BOOK EXCERPT (from Chapter 21): © by Anne Hart 2008

Genogram Self-Help Seminar and Convention Newsletters, Discs, Reports, or Year Books

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

Genograms are medical history genealogy records for the use of families to follow the medical history of generations of their ancestors. Your gift books may cover self-help seminars, lectures, and conventions or health-related events and institutions, such as self-help groups and classes given by HMOs or senior centers. Start a consumer guidance group or watchdog publication in a specific niche area to research and report latest news in plain language such as how to interpret what consumers usually have access to.

 Show people at seminars and in other situations how to make a time capsule containing genograms or how to find higher quality and/or alternative nutrition and health care based on looking at their ancestry and genealogy or family lifestyles. If you don’t have insurance or need to save money on your health, make sure you take advantage of free health screenings offered at health fairs.

Senior centers, shopping malls, health departments, and other health agencies or businesses have frequent health fairs. Some items you can get for free include blood pressure and bone density screenings, cholesterol and blood glucose readings, weight, and other measures.

 Flu shots usually are given free or at very low cost to certain age groups such as older adults. Call each health fair and ask the requirements.

Many screenings don’t have age requirements. Ask that copies of the reports be sent to you as well as your doctor. Keep a record of your numbers and measurements. Different health fairs emphasize screening for different health issues such as bone density, blood sugar, blood pressure, or other research. Your health department and the sponsors of the health fair will have the schedules.

Study the health Web sites for factual material that you can research in magazines and journals. Health food stores have free booklets and pamphlets on various supplements and health food products.

INCOME POTENTIAL

There’s income in referring people to various health establishments ranging from clinical trials that pay people or give them free examinations to spas, rehabilitation centers, home health care services, senior services, assisted living apartments, anti-aging conventions, alternative medicine and health treatments, nutrition retreats, free plastic surgery from physicians who donate their time free and travel around the world on hospital ships, to reducing farms.

Usually, you would earn a commission much like a travel agent from the health care establishment you refer people to by educating them with facts about the establishment or the research as in clinical trials of various new treatments. Ask the establishment what percentage of a commission for referrals you’d be paid.

You can also publish material or reports about the health service or offer marketing communications services and information dissemination. You’re acting as “an observer” reporting information about the health care establishment, procedure, clinical trial, or other service. Or you’re making referrals by finding new clients for the establishment for a commission or flat fee.

 Use your public library to read about what foods and nutrients work best. Make use of any offers for paid-for DNA testing for ancestry. Some genealogy surname groups on the Web offer to pay for DNA tests for ancestry.

Find out whether your surname fits the projects being researched. These tests usually are for males, and the Y chromosome is tested for ancestry research connected to some surname groups. Ask the various DNA testing companies that emphasize testing for ancestry whether there is a surname group offering to pay for DNA Y chromosome ancestry tests for males with the same surname, if there’s a project researching the ancestry of that particular surname.

Besides attending conventions or expos and trade shows, referring people for clinical trials, or traveling to give lectures as a medical journalist or health referral agent, you could write and/or publish alternative health booklets. Here’s how  to publish these types of pamphlets.

OPERATING YOUR BUSINESS

Publish books of the highlights and significant points of your own or with permission, other authors’ 72-page or 98-page pamphlets and booklets on alternative health, clinical trials, nutrition, spas, procedures, or contemporary issues, pet training, animal behavior, parenting, or school-related subjects such as biographies of historical characters, ethnic studies, or any other subject of interest to a wide or niche audience.

You can publish the books or pamphlets. Write them yourself or use with permission other writers’ pamphlets, and then produce video segments dramatizing, reviewing, or discussing the materials. Also, you could narrate the video MP4 files known as podcasts online. Or create multimedia presentations and slide shows to be saved on DVDs or CDs.

