Roger C. Parker's Resource Center

Review the 12 important characteristics of meaningful books before writing your first, or your next, nonfiction book

My recent survey of the 12 Important Characteristics of Meaningful Books has been added to the Sample Content Area of Published & Profitable. These characteristics reflect years of experience analyzing what it takes to successfully publish a book that creates a powerful brand for its author and opens doors of opportunity.

I created Published & Profitable to help nonfiction authors avoid some of the mistakes I made writing 38 books that have sold over 1.6 million copies around the world.

By analyzing the 12 characteristics that show up over and over again, and applying them to your particular goals, interests, and topic, you'll be better able to plan, write, promote, and profit from a meaningful book. You can access 12 Important Characteristics of Meaningful Books here.

In addition, you can access my writing tips blog which contains daily posts relating to the 4 major tasks creating a meaningful book:

1. Planning: Tips and resources for analyzing your market, the competition, and your goals.
2. Writing: Tips and tools for writing your book as easily and efficiently as possible. 
   
3. Promoting: Tips for creating a marketing plan and promoting your book online, offline, and in person.
4. Profiting: Tips and examples of authors who have created an empire based on a single book.

You may subscribe to the blog's RSS feed, or sign-up to receive daily e-mail updates.

8 tips for selling more books described in recorded live book coaching session

Visit Roger C. Parker's Published & Profitable's Sample Content page, where you can listen to a recording of a live coaching call with author Tim Baretto. Listen as I ask Tim to describe the origins of his Searching for Joy book and offer 8 specific ideas Tim can use to jumpstart sales of his widely-acclaimed book.

A published book's second year is often the hardest. The author's initial euphoria has frequently worn off, and the book appears to lose "news" value.

As this call shows, however, authors can play a major role in maintaining their book's sales by taking consistent action, even if the action is only an hour, or two, a week.

One of the major points discussed during downloadable call is the importance of authors searching for special markets, i.e., concentrations of book buyers, beyond traditional outlets like bookstores and online retailers.

White Paper Design that Sells report describes 16 Easy-to-Implement Best Practices

Roger C. Parker's Write Paper Design that Sells is a free report that describes how business owners, copywriters, and marketing professionals can improve the effectiveness of their use of white papers for lead generation, list building, and to introduce new product and technology breakthroughs. White Paper Design that Sells describes 16 specific best practices that will help your white paper attract more readers and keep them reading.

Rather than stressing  "design theory," or "aesthetics," White Paper Design that Sells focuses on readability. Readability is an often neglected aspect of white paper design. Readability is a measure of how easy, or difficult, it is for readers to navigate long text passages.

Readability is not an aesthetic judgment, but the result of details like layout (i.e., line length), typography (type face, type size, and line spacing, etc.) and color (less is usually better than more).

By stressing the basics of readability, White Paper Design that Sells helps business owners and copywriters improve the quality of the white papers they produce, as well as provides them with a way to evaluate designs created for them by others.

Associations and firms depending on white papers to generate leads, introduce new product breakthroughs, or build their prospect lists can download Write Paper Design that Sells here.

New website helps authors establish a brand and become profitably published

Roger C. Parker, the 32 Million Dollar Author, has created a new website, Published & Profitable, that provides the detailed, step-by-step guidance needed for authors and business owners to become profitably published. Roger C. Parker's 38 books have sold over 1.6 million copies around the world. Published & Profitable offers members access to over 350 pages of:

• Articles. Over 150 articles help authors evaluate their progress.
• Assessments.-These help authors and business owners make crucial decisions
• Author interviews. Published & Profitable contains over 70 exclusive conversations with authors.
• Mind maps. Mind mapping is a crucial planning and writing tool.
• Templates. Software templates speed the production of tip sheets and other projects.
• Worksheets. These provide a framework for making quick progress on specific projects. 

Published & Profitable's contents are organized in four steps:

1. Plan: Identify your market, survey the competition and create realistic goals
   
2. Write: Get the first draft of your book written as efficiently as possible.
   
3. Promote: Establish a web presence and loyal followers as soon as possible.
   
4. Profit: Book sales are seldom enough to justify writing a book. Authors need to create a back-up profit system. 

Business owners and self-employed professionals interested in writing a book can download a free report, Write Your Way to Success at Published & Profitable.

New Content Catalyst means the end of Writer's Block for business owners and copywriters

For most business owners and copywriters, the hardest part of writing articles, blogs, e-books, newsletters, and white papers is coming up with the title idea. Once you have identified the title, premise, or "big idea" of your project, it becomes relatively easy to fill in the blanks and complete the project. This is especially true if the title provides a structure, or foundation, for completing your project.

