March 12th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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Jiff-e-Books Personalized Books dealers print their books on blank paper, one of the features of the all-digital method. Our 50-book packs come with our without paper so that dealers have the choice of ordering book paper from us or purchasing locally.
There are a couple of advantages to buying your paper locally. First, you save on shipping when you order books. Second, you may be able to save on the cost of the paper by buying in slightly larger quantities.
The paper for our hard cover books is legal size (8.5″ X 14″). You can buy quality legal-sized paper that is prepackaged. Hammermill makes a nice 28 lb. paper called color copy paper that comes in a 500 sheet pack. You may have to look around, but 
many paper stores and some office supply stores carry it. There are other papers on the market that you may like to use; some are prepackaged and some have to be cut from a larger parent sheet.
February 27th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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There are now hundreds of titles of personalized books on the market. The one thing common to all is that they use a child’s name as a character in the story. What is not common to all, however, is the quality and appropriateness of the story.
A personalized book without a good, positive story is just a gimmick. Some of the personalized books on the market today have stories that have been cobbled together by someone who has no idea about writing, much less a children’s book. In one story I once read, the child “hero” goes for a ride in a space ship and uses the weapons on-board to kill aliens. This kind of story may be o.k. for an older child, but it is definitely not appropriate for the target age of personalized books.
I firmly believe that a quality personalized book should be affirming. It should reflect the child “star” in a positive light. The child should be shown engaging in worthwhile things: sharing, helping, and generally being a good citizen; learning to appreciate what he or she has; learning to appreciate nature, etc.
Many of the products on the market have good stories that are appropriate for young readers. Some don’t. It pays to look closely at the story, not just the personalization, when buying a personalized children’s book.
February 18th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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A custom personalized book is a good way to boost sales, especially if you live in an area that has a unique attraction. Jiff-e-Books can create a custom personalized book for its distributors at a low cost, so long as it conforms to our general format. The custom book will be yours to sell as you wish, but you may not resell the software to others for making your custom book. If you want to know more, please email us at info@jiff-e-books.com. Here is what is required to get a custom book produced:
- Be a Jiff-e-Books distributor
- Provide illustrations in jpeg format or as scannable art (we can also do photographs instead of illustrations)
- Provide story in text format
- Indicate page layout desired
- For $395 we will take your materials, convert them to our book format, and provide you with a functioning book file to add to your Jiff-e-Books software. Your custom book title will appear in the drop-down list of titles in the Jiff-e-Books entry screen.
February 14th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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If you are selling personalized books and don’t have a website, there are several benefits of a website that you need to know. First of all, we think the public expects people in business these days to have a site. Every type of business has a web presence. A website will complement all of your other means of selling your products.
If you go out and do shows, people may see your books and buy right then, but they may just as well not buy at that moment but want to buy sometime in the future for a child’s birthday or for a Christmas present. If they take your business card with your website url on it, they may keep the card and later buy off your site. Better yet, if you collected their email address, you can market to them with special deals and get orders from him or her that way. It is much better if a prospective customer has your web address when they go on the internet than if they just do a search for personalized books. If they do a search they may find a different site and buy from it instead of from yours.
Some people will put up a website and just sit back and wait for orders. Usually they will be disappointed if that’s all they do. Unless your site beats out nearly all of the other sites selling personalized books (very tough to do), you won’t see much business without doing something like pay-per-click marketing. People should really see their site as a way to enhance their business. A website used properly really is your modern-day storefront. If all of your other marketing endeavors lead people back to your site, you will see a steady growth in sales over your site as time goes by.
You can set up your own personalized books site or Jiff-e-Books can set one up for you. We will discuss websites again in future blogs.
February 6th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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We have been testing a non-OEM cartridge for our color laser printer, with excellent results so far. Instead of a “remanufactured” cartridge which has been refilled, these are newly manufactured cartridges that work just like the factory ones. The prices are great: we paid $59 for a cartridge that costs $133 for the factory brand. The site is www.suppliesguys.com. They have compatibles for HP and for Samsung and may have compatibles for other brands, but not for all brands.
February 3rd, 2010 by Bill Graham
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One of Jiff-e-Books’ savvy dealers recently came up with a clever marketing idea. She will be sending an e-mail to her personal contacts of a few hundred, plus past customers’ e-mail addresses, offering a FREE ”Letter from the Easter Bunny” to everyone who will forward the free offer to 5 or more friends. When they “copy” her with the other 5 friends, she will then send them the Code to enter on her website for the FREE “letter from the Easter Bunny”.
This idea is very promising because it will drive a lot of people to her site. They might go ahead and buy a book or just bookmark her site for a future purchase. It’s a really inexpensive way to increase your sales and your database for future marketing strategies.
January 29th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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If you have a site selling personalized books (or anything else), adding a blog to your site can have a positive impact on your rankings in organic searches.
Adding a blog is quite easy. You can use free blogging software by Wordpress. Your website host will probably put up a Wordpress folder on your site for free. After they email you the login and password for your dashboard, you can sign in and be blogging in minutes.
Another way to blog is to go to blogger.com. If you blog on blogger, it is hosted for free and you can link to your blog from your website. One thing to consider is that if the blog resides on your hosted site, it is totally yours and under your control. If it is hosted by a service like Blogger.com, you could lose all of your blog postings if they decided to remove your blog for some reason.
January 27th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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Here’s an idea for a different way of marketing personalized books. Realtors are always looking for an excuse to make contact with a prospective client so the client will think of them when they are ready to buy or sell a house. For instance, suppose a realtor holds an open house and meets a good prospect. If the prospect has a child, the realtor gets the child’s name and buys a personalized book to send to the prospect. The prospect will love having a book with their child’s name in it (and the realtor’s name and contact information). Realtors can also take a book along when making a listing presentation, when closing – just about any time they are making contact with a client or a prospective client.
Think about contacting a realtor, agreeing to make a book for one of their hot prospects, then offering to make books for them on an ongoing basis at a discounted price.
January 25th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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Personalized books can be bound several ways. Two popular ways involve either heavy-duty staples or a binding machine. Both methods produce a solidly-bound book. My opinion is that a binding machine that costs $125 or more is an unnecessary expense, plus it is a large item that is not convenient to carry when making books on location.
A heavy-duty stapler can be purchased at any office supply store for under $30 and it takes up very little space.
January 24th, 2010 by Bill Graham
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With the Easter season fast approaching, personalized book dealers would do well to use their personalized Easter letters as marketing tools. Of course, the Easter letters can always be sold to consumers, but another way to use them is to entice shoppers to make a more profitable purchase. Consider offering a free Easter letter with the purchase of God Loves Me or God’s Promise. The Easter letter costs you almost nothing and it will help you sell books. It’s easy to make a flyer using Microsoft Publisher or MS Word that will advertise your Easter special. If you are a Jiff-e-Books dealer and do not have the brochure/Santa Letter/Easter Letter software, you can purchase the CD for $59. With this CD you will be able to print an unlimited number of Easter Letters, Santa Letters, and brochures at no additional cost.
many paper stores and some office supply stores carry it. There are other papers on the market that you may like to use; some are prepackaged and some have to be cut from a larger parent sheet.