Business Assistant/Business Assistant.iso/home/money32/chapter.2

Text File | 1991-04-06 | 15KB | 268 lines

                      Money, Freeware by Another Company
                                copyright 1991


                                   Chapter 2


                                WRITER'S DREAM

              Judging  by  the  correspondence  that  comes to Another
         Company, we have found out that most  of  our  customers  are
         good writers. Most of you also know something very useful and
         possibly  unique.  Perhaps you are a retired glass blower, or
         know  everything  about  training  seeing-eye  dogs, or could
         teach people how to cook nutritious foods. Perhaps you  could
         write  a  course in industrial grinder safety, or volleyball,
         or  advanced  electronics,  or  elementary geology. Maybe you
         would be  good  at  writing  science  fiction  or  children's
         stories.

         But why bother? Becoming  a  published  writer  is  nearly as
         difficult  as  becoming a rock 'n' roll star. Self-publishing
         costs money and requires marketing skill.

         GUESS   WHAT?  There is another  way  to  be  published  that
         works for absolutely everybody!  Yet,  almost  no  one  knows
         about  it.   Using  this  technique costs almost nothing, yet
         literally millions of people will read your writing!  You can
         make unlimited money!  What am I talking about? The  Writer's
         Dream.  The Writer's Dream is a way to put  your  information
         on   IBM-compatible  disks.  If  you  can  operate  any  word
         processing program, you can do this:

         Let's   say  you  have  written  a disk about house cats. You
         release it as a shareware product. This means you send copies
         to  some  shareware  distributors.
             There  are  72  million  IBM-compatible computer users in
         America. Almost all of them are  frequent  shareware  buyers.
         Some  of  them  will  get  your  disk,  and  they  will  make
         copies,  which  will  in  turn  be read and copied by others.
         Eventually, one person out of every ten  is  likely  to  read
         your   disk-based  cat  book.   You,  with  your  own  little
         computer, will be an author with  7.2  million  readers!  And
         that's  not  all. You can put a commercial in your disk which
         causes some of the readers to send you money.  For  instance,
         your  commercial  could introduce another disk-based book you
         have also written, called Dogs.  Dogs is not shareware.   The
         only  way  the  readers can get your excellent dog disk is to
         send you $19.95! If only one out of every 100  of  these  7.2
         million  people  send you money, you'll make over one million
         dollars! No doubt you see the potential!

         In fact, since you can put  text  on  a  disk  and  therefore
         create  information  of interest to others, shareware is only
         one means of distribution. You  might  like  to  use  it  for
         in-house  training  or  disk-based  conferencing  within your
         company, or you might  like  to  create  and  sell  a  retail
         disk-based book product.

                           Do Electronic Books Work?

         One   of  the  hottest  selling titles in all of shareware is
         ALMANAC 1991. It is not a video game or a spreadsheet. No, it
         is  just  text  files!    I   have   also   written   several
         non-shareware   electronic  books that sell very well through
         mail-order distribution.  Some of these are GARAGE SALES  FOR
         FUN  AND  PROFIT  and THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO THE HOME-OPERATED
         BICYCLE BUSINESS.  In fact, even though I am a programmer, my
         single best selling  'program'  is  not  a  program,  just  a
         text-based tutorial, an electronic book. And, as you can see,
         I am not a professional writer! All I do is write my stuff as
         if  I  were  writing  a  letter  to  a  friend.

         But how do you present your text on a disk? How do  you  make
         it  look like a professional electronic book?

         There  is a super-easy way to make your presentation as clean
         and professional as this one. In fact it is the same  program
         as  provided  on this very disk. The WRITER'S DREAM is called
         DREAM.EXE  on  this disk, and allows anyone to make their own
         text files into a disk-based  book.  You  can  configure  the
         opening  screen  to  contain  your  own  chapters,  title and
         byline.  So,  instead  of  what  you  are  reading, this same
         program could be used for your own book.

         Here's how to use it for your own work:

         1. Make your chapters. Use any word processor. If  your  word
         processor  is one that normally makes non-ASCII text, use the
         ASCII mode (or 'non-document' or 'print to  disk',  depending
         on  your  word  processor).  All standard word processors can
         make  ASCII  files, but you may have to read the instructions
         that came with your word processor for details.

              You  can  have up to 20 chapters and they can each be as
         long as you like.

         2.   Copy   DREAM.EXE  and  BUILD.EXE onto a blank, formatted
         disk.  Then copy all your chapters files onto the same  disk.
         There must be at least 2000 bytes (2k) free space left on the
         disk.

         3.  Type  BUILD and press [Enter]. This is the setup  program
         for  Writer's  Dream.  It  will allow you to enter the title,
         your name, and your chapters  as  they  will  appear  in  the
         'menu'.  The  menu  is a 'live table of contents' - the first
         screen the user will see when they start to read  your  book.
         It  will  look  just like what you see if you press the [Esc]
         key now, except it will have your chapters instead of mine.

         4.  After  a welcome screen, the BUILD  program  starts  with
         the  title  box.  This  resides  on the left side of the user
         menu. You can enter up to 5 lines of text  here  although  my
         little  example  book  currently uses only three of the lines
         that look like this:

         MAKE MONEY AT HOME

         by

         Jeff Napier

         If  you use the up and down arrow keys, you'll see that there
         are   actually   five   lines   in  the  title box so you can
         enter a sub-title or whatever you want.  To  edit  any  line,
         just  move  the highlight bar with the arrow keys to the line
         you want to edit, then press the backspace key or hold [Ctrl]
         and press [Y] to delete what's  there.  Then  type  your  own
         line. Your lines must be less than 35 characters long. Do not
         center your lines, the program  will  do  this  automatically
         later.
             When  done  editing  the  lines to contain your title and
         name and possibly sub-title, just press the [Esc]  key.   The
         program will remember your changes.

         5.  Now  you will be shown a bigger box. This is the Table of
         Contents. In the  left  of  this  box  you  will  enter  your
         chapter  names  as  you want them to appear on the menu. Just
         delete my example chapters, and type in your own.
              On  the  right  side of this same box are the files that
         contain your chapters. In other words, if you have written  a
         chapter  called  INTRODUCTION  and  it  is  in  a file called
         INTRO.DOC, you would type INTRO.DOC on the right  side.  This
         is  how  the  program  knows to display the text in INTRO.DOC
         when the user selects INTRODUCTION.
              Do  not  preceed  filenames with a drive or path. If you
         were  to  put  C:\MYBOOK\INTRO.DOC, the program will not work
         properly  on  other  people's  computers,  unless  they  also