% great about is far from motivating, no matter how good a print price you got for the higher quantity run.

If you decide to print your booklet at all for your own house inventory, please, make it 1,000 copies, not more and not less.

Until next time,
Paulette - who has seen the ugly results of ignoring this advice
www.tipsbooklets.com

Booklet Covers and Bulk Sales

There's a reason to have an obvious blank space on the cover of your booklet. It's so the decision maker for bulk sales will realize you've anticipated their interest in having their logo or other contact information right on the cover when they use it to promote their own product, service, or cause. Expecting that decision maker to connect the dots on their own could set you up for an unexplained rejection of your product. The decision maker may not even realize why they are saying no. You haven't left space for them, and they don't realize you can, in fact, accommodate any customization they want. Make it easy for them to buy.

Until next time,
Paulette - who sees some lovely covers that are self-defeating
www.tipsbooklets.com

Ask Questions Before Answering Them

Someone emailed me about whether my company provided booklets in various sizes besides the 3.5" x 8.5" I recommend. It was unclear as to whether the person wanted to buy printed booklets from my site or create original booklets, and what their purpose was for distribution.

When someone wants a customized print run or wants to license a booklet that already exists, all kinds of modifications are entertained. When a person is doing their own, and doesn't know the history of my suggested booklet size, they are operating without useful info.

Turns out the person wanted to create original booklets and didn't know it's less expensive to create and mail booklets the size I advocate. Simple answer once the questions were asked.

Years ago, I tracked 3M for 5 years. You know, the folks that bring us Post-It Notes. For five years, no one told me they didn't produce a product that was the size my booklet would match. Five years!! By the time I found out about that, my contact was retiring and no one else was interested.

Yes, ask questions before answering them.

Until next time,
Paulette - who has always believed size matters and questions are helpful
www.tipsbooklets.com

I Don't Need a Graphic Designer

My curly hair got curlier today when a client wrote me the subject line of this post. This is, by the way, from a person who has spent the past year saying "next month is when I'll be ready for you to edit my booklet and expect to have the money to pay you."

Why this matters? It doesn't matter one bit to me, personally. Professionally, it's such short-sightedness on the part of the booklet author, however. I am guessing the person's content is likely to be good. The thought of presenting it in a less than professional way just doesn't make sense. Yes, I know people do it. It's more detrimantal than I think they realize. Even when the initial intention of the booklet is to distribute at workshops or sell single copies, it's those same people who are running short on cash that will stay in that situation. Their product will not make it past the review of a large quantity buyer because it is a non-match with the professional image of that large quantity buyer's company.

For a one-time few hundred dollars, the content can be presented professionally and add to the success of the booklet and the booklet's author. Talk to one of our graphic designers. You'll be glad you did. You can find their info in the Resources menu of our site, in the first link, Our Vendors.

Until next tme,
Paulette - who feels better now after that little mini-vent
www.tipsbooklets.com

You Made It Easy

Did YOU make it easy to create your booklet? Or are you still researching and tweaking and doing whatever you're doing to keep yourself from moving forward.

One client email today included the "you made it easy for me, one more time" comment. And a phone call from a different client said "I expect to have my booklet in your hands by the end of the month, after I finish researching and organizing the content." This latter person has been telling me a variation of that for about a year. I assured the person that the booklet could have been finished and bringing in apparently much-needed income by now.

Are you making it easy for yourself, or are you slogging around in some muck and mire, eventually maybe sorta kinda one day getting the booklet done? Call me. We'll talk.

Until next time,
Paulette - preferring easy, effortless, and enjoyable for all concerned
www.tipsbooklets.com

I'll Do It Myself

Rarely a day goes by that a booklet author doesn't decide to edit and/or do the graphic design layout work themselves. Some of the decision is based on saving money, and some is based on thinking they have the skills to do that. It's frustrating to see good content unnecessarily presented in a less than professional way.

The box of booklets sitting in the corner of the office takes on an almost-monster life of its own when the author realizes the results of their shortsightedness. One bulk sale would more than pay for professional editing and graphic design, greatly increasing the odds of many more bulk sales. It has become false economy or a matter of pride that results in doing it all oneself.

Reconsider if that's the route you plan to take. The return on your investment will be many times over.

Until next time,
Paulette - sighing a big sigh over some things that came past me this morning
www.tipsbooklets.com

Ignoring the Experts

As a first-born, natural trail blazer, I am fond of making my own way in the world. It's something I do naturally. I also know that when someone has found out where the potholes are with some process, it makes sense to pay attention to what they know.

It's a continuing source of amazement when people invest in my products and services and then ignore the recommendations. It makes no sense to me at all. It often costs them in time, money, and frustration.

Yes, I encourage people to put their own uniqueness into what they do, and also learn from other's experiences.

Until next time,
Paulette - who has paid a lot for her education
www.tipsbooklets.com