Promote Your Business With a Self-Published Booklet

Looking for a creative and long-lasting way to promote your business? Why not consider weaving your unique business knowledge into a booklet or book?

You don't have to aim for the New York Times best-seller list. You don't even have to conquer the complicated task of getting your book into bookstores. You already have a business and you already have a customer base, so you can become your own bookstore.

If you create hand-made gifts for special occasions, for example, your customers might also be interested in a booklet titled, "101 Unique Ways to Wrap a Gift."

Many business owners have created a profitable sideline for themselves by creating such books and booklets. With increasingly affordable and accessible desktop publishing programs, it's becoming easier all the time to transform your specialized business knowledge into a work of print.

First, though, a little homework is in order:

Focus on a topic you know well ... and your customers are interested in. The easiest way to do this is to keep a notebook and pen handy at work, and jot down tips and interesting bits of information as they come to you. Keep writing until you feel you've exhausted the subject. Then transcribe your thoughts into your computer's word-processing program.

Organize and edit. Think about how your customers will expect your information to be presented. Are these step-by-step instructions to help readers accomplish a certain task, whether it's planning a surprise party or planting a vegetable garden? In that case, organizing your information should be pretty easy: Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc. Or are you presenting a random collection of tips? If so, find a way to arrange them in several categories -- for a gift-wrapping booklet, for example, "Wedding Gifts," "Gifts for Children," "Birthday Gifts," "Retirement Gifts," etc.

Decide on the look you want. Check out similar books or booklets and see how they were put together. How long are they? What kinds of typefaces do they use? Do they incorporate photos and artwork or are they just text? What types of covers do they have -- heavy-stock glossy, soft-cover, hard-cover? What about them appeals to you? What don't you like? Write down your preferences for size, cover, typeface and appearance. Next, do a word count on your computer and estimate how many pages your book or booklet will run.

Shop around. This is vitally important. Business owners who take the first printer they find probably will end up spending way too much to produce their book or booklet. Put together a very specific spec sheet for your book -- "3 1/2 by 6 inches, 32 pages, 80-pound glossy cover, one color inside (black for text), two colors on cover (black and red), bound with two staples" -- and run it by at least a half-dozen print shops, preferably more. Don't spend $3.50 apiece to produce a booklet you plan to sell for $3.95 -- you'd have to sell 100 copies to make a profit of $45 ... hardly worth your time and effort.

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