The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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Text File | 1992-08-28 | 21.0 KB | 417 lines

********************** WRITER'S DREAM *********************** This chapter is going to be a surprise! In addition to the multimedia presentation program you have been studying, there is another program on this disk which you can use to create your own super-professional text tutorials. In fact, it is the same program that's being used to display all that you have been reading! In addition to the run-time program on this disk to present The Multimedia Workshop instruction manual, we have also included BUILD.EXE, so you can make your own tutorials with WRITER'S DREAM. We'll start out with another look at the shareware market as it might apply to you. You can skip a few paragraphs ahead to the technical stuff if you wish. 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 book! 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 hot selling titles in shareware is ALMANAC 1992. 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 now 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 Really? Well, I haven't made a million dollars yet. And, the average first-time shareware author reports lukewarm results. Like any business, you have to develop your skills and products. But even a failure is a success. Let's say your disk about apple tree pruning only brings in $30 per month. That's $30 per month extra pin money that you wouldn't otherwise get. But you can try again. You can write about "Organic Pest Control for Orchards" and perhaps you'll start making $100 per month. And you can try again and again. I think the average author who persists will eventually make at least $40,000 per year. 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. Write your chapters with your favorite word processor. 2. Use BUILD.EXE which is on this disk to build your own book. 3. Copy your chapters and DREAM.EXE onto a blank floppy. 4. Make some copies and pass them around. More detailed instructions are at the end of this file. There are some things you can do to make sure you get more readers and that they are more likely to send you money. * Consider your title carefully. It must attract attention. * Make sure your first 100 words are very powerful. Shareware buyers often buy 20, 40 or even 100 disks at a time. As you would expect, each individual disk is not regarded as particularly important to these folks. They will put each one in the slot and give it five minutes. If it doesn't grab their attention, out it goes! If it does get their interest, they'll read it from one end to the other! * Make sure your advertising is well written. If you simply ask for a donation, you won't get much. One of the best things you can do is use your disk to sell something else. A same-subject, volume 2, or another disk-based book covering a different but related subject will be easy to sell. * If you are already in a business, consider using a disk-based book to sell your product. For instance, if you sell seeds, you could write a book about gardening and tell your readers to call or write for a free catalog. You could even include your catalog as a chapter in your disk-based book. * If you send out many copies, you'll get more readers sooner. A good idea is to send to as many shareware distributors as you can. Most distributors will gladly list your program in their catalogs. Remember that shareware has a lot of inertia. It can take over a year between the time you introduce a shareware product and the time you start getting money. This is because it takes that long for distributors to get it into their catalogs, and for friends to make copies for friends, etc. It takes most users quite a while to switch from considering sending you some money to actually doing it. Shareware also has a long burnout period. If you put your phone number in your disk, you may be answering requests for orders or free catalogs for years into the future! Now is the time to write that book you've always dreamed about! WRITER'S DREAM is shareware. If you use it to produce a disk-based book, no matter what mode of distribution you choose, you must become a licensed user. This simply means you must pay for the program. The cost is $19.95 for a single disk-based book, or $59.95 for a "one-author, unlimited number of books" license. Any use of WRITER'S DREAM without a license is illegal. However, as soon as your check is in the mail, you may begin distribution. To register please phone: ************** 1-800-444-5457 ************** or 503-826-8082 Visa and MasterCard accepted Or send $19.95 / $59.95 plus $3 US postage (Canada - $5, Overseas - $7) to: Software Excitement! 6475 Crater Lake Hwy Central Point, OR 97502 USA Or via Compuserve: type GO SE, or fax: 503-826-8090 MORE DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILD.EXE 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 44 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 3 lines of text here. My little book currently looks like this: THE MULTIMEDIA WORKSHOP - Instruction Manual by Jeff Napier 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 precede 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 happen to have a sub-directory called MYBOOK on their C: drive. Do not type A:INTRO.DOC either, for the same reason. Someone might purchase your electronic book and put it in their B: drive, and it wouldn't work. You can use the [Bksp] key and [Ctrl] + [Y] to delete mistakes. You can also use [Ins] and [Del] to add or remove lines. Do not leave blank lines between your chapters. Each chapter must have a corresponding