Roger C. Parker's Content Catalyst is a downloadable system for creating the endless stream of articles, blog posts, newsletters, and white papers needed to succeed in today's Web 2.0 social marketing. The Content Catalyst offers:

• A system for writing based on choosing engaging, easy-to-complete titles. The Content Catalyst eliminates the bone-chilling stress that accompanies a blank computer screen. The Content Catalyst system helps you identify a title that not only attracts your prospect's attention, but creates a structure for completing the project in record time.
• Contains over 400 specific title ideas and examples. The Content Catalyst jumpstarts your project by offering over 400 title ideas, descriptions, and examples. Simply reviewing the lists of nouns, verbs, and modifiers is usually enough to restore your project's momentum.
  

To learn more, click here.

Newsletter describes how to avoid the 12 biggest mistakes of first-time authors

Often, new authors experience detours on the path to becoming successfully Published & Profitable. To help them avoid the mistakes that others have made before them, Roger C. Parker has created a short newsletter that describes the most common mistakes. You can download my 12 Biggest Mistakes of First-Time Authors here. 

This popular newsletter has helped numerous first-time authors avoid the most common mistakes. It provides an informed perspective on what's really important when writing a book to establish a brand and open the doors to new business opportunities.

Roger C. Parker is known as the 32 Million Dollar Author. His experiences learned while writing 38 books that have sold 1.6 million copies, and his ongoing individual and group book coaching is reflected in his freely downloadable newsletter's recommendations which you can obtain by clicking here.

New Membership Site Content & Design Planner Provides Step-by-Step Guidance

32-Million Dollar Author Roger C. Parker, and designer Maria G. Nozza, have written a Membership Site Content & Design Planner that provides a concise guide to the content and design issues involved in setting up a membership, or subscription, website. Membership sites allow prospects and casual visitors to sample a website's content, but limit distribution of premium content to currently enrolled members. Membership sites offer a practical and proven option for authors, business owners, and information marketers looking for new profit opportunities. 

Membership site success is based on a combination of design and content decisions which must be made during the set-up process. After the site has been properly set up, the membership site software's built-in content management system makes it easy to add and format new content. 

Roger and Maria's Membership Site Content & Design Planner describes a 6 step formula for success: 

1. Planning involves reviewing site goals and market information needs in order to identify content topics. 
2. Design tasks include selecting logical categories for organizing content and making layout, typographic, and color decisions that will appear on every page.
3. Marketing involves establish and prioritizing tasks to be completed during the pre-launch,  launch, and post-launch. Marketing also involves creating the proper incentives to encourage members and prospect sign-ups. 
4. Production requires creating the promised articles, audios, templates and videos for members to access.
5. Updating tasks include adding new content at consistent intervals to keep the site fresh for both prospects and members.
6. Tracking is the key to long-term success by identifying where prospects and members are coming from and the site's most popular features.

By identifying and prioritizing the decisions that must be made at the various stages of a membership site's life, the Membership Site Content & Design Planner has made a significant contribution to the careers of many site owners, and it can do the same for you!

New graphic design book for non-designers stresses the basics of creating attractive, readable, marketing materials on a budget

Design to Sell, Roger C. Parker's latest book, makes it easy for non-designers to create attractive, readable, marketing materials like ads, newsletters, postcards, and tip sheets. Using the ideas and techniques described in Design to Sell, business owners and copywriters can add value to their words, using design to attract attention, set their publications apart, and provide selective emphasis of important ideas.

Design to Sell explains how business owners and copywriters can use Microsoft Publisher, a low-cost page layout program that has been included with various versions of Microsoft Office for Windows, to produce easy-to-read marketing materials that attract attention and project a positive image. It's simple, straightforward descriptions of graphic design basics, and its step-by-step guidance, create a tool that allows non-designers to look good in print.

Details:

• Free chapter downloads
• Book reviews and reader comments
• Table of contents & bonus resources
• Assessment: Test Your Design I.Q.
  
