Joyce Restaino of Newfoundland, New Jersey writes:
“I hope your Publicity Hounds can come up with some ideas to help generate publicity for a motivational tips booklet I have coauthored with a corporate trainer. We envision a spiral bound book with a good-quality cover. We should have more information about the number of pages in a few weeks.
“Perhaps Hounds can even help us with the title, although our tentative title is ‘Get Going Now: 50 Tips to Show You How.’ We interviewed a number of experts who are quoted in the tips book—and the feedback from a dozen or so people who have reviewed it has been positive.
“However, with so much motivational material on the market, the challenge is generating buzz and getting noticed. Can your Hounds help?”
Are you planning to use this as a give-away to promote business or will it be sold? Makes a difference in how you put it together. My experience as a small publisher is that a give-away can be a lot simpler. If people are paying, they’ll want substance. Re the title, this is not particularly interesting, but could work for a give-away. If you’re selling it, it’s got to have pizzazz and distinguish it from all that other material you mention. And then be sure that what’s on the inside is also some new and not just a rehash of motivational posters featuring eagles and mountains and quotes by Thoreau or Emerson or sports figures – you know what I mean. In all cases, illustrations will help – and depending on your direction, they can be humorous or serious, but in either case, they should be original!
Joyce,
Congratulations on your soon-to-be completed booklet. A few thoughts to share with you. First, having a spiral binding on your booklet limits you in many ways. Having it saddle stitched with two staples in the spine is a much better way to go. This is done through a bindery that your printing company will handle. It’s definitely a case of ‘don’t try this at home.’
Your concern about getting publicity in the crowded field of motivation can be remedied by selling your booklets in bulk rather than one at a time. That means contacting corporations, associations, and publications for them to buy large quantities to use as a promotional tool for their own product, service, or cause. Once you are selling those very large quantities, your concern about getting publicity will become very ‘back seat.’ You’ll be reaching the end-users you want to reach through the distribution of the large-volume buyers. It’s been this approach that has allowed many of my clients to surpass my own results of selling over a million copies of my tips booklet without spending a penny on advertising.
You’ll find my website packed with home study courses, tips and all kinds of great educational tools for publishing an informational tips booklet. Visit http://www.TipsBooklets.com
‘Hope that helps.
Paulette
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the title is deadly, sorry, Show me how to what? To get going? Get going to do what? You didn’t ask enough “so what” questions and so ended up with something bland whose only virtue is a not-very-memorable rhyme. You have only a few seconds to get someone’s attention, and this title will not do the job.
Ask yourself what you want the booklet’s reader to feel they’ve accomplished afterwards, how that benefits this person, and who you’re targeting. You may also want to study the eight factors in choosing a name that I discuss in some detail in my book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World.
After that, you should be able to name the product. And with a better name, publicity will be much easier.
Think about how to tie your tips to a buzz already out there and just ride their coattails. I believe Joan has mentioned this many times.
For instance I once wrote a release about an auction I was having by tieing it to the movie V For Vendetta.
I wrote another article published in Australia called
How To Conjure Up Hypnotic Headlines Faster Than A
Harry Potter Book Flies Off Shelves
So you might try themed booklets like
How To Turn Your Employee Moral From Mission Impossible To Mission Invincible
What’s Your Business’s Da Vinci Code And Why Your Employees Should Believe In It
Garth Gibson, author
Find Your Shark To Find Your Wealth
What’s Your “To Why” List?
How To Stop Living A Ho-Hum Couch Potato Life