How to Run Your Own Publishing Bakery
(or, Why
Baking Print is Better than Baking Cake)
by Joe Vitale
I'm a bookaholic. I write them,
read them, buy them, review them, promote them,
collect them, and cherish them. You ought to
see my office. It's lined with books. And no
doubt I'll add more books to my vast collection.
What can I say? I'm addicted to books.
Still, I often wonder if anyone
realizes there is a better way to make money
than actually printing their information in
book form.
Printing books costs a terrific
amount of money. Somebody must have placed yeast
in the print industry's pants. Just look at
the rising costs of paper these days.
Plus the environmentalists
aren't crazy about all the trees being chopped
down to print your grandmother's recipes or
your uncle's memoirs.
And the competition for books
is fierce, with 2,000 books being printed every
single week. And you want to come out with another
one?
Sheesh. Hasn't anyone considered
a better approach to this business?
I run what I call a "publishing
bakery." The idea isn't new. Several people
are running the same operation, though they
probably call it "printing on demand"
or some other less colorful description.
Here's how it works:
-
You write a specific piece
of how-to information for a specific crowd
of people.
-
You store it on your computer.
-
You let that specific crowd
of people know about your item.
-
When orders come in, you
print the information and send it to them.
Easy, huh? But does it work?
Let's see...Ted Thomas sold
627 information packages for $197 each in two
months, which means he made $122,265 while sitting
at his desk...Last January Russ von Hoelscher
sold more than 500 units of his Internet course
at $149 a pop, meaning he pulled in $74,450
in less than four weeks...Mark Nolan sells a
$29.95 information product to the tune of 30,000
a year...The list goes on.
The numbers are simple: If
you sell just one $299 course a day, you'd make
$71,760 a year...Too expensive an item to sell?
Okay. If you sell just one $29.95 item a day,
you would make $10,782 a year. (You can use
$10,782, can't you?) Sell three of them a day
and you blast your income to $32,346 a year!
Let's get more specific.
If you browse through my on-line
catalog, you'll find all of my books, videotape,
audiotape set, etc. You'll also find free articles
and special reports. And you'll see that I have
a "Confidential
Online Marketing Strategy" that I sell
for a substantial amount of money. I don't stock
that item. It sits, alert but resting, in my
computer. When someone orders it, I call up
the file, click my mouse, and print the item.
I then send off the strategy to the person who
bought it. Then I take a nap.
That's how my publishing bakery
works.
Here's another example:
I have a colossal collection
of special reports, sales letters, fund raising
letters, and more packed into a hefty 400-page
volume that I call (for lack of a better name)
"Master
Writer 397.O". I don't stock it, either.
It's too big, too bulky, too expensive. So I
keep the original for it in a special place.
When someone orders it, I take the master and
make a copy of it. I then put the copy in a
nice three-ring binder, add whatever I think
is appropriate, and then fulfill the order.
Then I take another nap.
That's publishing on demand.
Here's another example:
I just created an astonishing
new sales and marketing training program called
"Project
Phineas". This consists of six original
tapes and a brand new workbook. Since it took
me well over twenty years to gather and integrate
the material into a home study course that works,
I don't give the system away. I charge $495
for it, knowing that people will perceive it
as valuable because of the price, and knowing
that it IS valuable, anyway. When an order comes
in, I print out the workbook, put together a
tape set, and send it off. And then I take a
nap.
Again, that's how I run my
publishing bakery.
I still have regular books,
of course. As I've mentioned in several places
in my writings, you want a book that looks like
a book for credibility. That's why I have books
published by The American Management Association
and The American Marketing Association. I can't
self-publish or bake that sort of credibility.
But now that I have that credibility,
I can make other information products, make
a mold for them, and then print them as needed.
This means I have no printer to pay, no warehouse
to pay, no inventory to manage, and nothing
to lug out to the garage for storage. It's all
on my computer.
Why can't you do this, too?
Well, you can!
First: All you need is a specific
item for a specific audience. It needs to be
specific because people want definite how-to
information. Tell them exactly how to grow herbs
in their toilet tank, or how to teach their
children Portuguese over dinner, etc. (I'm joking.
Be sure your item is something a specific group
of people want. Food, sex, and money are consistent
winners.) You can even buy reprint rights to
existing information products from other people.
Second: The item needs to be
for a specific market so you can reach them
by phone, fax, news releases, online, etc. You
simply locate the crowd of people interested
in your product by looking through a good catalog
of mailing lists, for example, or by conducting
searches online. You aren't appealing to "everybody,"
which is a market too big to target unless you're
Coca-Cola or rich. You want a specific group.
Third: Tell these people about
your information. Send them mailings, let them
know by phone, fax, or email, etc. Take out
ads in the publications they read. Send those
publications news releases. You get the picture.
Fourth: When orders come in,
accept the money.
I told you this was easy.
Actually, I would rather see
you do step two before step one. In other words,
pick a specific group of people and give them
more of what they are already interested in.
Instead of forcing people to buy what you write,
find out what people are already buying and
give them more of it. People who bought popcorn
recipes in the past will probably buy another
popcorn recipe; people who buy books on gambling
will probably buy another gambling book; people
who buy courses on self-improvement will probably
buy another self-improvement course. Find out
what they are already buying, and then create
a new "cookie" to "bake"
for them.
Running a cake bakery would
be full of headaches and nobody likes the calories
in cakes. A publishing bakery, on the other
hand, is clean, easy, fast, and healthy. Try
it!
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