• Amazon.com link

Explore Maria G. Nozza's My Graphics Notebook for online and offline design tips for small business owners

Maria G. Nozza is an accomplished graphic designer whose writing and design assistance has brought my newsletters and websites to a new level of impact and professionalism. Maria's "home" website is My Graphics Notebook. You can see more of Maria G. Nozza's content, design, and information architecture at:

• Design to Sell Online. This is the website that accompanies my latest book, Design to Sell. 
• Published & Profitable. This site offers over 350 pages of articles, assessments, audios, e-books, mind maps, templates, videos, and worksheets to help you plan, write, promote, and profit from a published book.
• Design & Thrive. This is Maria's membership website for profit-oriented graphic design professionals.
• Membership Site Planner. Our joint site offers content and design resources for information marketers and membership site owners.
• Long Term Care Connecticut. This is an example of a client site created as an easily-updated blog with pages added for specific functions.
• Haas Agency. This site is the hub of all Haas Agency resources and services.
• Grass Fed and Healthy. This site offers resources for healthy eating and sensible weight loss, coupled with hundreds of recipes for preparing grass fed meals for healthy families and families facing challenges caused by chronic diseases.

Contact Maria G. Nozza for more information.

Keep up to date with Roger C. Parker's latest design, marketing, and writing events

Each week, Roger C. Parker hosts a variety of educational teleseminar events for those interested in graphic design, small business marketing, or writing and publishing a book. These events are in conjunction with Roger C. Parker's Published & Profitable website which helps authors plan, write, promote, and profit from published books.

In addition, Roger host the weekly Guerrilla Marketing Association interviews which take place Wednesday evenings at 7:00 to 8:00 PM EST.

Details of Roger's weekly interviews are available at his Published & Profitable blog and at his Current Events blog.

Adobe Acrobat adds impact to your PowerPoint presentations

Create and deliver more convincing presentations by making Adobe Acrobat your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation software partner.

There's more to presentations than Microsoft PowerPoint, even though PowerPoint is the presentation software of choice for most business presentations. Adobe Acrobat complements PowerPoint, allowing you to show more, with greater ease.

As explained in the latest issue of my Guerrilla Marketing and Design newsletter, Acrobat's F11 Full Screen View permits you to display a variety of properly sized horizontal and vertical visuals, created using several different software programs, including Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Microsoft Publisher newsletters, Photoshop visuals, and Adobe InDesign publications.

All this, plus added protection in case "something goes wrong" on the way to your presentation! Read about it here and subscribe to future issues here.

Mind Mapping for Marketers and Writers

Free 4-page report shows how to get started in Mind Mapping...for free!

Mind Mapping is the "secret handshake" shared by high-output writers and marketers around the world. It's a 25-year old process that is becoming easier and easier to put to use.

• Get more done in less time!
• Find out my 7 top Mind Mapping Tasks
• Over 20 specific ways to use Mind Mapping for marketing and writing
• Where to get free demo software

This Special Report shows how I use Mind Mapping to produce weekly teleconferences, prepare  proposals, and write better and faster.

1. Learn how to get started with your first Map!
2. Find out what to do with Mind Maps after you create them.

Download today! No obligation.
 

Universal Productivity--Shortcuts that work in all Windows programs

The latest issue of Guerrilla Marketing & Design newsletter describes how to set up keyboard shortcuts to increase accuracy and speed working with all of your Microsoft Windows software programs.

ActiveWords is a "must have" for any users of Microsoft Windows software.

With ActiveWords, you can save hours a week, seconds at a time!

Click here for your copy and information about a 60 day free trial.

Active Words saves time communicating and researching

I've been living with Active Word for about a month now and I'm finding it more useful every day.

• Think of it as "Auto Fill on Steroids." I used it to reduce a long book title I'm working on with a three letter acronym that I can use with every program; e-mail, word processing, web editor, InDesign, PowerPoint, etc.
• I launch my e-mail program and address a message to a client in seconds.
• ActiveWords also saves time posting to my blogs, and checking what's new on other blogs and websites.

And that just barely scratches the surface! Better yet, there's a generous 60 day free trial. And, you can easily see the shortcuts you've created. www.activewords.com.

New book provides fresh thinking about presentation content

If you've ever been forced to sit through a presentation consisting of nothing but bullet charts, you'll love the fresh perspective provided by Cliff Atkinson in his latest book, Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press).

Cliff is an original thinker, as you'll see when you visit his Beyond Bullets blog.

Instead of focusing on software features, Cliff concentrates on content and sequence. He shows how to adapt centuries of storytelling technique to your next presentation task. Beyond Bullet Points provides a Microsoft Word content template that will make it easy for you to use storyboarding your next presentation.

With this book, Microsoft Press has broken new ground in a concept-oriented book that speeds a unwanted, but necessary, task and helps you communicate more effectively.