file where the text is to be found. You have a limit of 34 characters for each chapter name. (24 characters, if you have more than 20 chapters.) Your filenames must be ordinary DOS-legal filenames. You can have as many as 44 chapters or as few as 1. When done with this section of the program, just press the [Esc] key. 6. The program will ask you some questions. The first is about sound effects. If you like the sounds, answer [Y] and the same sounds will occur for your readers. (The readers can optionally switch off the sound effects from within the DREAM program by pressing the [T] key.) If you answer the question about sound effects with [N] then there will be no sound effects in your book unless the reader presses the [T] key. Then you have a choice of centered or left-justified table of contents. The normal choice is [C], but if you want all your chapter names to be shifted to the left, press [L]. Finally, the program will ask you if you want to create a new book. This is your last chance to cancel by pressing [N]. If you press [Y], then whatever previous book setup existed on disk will be lost and a new one written. The BUILD program creates a file called BOOK.CFG. This is where the table of contents information is stored on your disks. So, before you create a new book, if you'll ever want to read this example book again, make a backup copy. 7. You will probably have to experiment with the BUILD program several times before you fully understand it and can create the perfect product of your dreams with your own text files. That's ok, in fact, just fine. Each time you restart the BUILD program, it will show your previous configuration so that you can edit only the parts you want to change. When done with BUILD, type DREAM at the DOS prompt and test your whole book. If you have accidentally misspelled a filename, or put the a filename next to the wrong chapter name, you'll see the problem. 8. HINT: To make your disk easier to use for beginners (and everyone) rename DREAM.EXE as BEGIN.EXE or GO.EXE. Then, on the disk label you can type this line: "Type BEGIN and press [Enter]." 9. HINT #2: If you want your text to look better on-screen - just like this text - in your word processing program, set your left margin to 10 and your right margin to 70. 10. DELETE BUILD.EXE from your final disk. This program is only the setup utility of Writer's Dream. The only program required for your distribution version is DREAM.EXE, and of course the configuration file called BOOK.CFG. TO INCORPORATE EXECUTABLE PROGRAMS IN WRITER'S DREAM New for version 3.00 is the ability to list .EXE, .COM or .BAT files in the menu as if they were text files, but when the end user selects a program, it will run, and then return to the Writer's Dream menu. The possibilities that this opens up are endless. You can use a small graphics presentation program or even MSHOW.EXE to present more than just text in Writer's Dream. You can hook in a database program or automated catalog ordering program. You can even use Writer's Dream as a menu program and forget about text altogether. To put a program on the menu, simply list it as if it were a chapter in the BUILD.EXE program. On the right side of the menu box do not use drive or path designators, but DO use the extension. For example: PACMAN.EXE - is ok C:\GAMES\PACMAN.EXE - will not work (and it won't fit) PACMAN - will not work If your program requires parameters at the command line, then use a batch file in it's place. For instance, if you want to use MSHOW to display a single picture called CATTLE.1 then you could do this: 1. Make a batch file with any text editor which works in ordinary ASCII mode. For this example we'll call it M.BAT. In the batch file is one simple line: MSHOW CATTLE.1 2. In BUILD.EXE, on the appropriate line of the menu for the left side you make a description, perhaps something like this: PICTURE OF CATTLE and on the right side you put: M.BAT Then, when the end user runs DREAM, and selects PICTURE OF CATTLE, MSHOW.EXE will start and show the CATTLE.1 picture. Of course, you can also make more complex batch files, like something to show several pictures then allow the user to place an order: MSHOW CATTLE.1 MSHOW CATTLE.2 MSHOW CATTLE.3 MSHOW HORSE.1 MSHOW HORSE.2 ORDER.EXE Keep in mind that DREAM.EXE reserves about 60k of RAM for it's own use, so if you incorporate programs which use lots of RAM, you'd better test them to make sure they will run under Writer's Dream, especially on computers which have limited memory. ORDER.EXE What is this ORDER.EXE, mentioned above? It is supplied on this disk and registered users can distribute it along with DREAM.EXE with their presentations. It finds a text file on disk which must be named ORDER.FRM and prints the first five lines to paper. Then it prints the user's name, address, phone number and preferred disk size. Then it prints the remainder of ORDER.FRM. Take a look at the example on this disk. More information comes with the registered version of Writer's Dream. Also, registered users get a couple of optional programs which can modify text files for even greater results. CONSULTATION This file answers as many questions as possible in a reasonably small space, but if you need more detailed information, I am usually available between 9-5 west coast (USA) time. Please call me with your questions and I'll provide answers about this program, computers and the shareware business. For this service, the charge is $40 per hour, invoiced monthly. (Most questions can be answered in just a few minutes - there is no minimum charge) Jeff: 503-846-7884 _____________________________________________________________ end of chapter