This article is reposted from Crain?s Chicago Business.? I chose it because of this quote at the end: ?In order to be successful in sales and client service, you have to be very creative in order to differentiate yourself.?? Sounds also like what it takes to succeed as an artist.? I know of more than one artist who has produced handsome books and catalogs using Blurb.com or other inexpensive means.
By: Alina Dizik January 28, 2013
Laura Bruzas? book helped her attract speaking gigs.
John R. Boehm
After years of schlepping dozens of handouts to her speaking engagements, Laura Bruzas, founder of website Healthy Dining Chicago, decided she needed a book to keep them all in one place. In 2012, she self-published ?100 Simple Ways to Eat Well for Less,? which she sells mostly through her website, earning her about $6 per copy.
Not only did the book help to organize her thoughts; it helped her attract more speaking engagements. Income from such events quadrupled this year, she says.
The book ?gives me a sense of greater authority,? says Ms. Bruzas, who also worked in marketing at Whole Foods Market Inc.
Executives and entrepreneurs are publishing good old-fashioned hard- and soft-copy books to wrangle new business and earn some extra money from sales. Authors who ?vanity? publish typically foot the bill and avoid jumping through the hoops of traditional publishing. Sites such as Amazon.com?s Createspace and Lulu.com allow users to upload their work and print the book for a small fee. They also offer distribution channels.
?Windows are opening,? says Melissa Giovagnoli Wilson, a Chicago-based self-publishing consultant and author of 15 books, five of which have been self-published. ?If you have a great strategy, you can succeed in this space.?
It also makes financial sense, says Ms. Wilson, who has worked with executives from Allstate Corp., Hewitt Associates (part of Aon PLC) and Accenture in the past few years. ?When a book can cost you $3 (to self-publish) whether you buy one or 100,000 copies, we are now at a place when a company is considering it a marketing tool.? Some companies even are replacing traditional white papers with self-published books, she adds. Most self-publishers charge less than $300 to help authors publish their work.
BRINGING IN BUSINESS
Chad Coe, founder of Deerfield-based Coe Financial Group, uses his self-published book on professional networking, ?The Power of Peopletizing,? to expand his network of 4,700 LinkedIn contacts. During speaking engagements for his wealth-management firm, he gives the book to the first 10 people who give him their business card as well as to anyone who walks into his office. ?The (book?s) messaging helps bring in business opportunities,? he says.
Not everyone gives away books. Bill Burnett, co-founder of leadership consultancy THNK, based in Libertyville, sold about 2,000 copies of his second book, ?The Peak Interview.? It?s available at the University of Chicago?s downtown Gleacher Center and on Amazon.com for $15, a 50 percent markup over print costs. Because of the book, which covers interviewing and job skills, he became an adviser to a group of Fortune 1000 executives looking for work, he adds. ?It?s pretty easy to get a payback,? he says.
This year, Mr. Burnett will self-publish ?Behave!,? a manual on how to engage employees, which he plans to sell at speaking engagements and on Amazon. ?Writing books forces you to think through concepts more thoroughly,? he says.
In addition to low barriers to entry, part of the draw is that self-publishing produces a more immediate result. There?s no need to write 250 pages or wait more than a year as one would with a traditional publisher, says Andrew Razeghi, a lecturer at Northwestern University?s Kellogg School of Management. Some self-published books can be as short as 25 pages. This year, Mr. Razeghi published two titles through Slimbooks.com, a short-form e-book publisher that was started by one of his students.(SlimBooks operates a bit differently: it vets and selects the content it releases in its online store, providing design, writing assistance, editing and marketing at no cost to the writer. Those costs are taken out of future revenue up to $1,000).
Mr. Razeghi?s first book, ?The Future of Innovation,? became an Amazon bestseller in the category last fall. It was just 55 pages long.
Shorter lengths are more manageable, he says. ?You can have an idea and write it within a week to 10 days,? he says. The target audience also appreciates the shorter form: ?They can actually read it while boarding the plane,? Mr. Razeghi says.
Not all execs are using self-publishing to extend their brand. Sara Sirotzky used her time away from the office as a Chicago-based managing director at Marsh Inc., an insurance broker, to write ?Red Rose and Blue Butterfly,? a children?s book that referenced her childhood in Lima, Peru. The project was a goal Ms. Sirotzky had set to achieve around her 65th birthday. So she hired an illustrator, and the hardcover book is now sold for $13.50 on Amazon.com. It took less than six months to make it a reality.
?I wanted to make sure people would view me not (solely) from the business perspective,? says Ms. Sirotzky, who plans to write a marketing book next.
Creating the book has helped Ms. Sirotzky draw on skills from her own sales career. ?In order to be successful in sales and client service, you have to be very creative in order to differentiate yourself,? she says. And with the barriers to publishing continuing to drop, a book may just be the new business card?the ultimate way to stand out.
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