Before you produce compressed video MP4 files known as video podcasts based on self-help books, booklets or pamphlets on controversial issues in the news or controversies in health, nutrition, or other issues, you’d have to write and publish those pamphlets. Your gift book and/or video podcast to promote your paper and photo gift book can publicize what you write and publish yourself. Make sure nothing is copyrighted by someone else.

 All material must be original based on interviews with your client on how some event helped that person solve problems, achieve results, and find benefits through some steps taken—some action. It’s a behavior, an attitude, a change in lifestyle, or better nutrition that usually helps improve the health and outlook or attitude of your client.

Pamphlets as customized gift books can be of the general consumer type found at supermarket check-out counters or specialty pamphlets on how-to subjects. Or they can be genre fiction such as children’s stories, romances, or biography. Another form of pamphlet is the one-act 45 minute play suitable for high-school drama classes.

Here's how to write and sell a fast-selling paperback 98-page (when published) pamphlet or booklet, the kind you see on supermarket impulse racks at the check stand. They can sell quite a number of copies, or you can sell them by mail order or online from your Web site.

            Start by writing about twice the number of pages that will be published. For a 98-page booklet, about 196 double spaced typed pages produces, usually a single-spaced booklet with double spaces and headlines between the sections. You may come out with having to write less than 196 pages, it depends upon the font and size of the booklet. However, here are the dimensions you'll need.

            The size of the booklet may either be six inches wide by nine inches in length or five and a half inches wide by 8 inches or 8 1/2 inches in length. Take your choice. The difference is that trade paperbacks of 6 by 9 inches fit on supermarket impulse racks at checkout counters, whereas the mass market paperbacks you see in supermarkets and book stores in the back areas on special 5 by 8 book-size racks are standard for novels in the mass paperback market.

            Let's say you choose the 6 by 9 size, which is the best fit for the impulse check out stand supermarket size. It will also fit into gift shops and specialty store racks. You'll have a soft, glossy cover with your price, usually $2.99 printed on the upper right hand corner of the book cover. The title will be placed in the middle of the book cover toward the upper half. It will be centered and have a two-word to five-word title that speaks volumes about what's in your little paper book.

            In the middle of the cover, explain in one short sentence in smaller font, about 24 point what your book shows people how to do. It must be a how-to book such as how to find and keep a soul-mate, or some other how-to theme.

            Below the explanation is the author's name: By: Joe John, or whatever name you want on the cover. Inside the cover on the left hand side you print the name of your publishing company. Assuming you're publishing the booklet yourself, put an intelligent-sounding two-word name for your publishing company such as Behavioral Digests and trade mark your publishing firm, even if it's only you at home.

             Then under than you can put a longer publishing company name, just in case you want to publish other items besides these little paperback booklets. Put something light Published by International Palm-sized Books, Inc., and your address. You can incorporate your publishing company. Use an office address or a PO Box number, not your home address. You don't want people showing up on the front steps.

             Under your mailing address, write: “Copyright, the year, by, your publishing company, address and e-mail address.” Leave out your home phone.

You can add a disclaimer in small font at the bottom that "Reproduction in whole or part of any (your publishing company's name) without written authorization is prohibited. Then add at the bottom, "printed in the USA" or wherever you send the booklet to be printed. I understand printing prices in Singapore are great, so I hear from greeting card publishers nowadays.

             On your first page's right hand side, print the name of the book centered up close to the top of the page, leaving a 2 inch margin from the top. Put in a small clip art illustration or your own art, and then a line and a by (author's name) at the bottom, leaving another 2 inch margin from the bottom.

             The left hand side of the first page can have an illustration centered. On the right hand side put your table of contents. Label it Contents. Divide your booklet into six small chapters and list them. Let's say your book is on how to find a rich mate. Label it with a title, such as why am I single? Then have a second chapter on your cure-all for loneliness.

