Writing a HOW-To Booklet or Your Own eBook

Creating and writing your own booklet

How to Write Your Own “How to” or E-booklet

When it comes to publishing these days, you do not have to write prose like Shakespeare or Hemingway. In fact, all you need is a really good idea and you can become very successful. “How-to” and e-booklets are fast becoming a new way to make money. Even if your dream is not to write the great American novel, as long as you have vast knowledge or expertise in a subject, you can put together a “how to” or e-booklet for mass consumption.

For example, if you are an expert in organizing things—rooms, drawers, closets, life, etc.—you may want to consider writing about it. After all, who does not want to be more organized? You can put together a short ten to twenty-page booklet highlighting all the ways people can get organized. Your booklet can have a table of contents, graphs, pictures—whatever is pertinent to the readers and would help get your point across to them.

Because these how-to and e-booklets are small, make sure you quickly get to the points you are trying to make. There is very little room for fluff and fillers. If your first chapter is about organizing a child’s bedroom, there is no need to go on and on about why kids keep their rooms so messy or why they are disorganized. The reader already knows this—that is why he or she is reading your booklet in the first place. Keep the ideas simple and straightforward and then move on to the next chapter.

Make sure whatever it is you write about has some mass appeal. A booklet on how to buy a birdcage probably will not get you many sales. Sure, there are people this may interest, but probably not enough to generate the type of income you are hoping to get. Especially if this is your first booklet, you want to focus on writing about something that people can relate to and is useful.

If writing is not your forte, consider hiring someone to write the booklet for you. By collaborating with someone you do not run the risk of producing a booklet that is full of typos, spelling errors, grammatical mistakes or punctuation problems. Of course, having someone do this for you will cost money, but in the end it will be worth it when you distribute a high quality booklet.

Finally, you need to have a plan to market your booklet. This means printing out hundreds of copies and doling them out to businesses and people who will be able to further your cause. Find local businesses that specialize in organizing people and see if they can hand out copies to customers or simply leave them some place in the store where people can easily see them and take one as they go.

Another effective way of marketing your booklet is to send them to magazines or newspapers and see if they can include some of the booklet’s information in their publication and invite people to purchase your booklet for a small fee (preferably $5 or less). Make sure you have them mention to send the money in a self-addressed stamped envelope so you can easily mail them the booklet.

Once the word is out, it is up to you to keep things going. Distribute them as much as you can to as many places as you can. Always be on the lookout for new contacts who may be able to distribute or publish your booklet. You can even offer to do speaking engagements discussing the topic of organization. There you have a captive audience with whom you can share and sell your booklet. So for instance, if you do a whole chapter on mommies staying organized after a baby is born, you may decide to speak to a group of pregnant women who are taking a birthing class at a local hospital. While you are there, you can discuss your ideas on organization for them and then sell copies of your booklet. Make sure to include any information on the booklet that will let people know who you are and where they can get additional booklets if they want.

Whatever you do, make sure not to overextend yourself. If you get an order for 100 copies, be sure to complete the order as soon as possible to guarantee customer satisfaction. Also, stick with writing about things you know. You will come across as more sincere and authoritative instead of someone who does not know what they are talking about.

You can write a very successful how-to or e-booklet. It is just a matter of finding a subject with wide appeal and having a strategy to market and sell it. Who knows—you may discover a new career in the process.

Back to our Home Business Ideas section

 

Tagged as: Writing a HOW-To Booklet