Children who have difficulty reading or who don’t enjoy reading as much as other kids do can benefit from having a personalized book. When they see their own name in the story and realize that they are the main character, it creates more interest for them. As a result, they will pay more attention and will try to read the story themselves. Many times a personalized book will become a child’s favorite book, read many times over. Of course this repetition reinforces the learning of sight words and creates better comprehension.
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Personalized Books Help Teach Kids to Read
May 4th, 2010The Story Matters…
February 27th, 2010There 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.
Sell on the Web
February 14th, 2010If 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.
Marketing Idea
February 3rd, 2010One 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.
Blogging Good for Your Site
January 29th, 2010If 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.
Jiff-e-Books now offering choice of hard covers
January 20th, 2010The Jiff-e-Books system for making personalized books lets dealers print personalized books on blank paper, complete with color illustrations and personalized text. The pages are then bound into a hard cover. Since 2002 dealers have been customizing blank white covers for each title by printing a large cover label that is installed on the front and back of the book. This method of publishing enabled dealers to print any of 22 titles and produce a finished book from totally generic materials.
Recently Jiff-e-Books has begun offering preprinted hard covers in addition to the white, customizable covers. The new covers were made available by dealer request. When ordering, dealers have their choice of covers, preprinted or customizable, at the same price.
Welcome to the new Personalized Books Blog!
January 19th, 2010This is the first post to the Personalized Book Talk Blog. It will have discussions of personalized books and other items in the world of personalization. Please check here often for interesting and (we hope) helpful information.