             A third chapter on raising your feeling of importance, a fourth chapter on how to appreciate being by yourself in various settings, a fifth chapter on how to find your soul mate and where to look, and a last or sixth chapter on how to keep your mate once you found him or her. Mostly women will buy this book on impulse, but if the book is labeled, how to pick up girls, of course it will attract guys or anyone who wants to meet girls.

             The left hand side of your table of contents page should have artwork on it centered. Then on page 7, a right-hand side page, your first chapter begins with the title, self-explanatory and short, usually asking a question which you will answer in your first chapter. Define your question and answer it. Keep each chapter four printed pages, which is eight double spaced type written pages. When made single-spaced, each chapter runs to about four printed pages each.

             Then start your second chapter on page eleven. Break your booklet up into segments or chunks. The printing will be singled spaced with double spaces between each section heading. Show the reader how to solve a problem or fill a need. The problem could be technical or personal, business-oriented or relationship-oriented, health-directed, or about healing and nutrition, parenting, or any subject likely to land on a supermarket check out counter's impulse rack.

             After every 14 or 14 chapters, usually 13 to 15 chapters, you'll need a segment or section break with a new title, perhaps outline your case histories, success stories, anecdotes, interviews, or using someone as an example. Don't use real names unless you have signed permission letters and can footnote that at the end of each chapter in a list of references that's numbered. For brevity, use a first name only and an initial, usually a fake false name approved by whomever you interview with an asterisk saying the name was changed to preserve privacy.

             Use more than one example, usually two or three case histories. You can also use celebrity examples if you can get permission for success stories that run about 13 paragraphs each.

             Have sections divided if you can around page 19, 21, 23, and start another chapter heading around page 28. Every two pages should have section breaks with new headings. You might write and publish a booklet on journaling and describe how it's related to a feeling of self-importance or of accepting oneself as "good," or write a technical or business how-to if you're not an expert on relationships.

             More women will buy these booklets if they're about relationships. You can focus on instructional booklets on any topic from needlepoint and crafts to how to paint furniture and offer it to do-it-yourself stores, such as the big chain stores that customers frequent to buy do-it yourself materials for home repair and building. Another fast-selling area is travel writing.

             This would focus on where to go and how to find specifics from antiques to restaurants and entertainment for various ages, education, visual anthropology, or special needs, such as traveling with multiple disabilities or traveling with one's dog or cat. One person trains his cat to use any toilet so he can take it into motel rooms without a litter box.

             Your main focus is on how to do something, build something, solve a problem, make choices, or fill various needs, from quilting to relationships. Most people buy booklets with general titles such as how to keep a mate from leaving or how to save a troubled marriage.

             Your six-chapter booklet should take up about 98 pages when printed, so don't make it longer or it won't fit into the small books rack in supermarkets and gift shops. It's easier to mail that way. Break your six chapters into three sections that run about two pages each per section with each chapter about four to six pages in length, but vary the length throughout the booklet.

             Distribute it yourself or find a distributor who handles the supermarket impulse checkout counter rack. Or you can use gift shops or mail order. Another way to go is to offer your booklet to the tabloids as they have publishing divisions for these types of little books. They'll take a lot of your profit, so my advice is do everything yourself from writing to selling.

             A print run of 1,500 copies would test your markets, but do your market research first to make sure someone would buy your book in large numbers. You might try a test run in a supermarket to see if the booklet moves and whether it competes with the tabloid-published booklets of similar size and length. 

              Will the tabloids let you compete with them in their supermarket client's racks? If not, you have the small gift shops and the malls. If you want to move the booklet, also offer it on tape or online for the e-publishing download market or on a CD ROM or DVD disk. Look at all the marketing alternatives and give your booklet visibility in place where people gather. Career booklets belong in community college and high school career counseling libraries.

Non-Fiction Booklets and Pamphlet on Controversial or Contemporary Issues

            Write and publish sixty-six-page pamphlets or booklets that are about 4 inches wide and about 6 inches in length. These booklets fill up quickly with your articles. Don't forget to reduce the number of pages you write that first start out as double-spaced typed pages.

