Want to generate business? Write a book.

If you've ever thought about writing a book and wondered if the effort would be worthwhile, a new study suggests the answer is a strong "yes." Mike Schultz of RainToday.com interviewed 200 authors of business books to find out how they did it and how it impacted their ability to do business. RainToday offers articles, case studies, and research designed to help service business rainmakers and marketers work more effectively.

The results:

- 53% of authors reported a "strong" or "very strong" influence on their ability to charge higher fees

- 76% indicated publishing a book had at least some influence on their ability to close deals

- 83% reported at least some improvement on business with current clients as a result of publishing a book

In short, consultants and agency execs seem to agree that publishing a book helps them to be seen as gurus whose services are in demand. Mike has published his findings in a report for those who are interested in learning more about how publishing impacted the authors, how to go about getting a business book published, and how to market it effectively.

A few more statistics from the report:

Management consulting, marketing, and training were the most common book subjects, collectively accounting for more than half of the 590 books published by these 200 authors. IT consulting followed with 11% of the total.




63% of authors said that publishing a book had a "strong influence" or "very strong influence" on their ability to generate new clients.


The three most effective methods of marketing were internet marketing, trade media coverage, and direct marketing to existing clients.

Go ahead, unleash your inner author. It's worked for my friends Yvonne DiVita and Jay Lipe -- it may also be a path to greater success for your business.

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Terms: publishing a business book, writing a book for business, book marketing

The Web marketing portal: WebMarketCentral.com

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentral.com

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Katrina's Forgotten Victims: The Disabled

Due to accident, illness or age, many Americans depend on their wheelchairs. To people who have lost the use of their legs -- or, in some cases such as the late Christopher Reeves, the use of most or all of the muscles below their neck -- a wheelchair is much more than a mode of transportation. It is their freedom to move, their legs, and the place where they spend a great deal of their waking hours.

Particularly to those who need a true "rehab" wheelchair, their chair is a very personal item. It has to fit their height and weight, support them properly given their limited muscle control, and have a drive control mechanism appropriate for their specific disability: toe-controlled, finger-controlled, or, like Christopher Reeves, controlled by the puff and sip of their breath.

During and immediately following Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of wheelchair-bound people were rescued; that's the good news. The bad news is that, in most cases, their chairs were left to the ravages of rising Lake Pontchartrain. Our federal government, in its wisdom, couldn't find money in the $262 billion dedicated to hurricane relief efforts to buy appropriate replacement chairs for these individuals.

Yes, yet another example of your tax dollars not at work.

Just before Christmas, I had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of Bruce Bayes, the CEO of Custom Mobility. Bruce's business acumen (he has built the largest rehab dealership in the southeastern U.S.) is matched only by his passion for serving those with disabilities. After Katrina, he felt that he had to do something. His efforts have helped many disabled victims of Katrina, but more remains to be done.

So how can you help? Please visit this site.

God bless you.

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Web Marketing News Headlines

Granted, this is a lazy way to post, but if you haven't checked them out, the Web Marketing News and E-Commerce News pages on WebMarketCentral are a great way to keep up with what's happening. Here are a few of the headlines you may have missed if you haven't visited those pages lately (or grabbed the RSS feeds from them):

Amazon.com Reportedly Considering Ad Network
Information Week 8 Feb 2006
Amazon.com is reportedly looking for beta testers for a possible contextual advertising network that would place third-party links to products on the online retailer's partner Web sites...

SMB community targeted by spam
Computer Weekly 8 Feb 2006
Spammers are hitting SMBs harder than larger companies, according to the annual report by Postini, a provider of integrated message management products. The report suggests that SMBs were sent nearly 50 spam emails per day per user in 2005, almost four times the number that large companies were sent daily...

Anti-spam initiative
Computer Crime Research Center 8 Feb 2006
Maybe this is where it starts to change. Two of the world's largest e-mail providers, America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc., have said that they will soon start giving companies the option to pay for guaranteed delivery of e-mails to the inboxes of their subscribers...

E-Mail Marketing Best Practices
E-Commerce Times 8 Feb 2006
Producing consistent, predictable results at the push of a button is the dream of every marketer, but can only be accomplished by following some simple rules. Although an important step forward, the CAN-SPAM act only provides a legal platform for e-mail marketing...

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The portal for Web marketing resources -- WebMarketCentral.com