What To Do When There Is Too Much Written On Your Topic Already

Do you have a desire to write a booklet but you don’t feel it will sell because there is so much written about your topic already?  If this has been the excuse that has kept you from realizing your authorship dreams, hold on to your hat because it will get blown off right along with this excuse by the end of this post!

I have two little words for you.  Diet industry.  Look at how much has been written about dieting, and yet publishers are still cranking out new books on the subject every year.  Why?  Because it’s still profitable, as long as each book deals with a different area of the industry or has a new slant.  For example, there are diet books for children, diet books for the elderly, diet books for diabetics, and even diet books that only contain desserts for people who love sweets!  There are hundreds if not thousands of diet books available on the market today.  A new one is always welcome, as long it has a niche to fit into.

If you think your topic has been written about too much already, niche it down.  Don’t write about great hiking spots in the U.S.  Write about great hiking spots in Colorado.  Or niche it down even further to easy hikes in Colorado.  If you need a little larger niche, you could go with easy hikes in the northwest.

Just like a diet book can never be one size fits all, so it is with your booklet.  No single information can please everyone or include the information everyone needs.  But, you can write a very specific booklet for a very specific niche.  And even if there are a couple of other books or booklets on the same subject in the same niche, they won’t be written with your experience from your point of view.  Your information will be different.  It will give the reader something that the other books or booklets don’t.  It will be a fresh perspective.

Take a look at the other information available on your topic and for your niche.  You’ll probably come up with plenty of information that was left out of the other products, which you can include in yours.

In my next post, I’ll deal with one of the biggest excuses of them all!

To your riches!

Kim

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The Two Big Advantages Booklets Have Over Books

Yesterday I attended a business meeting.  The room was filled with people from a variety of businesses, but there was one person who caught my attention.  He was an elderly gentleman with white hair.  When he stood he was a little stooped over, and although he spoke clearly there were awkward pauses between some of his words – as if he had suffered a stroke some years ago.

He was only given a moment to introduce himself to the rest of us, and he took more time than he should have.  He was an author, and he was there to promote his book.  I never caught his name nor the title of his book.  What I did catch was that a little over ten years ago this man retired from a very long, exhausting professional career which had nothing to do with writing.  He was searching for something else to do with his life and was inspired to write a book.

It took this man ten years to complete his book.  TEN YEARS!  And trust me, this is someone who does not have time on his side.  I turned to the gentleman sitting to my right and said, “I could have saved him about nine and three quarters of those years!”

Most authors probably don’t take ten years to write a book.  It’s probably more like two to five years, depending on the subject matter and how much research is involved.  Even so, that is a long time to wait to see a profit from your work.  And you may never see a profit after all is said and done.

Booklets give you two big advantages.  The first is that they take far less time to write and publish than a book does.  And the second is that they give you a way to test your market before writing a full manuscript (should you be so inclined) and therefore saving you possibly thousands of dollars.

The poor gentleman at the meeting yesterday had it backwards.  He wrote the book and now he’s trying to figure out how to promote it.  Had he written a booklet, he would have more money in his pocket for promotions and he could have tested his market to see whether a full length book might be profitable.

I must give this gentleman credit, however, because he did finish his book.  He had a box of printed copies with him.  Ten years is a very long time to work on any project, especially when you have no idea whether you’ll reap any reward for it, and he didn’t quit.  He saw it through to completion.

Don’t write a book.  Please don’t.  Not until you have a solid understanding of your market.  Then, if a book is your heart’s desire, go for it.  In the meantime, write a booklet.  You can have printed copies in your hand in about a month’s time depending on how quickly you write your manuscript.  And then you can test your market with your booklet and see how receptive they are to your subject and your content.  You’ll also be able to test your marketing skills before investing the time and money it takes to self publish and promote a book.

Sometimes, the riches are in time and money saved.

Here’s to your riches!

Kim

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Let Your Booklets Do The Selling For You

Here’s a quick tip for you.  If you have more than one booklet that you are selling, why not cross promote them and let them sell each other?

This is easily done by listing all of your other available titles on the back cover of each title you have so that people will know what else you have to offer.  It’s a good idea to keep all the titles you list in the same genre or of the same theme – such as all titles related to weight loss or all related to parenting – as whoever is interested in one of your titles may be interested in related titles as well.

By listing your other available titles on each title’s back cover, you’ll be allowing your booklets to do the selling for you!

To your riches,

Kim

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The Two Essential Tools Every Writer Must Have

As a writer, there are two very essential tools you must have if you are ever to be thought of as a professional.  You probably already know about these  tools, but you may not be using them as often as you should.  They are a dictionary and a thesaurus.  Without them, you are no better than the average Joe.

