HomeBizNotes.com

With Labor Day weekend in the United States, the summer vacation season comes to an end.  Children are back in school and home business owners get into full swing for fall and the upcoming holiday season.  Even if their business isn’t holiday related, this seems the month when businesses become energized and take stock of where they’re going.

Throughout September, we’ll be featuring various businesses.  My co-blogger, Yvonne Russell, will present a series of posts about daycare with guest, Debbie Yost, who has visited us before.  This time, Debbie will be going through the steps of setting up an in-home daycare business.  If you’re involved in this business or have thoughts of starting one, you won’t want to miss any of these posts, which begin September 2.

Do you have a home business you’d like to tell us about?  Perhaps to have us feature at Home Biz Notes.

Someone also suggested, “Mary, you should mention how you juggle your home based business along with doing substitute teaching, helping with grandchildren, and caring for an ill daughter.”  I hadn’t thought much about this…it’s something one just does.  However, perhaps some of my stories will help others.

(Amazon image; click here for details)

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

Judging by the popularity of our giveaway for my co-blogger Mary Emma Allen’s anthology of children’s stories, a giveaway or competition would be a good strategy for promoting your home business.

Check out how Mary Emma went about it. It’s quite simple really, but very effective either in-house or on your blog. Promotion is key. For blogs, register at Bloggy Giveaways for free competition promotion.

Here are some more tips on running a contest to promote your business. Be sure to check laws relating to running competitions as these vary from state to state and country to country.

Mary Emma’s Allen’s Giveaway (now closed)

Other Popular August Home Biz Notes Posts

• Do You Feature Specials On Fridays At Your Home Business?
• How To Up The Chic-ness Of Your Home Business
• Thursday Thirteen – 13 Travel Related Home Businesses

HomeBiz Notes.com

During August, we’ve had a theme of travel and related home businesses.  So I’m rounding out the month by discussing Kathleen (Katy) Walls’ travel books with her. Katy has producted them through her Florida home based publishing business.  We also learn from Katy that you can write books about the places close to home without traveling to exotic locals.

Her most recent book is Wild About Florida: South Florida, one of a series.  

Mary Emma: What made you think of writing a book on Florida’s natural places?

Katy: Nature and wildlife are things I have always loved. I do a lot of camping and some hiking and kayaking. I’ve lived in Florida over thirty years and have enjoyed finding lesser-known places.

With more and more people moving to Florida and wanting to know about zoos, gardens, preserves, state parks and forests, national forests and other places like that, I wanted to share this information with other nature lovers.

Actually there is so much information it had to be divided into three books, South Florida, Central Florida and North Florida. Luckily, Martin, my other half, likes this sort of traveling so he had teamed up with me and is doing the photography for the book. He has also studied photography in college and has had several pictures published over the years.

Mary Emma: Are these books based on your years of camping around Florida?

Katy: Yes, but naturally, I visited the areas more recently to see what has changed.

Mary Emma: I see this book is in full color, a change from your other travel books.

Katy: Unlike my other books, the plants and scenery of Florida just had to be in color to do it justice. After all, a black and white pink flamingo loses it punch. And what about a botanical garden all blazing with lavishly colored blooms, bird and butterflies? Black and white? No way it could do the job.

Mary Emma: You mentioned  “other books.”  Are these travel related?

Katy: In my nonfiction, there are Georgia’s Ghostly Getaways, Finding Florida Phantoms, and Hosts with Ghosts: Haunted Historic Hotels in the Southeast

Mary Emma:  These all seem based on a ghostly theme.  What caused you to write them?

Katy: Next to nature, I am fascinated by the paranormal. My Irish grandmother introduced a love of ghost stories in me at an early age.  Georgia’s Ghostly Getaways and Finding Florida Phantoms explore the history behind many of Georgia and Florida’s most interesting haunted places. I dug to find the history not the psychic facts, as the people behind the occurrences are what interest me.

Since both of these books did well, I decided to go for a broader scope Hosts covers the entire southeast, from Florida to Kentucky. I found some fascinating places on these trips.  Let me tell you, I really worked. People who are not travel writers do not realize that traveling to all these places and writing about it is hard work.

Mary Emma:  You have an impressive list of books, Katy, in just your travel related ones.  As a travel writer myself, I know the research, including the travel, takes time and is work.  Thanks for sharing with us.

For more information, visit Katy’s web sites:

Her online travel publication, American Roads publishes not only Katy’s travel articles but other writer’s as well (mine included. Then there are Global Authors Publications (GAP), her publishing company,  Katy Walls that promotes all her books and Wild About Florida for the new books.

(Amazon image; click here for details)

(c)2008

August is Travel month at Home Biz Notes. How can you take your home office on the road?

Office Depot has teamed up with Jeff Zbar, a small business advocate to take his home office on the road. It has been dubbed The Home Office Highway Tour. In a fully decked out RV, Zbar will travel with his family and his home office.

Of course, it’s good publicity for Office Depot, but it does make the point about the potential for taking your home office on the road. If you have internet access, a desk space you can set up (even temporarily), you can also find facilities along the way.

When we have a computer or printer meldown and need to find other internet or printer access, we often look for other alteratives. How about for longer trips? I traveled the US and Europe in a regular car and had no trouble finding internet access. I used hotels, libraries and internet cafes.

• Have you taken your home office on the road. Any tips? We’d love to hear your experiences.

HomeBizNotes.com

As youngsters get ready to return to school (and some schools already have started), there may be apprehension.  Grace at  Kids Health Notes has some tips and resources for parents and children that may help make this day easier and even enjoyable. 

Do you have any suggestions or helpful resources for going back to school that work in your home?  Do you have any extra juggling because you have a home business and family to get off to school?  Or to home school?

