Day 5, Bill Ruesch recession-recovery diary

Dear Reader,

Some may wonder if I’ve been sitting on my hands the last two years. My previous blogs could lead you to that conclusion, but you’d be wrong. For a quarter century (doesn’t that sound painfully long?) I semi-specialized in direct mail printing. Most of my customers were either DM agencies or in-house marketing departments of companies communicating with their customers through the mail.

We all know what happened when the recession hit and companies en masse pulled back on direct mail. We could see it coming. The Internet was making promises of delivering tons of new business at a fraction of the CPM. The post office, thinking in government logic, decided to bump up their rates to solve their cash flow problems. This awful triad of recession-fear–the Internet rainbow–and postage costs all but killed direct mail.

I said we could see it coming and we could, but no one thought it would happen so fast. It was literally almost overnight. One day DM was thriving, the next, BOOM the bottom dropped out.

In an effort to prepare my business for the coming crash, I had already been looking in new directions. I asked myself what I love, and determined that I love books. Wouldn’t it be nice to help authors print books and get samples for my personal library in the bargain? Yes, but moving into new markets takes time. It requires making new connections, and building trust.

To shorten the time I decided to begin blogging. I reasoned that the Internet would provide me with a minimal cost platform. It does, but the competition for attention is overwhelming.  I read somewhere that 17 thousand new blogs are started every day–e v e r y day.  That’s over 6 million a year!

There are many, many Internet “gurus” that for a fee, promise to show you how to drive readers to your site and earn you more money than God while you are sleeping peacefully on your yacht. I don’t know about you, but I shy away from these kinds of promises. I may be old-fashioned, but I truly believe that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

The problem still remains, how do you make an impact on the Internet when the odds are so staggeringly against you? The answer for me is to keep chopping at the tree. No one knows how many cuts it will take before it topples, but for certain it will never come down if you don’t wield the ax.

In reading a response to a discussion I started on a writer’s group on LinkedIn, I was struck with the thought that it isn’t just self-publishers who need to pay attention to the quality of their products. Some very big names are guilty of foisting-off crap.

The kind of food you'll find at Cracker Barrel.

Recently I visited a Cracker Barrel Restaurant with my wife. For those who may not be familiar with Cracker Barrel, it serves southern style comfort food at reasonable prices. We like to go there when we just want foody-food. Nothing fancy.  No cooking with exotic spices like saffron or curry. On the menu will be dishes like meatloaf, country fried steak, and catfish. You can choose your sides from a menu that includes fried okra, turnip greens, and corn. For desert there are various cobblers, pie, and ice-cream. Yum.

Before you get to the restaurant part of the place you have to wend your way through kitschy collections of merchandise that change with the season. My wife loves to peruse their tables of nick-knacks, music boxes, and stuffed animals. Now, as I am writing this it is three days from Christmas, so they were all decked out in a torrent of red and green. Santas and gift items were stacked nearly ceiling high. My eye caught an illustrated book of The Night Before Christmas. The illustrations were beautiful. I wish I could say the same for the book. The workmanship, especially on the cover was a disaster. Both covers, front and back, bowed outward from the spine. It was not only ugly, but made it impossible for the book to lay flat on a table. Here was a book that I wanted to buy, wanted to take home and treasure, wanted to read it to future grandchildren, but I couldn’t get past the cover. This was not an heirloom piece; it was a piece of carnival crap. I looked at the spine and was surprised to see that Simon & Schuster allowed this mess to go out under their banner.

I believe that books are a treasure. They last decades and centuries even. It saddens me to think that the noble business of publishing, especially the giant houses like Simon & Schuster, may be more focused on profit than quality.

I have heard authors complain that their traditionally published books were an embarrassment to them. That the cover designs didn’t truly represent the book, and that cheap cost cutting methods were implemented. Authors who have sold their rights to the publisher have no claim on how the book is manufactured. As for The Night Before Christmas I’m guessing it was sent to a sweat shop overseas to be printed and bound for the lowest price possible, a price guaranteeing maximum profit but sacrificing the honor of the book. I didn’t buy it. I’m hoping no one does. If enough customers reject poor quality the publisher will have to ask why. Why didn’t this book sell?

I plead with self-publishing authors to realize that they have total control of their children. Dress them up in their Sunday best and send them out to play. The day may come when the marketplace will select a self-published book over a traditional one because of the value added that comes from your care.

Many years ago, in the distant past, even before Willie Nelson had a pony tail, I was working for an advertising agency and had a client who wanted to publish a book. His book was called It’s Your Money, Earn or Burn. Actually, I wrote the title, but that is beside the point. The information in the book is way out of date now, but at the time was cutting edge.

He, my client, and a partner had a business finding and promoting tax sheltered investments. Since then congress has closed most shelters and left many tax payers high and dry. The rules surrounding  acceptable tax shelters from those disallowed were somewhat discombobulated and difficult to decipher. Imagine that–tax regulations being difficult to understand–who wodda thought?

Willie Nelson

For example there was the famous case of country singer Willie Nelson who followed the advice of Price Waterhouse, one of the top 10 accounting firms in the country. The government disallowed his sheltered investments and the unpaid taxes and fines forced Willie Nelson into bankruptcy.

Get this, the government wouldn’t tell you in advance if a shelter would be allowed or not. You had to assume it would be, then wait for their audit, which could take years. If you guessed wrong–WHAM you paid dearly.

My client’s idea was to write a book simplifying tax shelters for people and leading them away from uncertain ones into those proven. It was an excellent idea, but marketing and distribution became a problem. The Internet didn’t exist in those days so it was difficult to connect with the very small percentage of Americans who were potential targets for his message, but that didn’t really matter.

Why, you might ask.

The very day books were delivered; he extracted a copy, proudly marched down the hall to the offices of another firm, and gave the book to the owner. The owner looked at the cover, turned it over and saw my client’s photo and bio on the back. Volia, instant credibility.

As a direct result of using his book as a calling card, my client secured a contract that paid him more than all of the costs of producing the book. All actual book sales were gravy.

Ask yourself if instant credibility would benefit you. Are there doors currently closed that might open if you used a book to jimmy the lock (metaphorically speaking, that is)? How do you crash through the glass ceiling? Try throwing your book at it. A book can give you more status than any other factor. These people would definitely improve their chances for advancement, better name recognition, and higher earnings if they had a book:

• Public Speakers
• Corporate Trainers
• Presenters
• Sales Representatives
• Teachers
• Executives

Note: Remember that writing a book is only the first step. At that point you aren’t even half-way done. To decide how you will market your book check into The Author Platform. It’s a comprehensive program to teach you how to use the Internet effectively.