Your book can be a powerful sales tool

Want instant credibility? Respect? An edge competitors don’t have?

Write a book. Doing so can be good for business.

“It’s the best marketing tool I’ve ever developed. A book is a business card people never throw away,” enthuses Russ Riendeau, senior partner at East Wing Search Group, a Barrington retained search firm and head of East Wing subsidiary Eyecatcher Press.

“In our celebrity-driven culture, a book sets you apart. It’s credibility. Customers listen a little longer because you have a book and the other guy doesn’t.”

Riendeau actually has five books; his first, “Thinking on Your Seat,” was published in 1996.

Jackie Camacho-Ruiz has one book, “The Little Book of Business Secrets That Work,” published last summer. “Being an author puts you in a different category,” Camacho-Ruiz says. “It creates credibility. ‘You wrote a book? Wow!’”

Here’s the clincher, however: Camacho-Ruiz credits her book for “a 20-25 percent increase in business” at her JJR Marketing Consultants, LLC, an Aurora-based marketing firm.

Riendeau and Camacho-Ruiz use their books to generate business for their companies, which is typical: Most entrepreneur-authored books don’t directly make money — unless the book is written by Kathy Graham.

Graham, principal of Highest Quality Scripts, Inc., one of several Naperville-based Highest Quality companies in her corporate family, “makes money on every book — or I don’t publish it.”

Graham’s books “are a progression of material” she has developed and presented to clients and at seminars. Her newest, for example, “Graham’s Six Steps to Career Success,” is based on seminars that teach career success strategies. It’s due later this spring.

Graham’s first book, published in 2008, was a children’s book intended to put economics into kids’ context. Titled “The Land of Lemons and Nuts,” the book has been published in English, French and Spanish.

There is, of course, both a process and a cost to publishing your book.

To begin, don’t expect a big-name publisher to be interested. “Self-publishing is what people are doing, publish on demand,” says Juli Schatz, founder of Author! Author!, an Elgin networking group that meets monthly to exchange ideas.

“Ninety-five percent of potential authors believe they can’t write (a business book),” Schatz says, “and some books are awful. But (a business owner) can find a ghost writer or collaborate with someone.”

It will cost “$5 to $6 per book” to produce 3,000 copies of a 150-page book at Riendeau’s Eyecatcher Press. That includes cover and inside page design, proofreading, digital files, printing, and, importantly, a mentoring process that will politely prod you to complete the project.

Camacho-Ruiz spent less — about $5,000 — but her graphic designer husband did the design work and she traded for most other production services.

Graham has an in-house ad agency that handles her book production.

Ÿ Contact Jim Kendall at JKendall@121Marketing Resources.com.

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