(Amazon image; click here for details)

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

HomeBizNotes.com

Yvonne Russell, in her post, Do You Take Your Home Business On the Road, asked if others bloggers operated their businesses while traveling.  I’ll expand upon her post and give some insight into how I operate my writing/blogging business from home and during my travels. 

Perhaps others will share some of their business/travel tips. 

• I do find a laptop is a necessity.  Then I can type most anywhere, even when I don’t have Internet access.
• Since much of my writing nowadays is blogging, I do need Internet access somewhere along the route.  Even when I write for print publications, the editors want the material sent via e-mail.
• More and more hotels/motels have wireless, and increasingly it’s free.  More also are installing business centers in their lobbies or nearby room with computers and Internet access you can use for free.
• Coffee houses and fast food restaurants now frequently have wi/fi access.  This has become a drawing card for them, too.
• Airports generally have Internet access and some even have it at no cost.
• One business owner reported that her hair salon had Internet access for customers.
• I’m not set up yet to access the Internet via my cell phone.  But that’s becoming an option, too.
• When I’m working on books that I illustrate, I take a sketch pad along with me and get ideas for my art work.

How do you keep your business going while traveling?

(Amazon image;click here for details)

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

I have a drawer full of promotional pens. I bet you do too.

I couldn’t even tell you which companies they are from. To me, they are just pens. When I need a pen, I grab one. I don’t notice the company name.

Everyone uses pens, and promotional pens are reasonably priced, so they are an obvious option for busines branding and promoton.

• Have promotional pens had their day as marketing tools?
• What is the perfect promotional product to give or to receive?

HomeBizNotes.com

For more than a decade, since I met Kathleen (Katy) Walls, I’ve seen her move from author to self-publisher to forming a publishing business, Global Authors Publications (GAP).  I thought some suggestions from Katy would help writers understand the publishing business from the perspective of an author/publisher. 

Katy founded GAP in 2004 to publish her books from her Florida home.  She has written the popular books:  Georgia’s Ghostly Getaways, Finding  Florida’s Phantoms, Last Step, Man Hunt- The Eric Rudolph Story, Kudzu, Tax Sale Tactics, and Hosts With Ghosts: Haunted Historic Hotels in the Southeast.

She is currently at work on a series of books about natural Florida called Wild About Florida. There will be three books, North Florida, South Florida and Central Florida. Her husband, Martin Walls, will do the photography for the series. Wild About Florida was released in June.

Katy has expanded to publish books by other authors as well as her own.

Mary Emma – Why did you decide to self-publish? 

Katy-  In the beginning, I had my first book published by iUniverse.  Naturally because I had to pay so much for my own books and they were not returnable, I could not get them into stores.  For the second one, Georgia’s Ghostly Getaways, I found a traditional publisher.  They held my book over a year, then they dropped it.  I was devastated and MAD. 

A friend and I formed a co-op publishing company where each member of the group (ten of us) learned at least one facet of the publishing business.  This eventually became difficult logistically, so the members agree to disband.

I took over the name, GAP, and ran the business with the same principals in mind. Let the author have all the royalties and buy at cost. They pay an upfront fee and a small yearly maintenance fee. It has worked well as I now have thirty-one books by fifteen authors available.

Mary Emma – What did you gain from the co-op experience?

Katy – A few of the original group also went on to form publishing companies using a similar plan.  For me, if we had not formed the co-op first I might never have gotten the courage or skills to publish as I do now. It is much easier to research and learn a new skill when you have others who are sharing the experience.

Mary Emma – How did you decide what direction to go or what topics to consider when selecting books to publish?

Katy – With fiction, I look for believable characters and an exciting plot. I will publish a book in a genre that is not a personal favorite if I feel it has potential. Since all books I publish go to my editor before printing, a very poorly written book would not get accepted. I turn down pornography and books that encourage hate or racism automatically.

Non-fiction is more subjective. My own books sell well in the regions they are about, but not as well in other areas of the county. Sometimes a book has a niche market. 

A book like Wild About Florida, for example, will appeal to a certain type of person. It is a color book and has a lot of wildlife and nature photographs. It is also a guidebook of where to go to find that type of thing in Florida. Naturally, it will not have much appeal for a person who vacations at the Ritz and only visits cultural attraction when they travel. But for a person planning a Florida camping trip, or a canoer Read more

HomeBizNotes.com

“Taking a Break” is our promo theme at the b5 Business Channel. Generally that means taking time away from your job or business…getting a breather…taking time to regroup…enjoying a different atmosphere. 

However, for home business owners the “break” may mean getting back to work.

You’ve been busy all summer, if you have school age youngsters, juggling your business and making time for them.  This also might have been vacation time, when you had to make sure you had every deadline met, all orders finished, and strategy planned so everything ran smoothly while you were away.

Now that it’s “back-to-school time” in many areas, this “taking a break” may mean getting back on a getting back on a schedule.  Your life may become more routine (if life ever is routine if you have a home business and family), and you feel you’re getting more accomplished in your business.

Do you find you accomplish more when you’re taking this kind of a break?  Not that you didn’t enjoy summer with youngsters around, but your life became more challenging as you balanced business and family throughout the day.

(Amazon image; click for details)

(c)2008 Mary Emma Allen

The world is becoming a smaller place travel wise and technology wise.

Here are some of our most popular business travel posts from the Home Biz Notes vaults.

• Conducting A Business Away From Home
  
• Home Business Around The World
• Travel While Operating Your Home Business
• Taking Your Home Business Out Of The House

• Do you sometimes run your business away from home?
• Is your business one you can take on the road with you?