Any high schooler can sit down and write a decent report about a subject that interests them.  It may even be grammatically correct (although given the number of errors I see online in other people’s blogs and on their websites I have my doubts).  But, you are not writing a report.  You are writing a booklet and it must be informative and/or interesting to read (and it helps if it is grammatically correct too!).

In order for your booklet to be informative, it must be clear.  This is where the dictionary comes in.  If you are not certain whether to use a particular word, you can look it up and see exactly what it means.  I recently did this and found that a word I wanted to use meant something entirely different than what I thought it did.  It was a word I did not use very often, thus I felt I needed to look it up to be sure that I was using it in the right context.  A dictionary can really make the difference between you being perceived by your marketplace as an amateur or as a professional who really knows their stuff.  Writers who are highly paid usually have more than one dictionary within arm’s reach at all times.

In addition to having information in your booklet that is clear, you also want it to interest the reader.  You’ll need a thesaurus for this.  A thesaurus is like a dictionary in that you look up words, but instead of it giving you an explanation of what the word means it will give you other words that mean the same thing or close to the same thing.

A thesaurus is useful because it can make your writing more interesting to read, and just like a dictionary, it can also make it more clear.  For example, imagine you are about to use the word ‘excite’ in a sentence.  There may be a better, more descriptive word you can use.  If you are writing to businesses and telling them how to improve employee productivity, you could tell them to excite their employees with a special bonus program.  But, a better word for this would be ‘motivate.’  When you look up the word excite in the thesaurus, you’ll find the word motivate, as well as several other choices for your consideration such as spur, energize, stimulate, inspire and awaken.

Learning to use these tools will greatly improve your writing and make you look like a pro.  And you don’t even have to go to your local bookstore to buy them.  Just hop on over to www.dictionary.com where you’ll find a dictionary, a thesaurus, and more!

To your riches!

Kim

What A Dying Woman Can Teach You About Booklets

I received a phone call today that an acquaintance of mine is near death in the hospital. She has an inoperable brain tumor, and the doctors don’t expect her live more than a couple of days.

I first met this lady about two years ago. She had been a victim of an online phishing scam which depleted her life savings – about $250,000. She was interested in writing a booklet to help others avoid her fate. Losing that money was the worst thing that had ever happened to her (until the brain tumor was found). She even ended up losing her home because of it as she was retired and no longer bringing in an income, and had countless other troubles ensue down the line.

Long story short, she had some very valuable information to put into that booklet. She had insight that was unique and interesting and certainly helpful. But, the booklet never got started. She always had something more important to do. I talked with her several times by phone, and even sat with her over dinner to get her going, but in the end she just never got it going. Now she’s dying and the world will never get her information. It would have been a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

If you’re thinking about writing a booklet, please stop thinking and just do it. The world is waiting for your information or your inspiration. We’re all going to die sometime. Don’t let your booklet die with you.

To your riches!

Kim

No Time To Write? Try This!

Do you find it difficult to get started on a writing project?  Maybe it’s because you’re working 40 hours per week and you’re tired when you get home.  Maybe you’re home during the day but you have small children and are busy caring for them.   Writing a booklet doesn’t take long once you get started, but you do need to get started.  Whatever your reason for not getting to it, I’ve got the solution for you.

What you need to do is consider your day and block out the time when you are least likely to be interrupted and most likely to be productive.  So, if you’re working a day job, maybe you could get up and hour earlier and write in your pj’s.  Or maybe you’ll be able to write on the weekends for several hours at a stretch.  If you have small children, maybe you could write in the afternoon while they nap or at night after they’ve gone to bed.

The key is to be as consistent as you can and block out the same hours each day.  Once you do it will become routine and therefore easy to stick to.

I’ve been using this tactic for years now and it has always worked well for me.  You just need to make up your mind to do it.  Give it a try and you’ll see that it works.

To your riches!

Kim

Nix The Naysayers And Get Rich

Have you ever shared your dreams of being a writer with someone only to have them pooh-pooh your ideas? Maybe they said your ideas would never fly, or maybe they said you don’t have enough experience.

Whatever they said, put it right out of your mind and take a look at the naysayer. Are they doing well? Are they rich? Are they a writer who is speaking from experience? I’m betting they aren’t, which means you need to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward to achieve your goals.

The naysayers are unhappy with their own situation but they don’t know how to fix it. And if you gave them 100 ideas on how to live a better life they would have 100 reasons why those ideas wouldn’t work. They will forever be naysayers.

