Personalized Books as a Home Based Business

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Author: Bill Graham

Article source: http://www.articlealley.com/. Used with author's permission.

Personalized books have been around for a long time. They have lasted too long to be considered a fad. Parents and grandparents like to buy them for kids because they encourage reading and enjoyment of books. Today personalized books can be found in such diverse places as mall kiosks, church fundraisers, flea markets, and on the web.

Almost since the dawn of the personal computer, systems have been available to enable people to operate home businesses producing personalized books on home computers. If you're interested in operating your own home based business selling personalized books, just type in "personalized book business" into Google and you'll see that there are several companies that offer systems for producing their particular line of books.

Before purchasing one of these systems, however, it pays to do a little homework. First, know what you'll be selling. Get a sample book or two from each company so you can see the actual product. If you like the product, investigate a little further. Does the company give you potential sales figures that seem almost too good? If so, they probably aren't realistic. How much will it actually cost to get started?. The company should be up front with all the costs involved. How do reorders work? Can you order supplies over the internet, or do you have to call to place orders? How soon are orders shipped? What happens if you need some technical help?

Another very important consideration is the production method you will use to print and bind the books. Some companies provide pages with preprinted color illustrations which you run through your printer to print out the story. You then bind the printed pages into a preprinted hard cover. This method requires that you have on hand sets of preprinted pages and covers for every title that a customer could ever order. Additionally, if a page jammed when going through the printer, you have ruined a complete book.

There is another method of producing personalized books that does not require any preprinted inventory. Using generic (blank) materials, this method lets you create from scratch any title that your customer wants. This is possible because it employs an all-digital method in which you print the illustrations and the text all at once on blank paper. There are large adhesive-backed labels on which you print the cover illustrations, so the covers don't have to be preprinted, either. With such a system as this, you would always be able to produce whatever titles your customers want, so long as you have the generic materials on hand.

Selling personalized books can be a fun and rewarding business. You're selling a product that customers want and that they will buy again and again. It doesn't take long to get started in this business, but it pays to do some research before you buy.