Interview with
Paulette Ensign
Interview by Jenna Glatzer
Paulette Ensign
is founder, CEO, and Chief Visionary of her San Diego, CA-based company, Tips
Products International. Formerly the national president of the
National Association of Professional Organizers, Paulette found major success
through booklet writing. In 1991, she wrote "110 Ideas For Organizing
Your Business Life," and "111 Ideas For Organizing Your
Household," and, without spending any advertising dollars, sold over
500,000 copies, printed in three languages. She now teaches other writers
how to get started in the tips booklets market.
What were you doing before you started writing
booklets?
First, I taught string instruments in public elementary schools for 11 years.
Then I was a professional organizing consultant for 15 years. The booklet
journey was an outgrowth of being a professional organizer. This is now my third
career, dealing with all things booklets.
Where did you get the idea to write and sell booklets?
Someone was promoting a booklet they had written about better business
presentations. I was interested in the topic, got a hold of a copy of the
booklet, and instantly realized I could write a booklet on getting organized. It
seemed like something that would be a good marketing tool for the consulting and
speaking services I was providing as a professional organizer, as well as be a
new source of revenue as a product. It definitely became both. That was the
birth of the 16-page booklet,
"110 Ideas for Organizing Your Business Life."
How did you get started?
I started by sending a copy of the booklet and a cover letter to editors at
various mass market magazines. I invited them to excerpt from the booklet, as
long as they would put contact information and the price for people to get their
own copy of the booklet. First, I charged $3, and later bumped it to the
single-copy price of $5. It's been $5.50 including postage for single copies for
years now.
The editorial excerpting was the first of five different marketing methods
I've used over the years. The next was selling large quantities directly to
corporations for their use as a promotional tool for their business. Then
I went on to license the right to reprint the booklet as a booklet. The fourth
method was to license the contents to other languages and other formats. And the
fifth is e-publishing (electronic publishing).
To date, I've sold over 500,000 copies of my one booklet without spending a
penny on advertising. I've had clients surpass my own sales results, as their
sales have gone up into the millions.
Did you research the market to figure out how these
might sell?
My style of market research historically and consistently has been to get the
product or service out there and see if it sells. I did and it has.
What was your time and money investment like before you
started seeing a return?
The fact that I had very little money when I did this is largely what
prompted my doing the booklet in the first place. I did a verrrrry short first
run of 250 copies of the booklet. That was the most expensive booklet print run
I've done to date as far as per-booklet price. What I have found with the
editorial excerpting is that it often takes 90 days before results show up,
largely because of lead times. With large quantity sales, it can happen faster
if the decision maker likes the booklet right away and has a pressing need for
it. Or it can take months. There's no rule of thumb on this.
You sent copies of your booklet to magazines in the
hopes that they'd mention your material. How well did that work?
The old 80/20 rule applied as far as getting 80% of the sales I got through this
mechanism from 20% of the publications who ran an excerpt. I ultimately sold
about 15,000 copies of the booklet this way, one at a time. More interesting,
however, were some of the other things that happened as a direct result of those
publicity excerpts.
You also recorded an audio version of a booklet.
How does that sell?
One of the things that came from the publicity excerpts was that a public
seminar company hired me on a project basis to record an audio program based on
the booklet. That expanded my product line, on someone else's budget, since they
paid an advance and royalties on all units of that audio program. AND, that
audio program prompted my getting a 20-minute interview on the inflight audio
programming of American Airlines one year. The interview ran on all their
domestic and international flights during the months of November and December
one year. That all originally traced back to a publicity excerpt.
Your big "coups" happen when someone buys
big quantities of your booklets. You've had a manufacturer's
representative buy your booklets to send instead of calendars to clients, a
company buy 5000 customized copies for a trade show, 105,000 copies to an
overseas magazine, etc. How did you find these people and market yourself
to them?
The large quantities come from identifying who wants to reach the same end user
that you want to reach, in most cases. That isn't always true, though it is
always where I direct people to start their large quantity sales efforts. Look
at who is prospecting you, and turn around and prospect them. Alert yourself to
marketing opportunities wherever you are, whatever you read and hear, whomever
you talk with.
What do you write in a cover letter?
It is important for each booklet author to find their own 'hook' to open the
letter, whether the letter is going to a magazine editor or a corporate
marketing director. I make a big point of focusing on the benefits of the
booklet for whomever the letter goes to. With magazines, they are charged with
providing interesting, current information for their readers, so that's the
focus of what the booklet can do for their readers. With corporations or
associations, the letter focuses on ways to use the booklet to increase revenue
or sales, primarily. The letter contains a few suggestions to whet their
appetite and not so many they stop reading.
You teach a free "Teleclass." What's
that, and why do you do it?
The free one-hour teleclass by phone is presented on Tuesdays. It's an
introduction and overview of How to Promote Your Business with Booklets. I do it
so people have a chance to get the most basic ideas of how to convert their
knowledge into a simple information product that serves as a marketing tool,
profit center, or both. The teleclass is the tip of the iceberg, with good solid
information in it. People come to that free class and then decide
they want more. There's much more available, depending on what they want, what
format they want it in, when they want it, and what their budget allows. There
is a link on the website at www.tipsbooklets.com
that takes you to the site for the teleclass.
What's one thing you wish you'd learned earlier about
selling your booklets?
The large quantity sales of the booklets are done more easily when the booklet
author is aware of the booklet fitting into a larger promotional campaign of the
corporation or association being approached. Sometimes the easiest way in the
door is through the account executive of the public relations or advertising
agency of record for the client you're approaching directly.
How can a writer figure out if his or her booklet topic
will sell?
I often make reference to two models that some people still remember as
testimony to the fact that *anything* can sell: the pet rock and the Rubik's
cube. The people involved with those novelty items got out there and sold their
products, period. There's so many billions of quasi-intelligent people in the
English-speaking world that it is impossible for any of us to ever reach
everyone who would be our client. It comes down to marketing, and then marketing
some more. There is a market for each writer's booklet, in my opinion.
Anything else you'd like to add?
It would be easy to talk about this for days and days. That's what happens on
the free discussion board at my web site. Please do visit there, read the
archives, get all excited, and get started with your own booklet. There's lots
of free and fee-based support for your success.
There is a menu of booklet-related products and services to suit your needs
and wants at Paula's website. Visit www.tipsbooklets.com
to continue your journey.