Forget the naysayers. Surround yourself with as many positive people as you can who are working toward their goals. If you listen to the naysayers you’ll never reach your goals and you’ll never get rich. You might even turn into a naysayer yourself! So go forth and write your booklet and get rich! Like Nike says – Just do it!

To your riches,

Kim

Is Your Booklet Idea A Rich One?

Today, while waiting in the grocery check-out line, a booklet caught my eye. It was near the grocery counter where they keep the little packs of gum and mints. I don’t remember the exact title – something like “The Secret To Having Money.”

This particular title got my attention because I have authored two money related booklets. I couldn’t help but wonder what might be inside this booklet that I had missed putting into my own.

Not having much time before my turn at the cash register I picked up the booklet and quickly thumbed through it. To my utter amazement there wasn’t anything inside of value – at least not in my opinion. There was some psycho-babble about how to have a positive attitude in order to attract money, some mumbo jumbo about how to have the right relationship with money, and several other similar type chapters including, as I recall, one having to do with luck. If you were hard pressed for cash this booklet would do nothing to help you change your situation. In fact, it would further deplete your finances without giving you anything in return.

In spite of the fact that this booklet was devoid of any useful information, it is available to the public in grocery stores and probably some other places as well. This means it has gone through some special distribution channels and someone somewhere decided this booklet would sell – probably because of the title. I wonder if the booklet is selling, or if that person that gave it the go-ahead is now kicking himself for putting such an inferior product into the marketplace.

If you’ve got an idea for a booklet and you’re not sure how good your idea is, just think about this money booklet. It’s completely useless yet it’s in the marketplace. Chances are your idea is a much better one and if your booklet contains useful information that will help someone then you’ve got a rich idea, not just a good one. If that’s the case, by all means write it! The marketplace needs your booklet!

If that booklet in the grocery store is any indication, I’ve got a superior product in each of my money related titles. I can present them with pride to would-be buyers because I’ve seen the alternative and it’s a waste of paper and ink!

To your riches!

Kim

What Are The Hottest Topics To Write About?

When writing booklets, you should stick to subjects you know about or are very interested in. Realize that people will believe you’re an expert on the subject because you wrote the booklet, so make sure what you write about is something you won’t mind being known for.

Here, then, in no particular order, are some timely topics as well as some evergreen ones for you to consider:

1) Pets – pets are the new kids for the boomers who now find themselves empty nesters, but you don’t need to focus only on boomers. Booklets for parents about how to choose the perfect pet for their family or child, or booklets about pet care would find a waiting market place.

2) Going Green – Anything to do with going green at home or in the office. This is huge among businesses right now. Booklets about how to go green in the work place will be welcomed.

3) Saving Money – as prices rise this is on everyone’s mind.

4) Making Money – This subject is always fresh. Everyone wants more.

5) Losing Weight – Ever wonder why there are so many diet books? It’s because the market for weight loss products and information is huge. There’s plenty of room here for your booklet.

7) Relationships – Anything from how to have a better marriage to how to find the perfect mate to how to get along with your boss. This is another timeless subject.

8) Health – My booklets fit into this category. You can write about ways to stay healthy or focus on a specific health issue. You could even write about health hazards in the work place. This is a very broad category.

9) Anything “how to” – “How to” books almost always do well. So do “how to” booklets.

10) Travel – A timeless classic that never goes out of style. Someone is always traveling. You could write about traveling for pleasure or for business.

11) Anything of interest to baby boomers – This is a very large segment of the population today. The market is wide open.

12) Parenting – Too many possibilities to list. Parenting teens, parenting toddlers, foster parenting, becoming a new parent, adoption, and the list goes on! Write about timely issues parents are facing today, such as internet safety, or write about something classic such as toilet training.

13) Education – Everything from how to get into the best pre-school to how to get into the best college. Homeschooling is a hot topic too.

14) Sex – I saved the best for last! This could fall into the relationships category or the health category, or it could be in a category all by itself.

There are tons of things you could write about. Think about what you know that could help someone else.

To your riches!

Kim

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Fiction Or Non-Fiction?

A booklet may be either fiction or non-fiction, as long as you have the market to support it.  Non-fiction titles will be easier to market, but fiction titles that revolve around events that happen in real life should do just as well.

You’ll have a more difficult road ahead if you write sci-fi, fantasy, romance or similar types of fiction, at least as far as selling the booklets as a promotional tool is concerned.  Of course, there’s always an exception to the rule, and I know these booklets could be lucrative if marketed to the right audience.

Kim