            You can also provide marketing research for corporations or information for advertising and public relations agencies, employment agencies, or college career centers in this format or mystery shopper news if updates aren't required more frequently than annually.

If you're printing up an 8 1/2 by 11 inch page, usually it takes up to twice as much writing to reduce the size in half when you print up single spaced content with a double space between paragraphs and allow for a 16 point type size font for each heading or larger fonts for chapter headings.

Make Small Booklets with Fresh Information

             When you print up small booklets, you'll need much less writing to fill up a whole little booklet. These small booklets are bought by school libraries to fill research folders on a variety of topics that are current issues in the news. If you are marketing to the general public through supermarket racks on impulse shelves near the checkout counter, usually near the checkout person, you'll want to supply each supermarket with your own racks the size of your tiny booklets.

             The subjects that sell best are topics that tell the reader how something affects or changes something else. For example, how different foods affect your moods, and subtitle the booklet how people can change their behavior or their lives by adjusting the foods to their moods or any other topic telling readers how to improve themselves with the specific information.

             Price your booklets anywhere from $1 to $2. Usually $1.19 in the US and $1.49 in Canada is fine, keeping the price plus tax adding up to an even amount. Find out what the tax would be on your booklets to one person at a checkout counter for the booklet. Then adjust the price so the reader can pay the tax and your price and have it add up to an easy to come up with amount, like $1.20 or $1.50. Calculate your expenses so you can arrive at a price that looks inviting.

             Keep your pages around 66. Use an even number of pages. Your cover would have a title and a subtitle explaining what the title can do for the reader, how changing the behavior can change the person's life. Print your company or publishing name and address on the inside cover in the center. 

            On the first page, label it "Contents" and list you six or seven chapters and the page numbers. At the bottom of the contents page, about two inches up from the bottom of the page have the authors name in small, but easily readable font, such as 10 point Times New Roman or italics.

             The left hand side of the contents page should have a disclaimer saying that your book is intended as a reference volume, not a medical manual so you won't be sued for giving medical advice without a license or credentials. Put in there that your booklet doesn't presume to give medical advice.  

             You really need this in there. Add a "consult your physician before beginning any therapeutic program," to protect yourself from being sued or accused of giving medical advice. You need this disclaimer on any booklet that gives information based on material provided by actual researchers and experts, even if you are using medical articles with simplified English or anything where people are told what to eat to change their health or behavior. 

             Always put this disclaimer or a similar one into a booklet you write and publish. This is especially true when you interview doctors or read their articles and report what they wrote, even with their written permission, which you always need to have. You don't need this disclaimer of your booklet is about how to knit costumes for animals or how to fix a leaky faucet or repair and antique furniture, but you need it for special diet, food, and nutrition booklets.

             Each chapter can run four to 12 pages in this tiny booklet with the chapter divided every few paragraphs into new headings so you break up your booklet in chunks. Try to balance the size of your chapters. Usually four-page chapters work best in this size booklet totaling about 6 or 7 chapters, and total amount of pages being about 66. 

Keep your pages an even number. Don't leave blank pages in this size booklet. Place a one or two-sentence description of the booklet centered about one inch down from the top of your glossy back cover. 

             Put it in a box if you like, and place or print your bar code below with the price on the back. You'll also have the price on the front cover, your logo in the upper left hand corner of the front cover, the title, subtitle, and any illustration, usually a photo in color of a person working with the items in the book or doing some action that sums up what the book says.

             Have the book cover put on with two staples in the spine that are not readily noticeable to the reader. Only the backs of the staples should be seen on the spine, and flat into the crease of the spine of the book so as not to catch on any object. You don't need an ISBN number for this kind of booklet, only a bar code so the scanning machine in the supermarket can scan it. Provide your own racks if ones there belong to other merchants and distributors. Have the price on the front and back cover in addition to the bar code so readers can see the price immediately.

