Re: Some thoughts and questions...

> Mmmmkay... now... do they NEED to be that long?

I guess I figured that the initial $4.58 was the whopper and then
the .02 per page (from lulu) would make it crazy to sell something
small, as it wouldn't be cost effective for customers. The other
reason I made it so many pages, is that the catagories of angel
poems are grouped together. ie: Professions, School, Sports,
Medical, Life 101, Etc. Rather than splitting up the catagories, I would
leave them intact, as I do on my sales list that people are used to
receiving at the craft shows.

> What I found was that for my help manuals, people needed specific things
> (how to do this type of program or that type of action in an online game)
> but they didn't need the whole manual. The craft books that I've seen
> generally run about 16-24 pages. I've seen some whopper-sized ones, but
> the little ones sell equally well. I think customers like a *few* projects
> that are targeted to what they do rather than a big bunch of them.

See, when I am at the Craft shows, or when my repeat customers contact me,
they are always asking me if I am ever going to come out with a book.
That tells me there is a want for my poetry, but not everyone wants to
go in business with them. Some want them just to use for their own purposes
in making greeting cards at home, or to make inserts for their scrapbooking
projects (which is the HOTTEST trend right now)The actual "How to"
manual would be duplicated in each edition of the book. I think there are
a lot of women out there ... at home with a hobby, like
making scrapbooking inserts or greeting cards, and then something happens
that makes them want to try their hand at a craft show. For those already
doing craft shows, they are ALWAYS looking to expand their line of items.
So I think it has broad appeal to the right market. So my inital thoughts
were to put the How To part in each edition. The how to part won't appeal
to the person already doing the craft shows, BUT...my permission to use the
poems would be invaluable to them. Most of the poetry or writing I see
available for people to use states it cannot be used for commercial purposes.
My whole idea is that the poems COULD be used for those purposes as long
as my copyright was put on the poem with "permission granted". For the
person using it for their own purposes, who later wants to go into business,
it would give them the how to AND the poems to start.
Would like your input on that.

> I found out that I could make a LOT more money with my books by
> specializing (breaking the big manual into $2.00 booklets) and I was
> wondering if this might work for you.

Since Lulu doesn't care where or how I print the same material,
perhaps I should do smaller booklets as well? And in the smaller
booklets, push the book? I could make it so it is much more cost
effective in the long run for someone to buy the book, vs the
booklets if they wanted a majority of the poems.

Make the booklets here locally and proceed
with the bigger books through Lulu?

> Anyway, this all sounds exciting and I hope you'll keep us up with what
> you're doing!