             If you write on health topics, keep the English simple, writing at 5th grade level. Keep sentences short and paragraphs short, about two sentences per paragraph. Use Times New Roman 12 point type, nothing smaller, or older people won't want to look unless they have their reading glasses. So keep the font large enough for most people to see at most ages. 

             You can find distributors who specialize in small pamphlets and booklets. Print your own catalogue listing all your pamphlet/booklet titles. Place a catalogue copy on the Internet’s Web to reach people around the world. Specialize in supplying college and high school career counseling offices with booklets on each type of career in a group of related careers. Or focus on foods and health or psychology and behavior for self-help. 

             Inspirational, religious, New Age, nutritional, and holistic health booklets each have individual, customized, expanding markets associated with conferences, conventions, suppliers, vendors, publications, and members of the various groups with similar interests.

If you want people to pay for your booklets, give readers information that's not easy to find and is not usually found among the free literature available in health food stores, community centers, self-help magazines, or religious organizations. Also try specialty gift stores, home building centers, discount stores, libraries, business, professional, and trade associations, corporations, schools, and employee organizations.

  Supermarkets have special display racks with informational booklets and short romances. Some of these publishers are parts of larger publishing companies, such as the tabloids. Try gift shops, museums, libraries, bookstores, schools, churches, hotel lobby shops, sports stores such as golf and tennis shops at hotels and resorts, golf courses, and sports clubs.

  Keep trying the supermarkets and smaller convenience stores until you find a store that lets you put in your own display rack for your catalogue of booklets or pamphlets. Sometimes used bookstores will allow you to put in a display case or rack of your short romances or historical fiction. School supply stores may be interested in your pamphlets with biographies of historical characters or vocational biographies. 

            Writing on contemporary and controversial issues in the news supplies school libraries with information for student research. Pamphlets need a bar code and a price more than they need an ISBN, but you can get one in case you want your booklet to go to libraries and schools or be sold by online booksellers and distributed by distributors.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Gift Book Pamphlets into Podcast Feed Urls

Podcasting News: Health and Fitness Podcast Directory

http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/link_13.htm

Sanoviv Alternative Health Care Medical Institute

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SanovivMedicalInstituteAchievePerfectHealth   
A Better Day (Helping to make everyday a better day) http://feeds.feedburner.com/ABetterDaysMedia 

Podcast Feed Url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ABetterDaysMedia  

2Down (Weight Loss) Podcast News Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TwoDown

Fitness

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Homeschoolers, parents, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, and workers interested in opening powerful, affordable-budget, trend-ready home-based publishing, writing, or video podcasting and video news release-production businesses and creative writing fundraising events will enjoy these unique applications to help you create your own board games, projects, businesses, publications, and events.

Sample business start-ups (or one-time project) categories include the following categories: description of business, income potential, best locale to operate the business, training required, general aptitude or experience, equipment needed, operating your business, target market, related opportunities, and additional information for resources.

Develop practical projects using the skills of video production, creative writing, book and pamphlet publishing, or newsletter design. These skills include adapting stories, novels, news events, or scripts and skits to numerous platforms, formats, and media types.

Inform others how to avoid pitfalls and blind spots that can derail careers early in the game. The campaigns are ideal for most promotional, business, or training situations.

Most Popular of Author's Books

Anne Hart is the author of 80+ published books currently in print and 11 more books out of print since the 1980s and1990s. Recent books now in print also include family history novels and numerous DNA-driven genealogy books. She's a member of the American Association of Journalists and Authors, and Mensa, and holds a graduate degree in English/Creative Writing emphasis.

See her book titled, 102 Ways to Apply Career Training in Family History/Genealogy: How to Find a Job, Internship, or Create Your Own Business. ISBN: 0595413161. 2006. ASJA Press, iUniverse, Inc. 1-800 Authors or http://www.iuniverse.com.

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