In an emergency, be prepared to communicate and train quickly

When an emergency hits - Ebola, enterovirus D68 or a natural disaster, industrial accident, devastating fire, white-collar crime or workplace violence, the need to communicate about the situation is immediate.

At such a time, failure to take the initiative can present dire health consequences if not damage to employee morale, undermining of management credibility, good will among customers, suppliers and vendors and confidence among stockholders.

Today, with the need to immediately communicate information and implement training manuals for Ebola and enterovirus D68, a short run printer can quickly print and distribute training manuals and procedures to medical personnel and hospital staff as well as these other important constituencies.

When printing is completed it is necessary to disseminate this information; some short run printers can package, ship and distribute training materials and manuals from a single location, quickly and cost effectively.

To be able to react to a crisis in a timely manner, a crisis response template should be part of an organization's overall communications' plan. In advance of any potential crisis, this template should be sent to all locations and available to all employees. Packaged binders or manuals containing "pre-planned" responses, the template should include various crisis situations and response scenarios to be accessed should an emergency situation arise.

Help prepare your organization for crisis situations that strike unannounced but must be handled quickly and effectively. Make sure they receive the "right" information by having the appropriate materials at the right locations, at the right times, for all employees.

Will your print materials be at the right locations on the right days?

Companies necessarily invest much time, effort and money to research, write, organize and complete training workbooks, HR manuals, instructional booklets and corporate procedural guidelines. But, if they are not where they need to be and not in front of the correct audience, at the appropriate time, they do not serve their intended purpose to teach, train and inform employees, customers and clients.

                                                                                                    

Even in today's digital environment, with the proliferation of online training courses and digital program modules, printed books, manuals and workbooks are necessary and essential to communicate sensitive and proprietary company information to its different audiences. 

Faced with the need to print and distribute such materials with tight timeframes and diverse logistical requirements, digital printing can efficiently and effectively meet the challenges that creating and distributing printed materials can produce:

l        Print-on-Demand - allows the printing of books, binders and manuals as few as one at a time and only when an order is placed. 

l        Cost effectiveness - with virtually no upfront pre-press costs, small print runs are cost effective. Traditional printing services have always required quotas or minimum orders when you used their services. However, because of the flexibility of digital printing, these financial boundaries do not exist.

l        Short Runs - digital printing is ideal for short-to-medium runs. Digital data is easily stored and updated; therefore changes can be easily accommodated. Digital printing allows more effective print management: there's no need for large inventories and no need to dump out of date stock.   

l        Speed - digital presses can be set up quickly and are capable of enabling next day or even same day delivery.

l        Personalization - each book, binder or manual can be personalized to include unique content and personalized materials.

  

To make more efficient the entire printing and distribution process, print document management companies such as NetPublications, Inc. offer a complete document management solution by combining printing, binding, storage, fulfillment and distribution in one facility, with one point of contact.

As a result, companies can focus on the businesses that make them successful and know that the printing and dissemination of their important and sensitive training, human resources and other corporate printed documents will be properly managed.

You have just completed your book...now what?

You have spent months, if not years, researching, writing, designing and editing your book. It is now finished and ready for sale.

Congratulations!

Now what?

You undoubtedly want your book sold and in the hands of readers. You want it distributed through retail channels, online outlets and other avenues that sell books.

Many options exist to distribute your book through these diverse channels. Each offers its own advantages and disadvantages and understanding and choosing the correct one for your particular needs can be overwhelming. 

Traditionally, books have used a distribution channel consisting of book distributors and wholesalers.

Book distributors actively sell books to bookstores, retailers, libraries and online stores, usually from a catalog. Personal sales calls and visits can also occur as long standing relationships typically exist between a distributor and retail outlets. Distributors offer a full range of services to stimulate demand and sell books through the distribution channel.

Book wholesalers make books available to retailers but do not typically engage in actively selling books to the retail market. They process orders and ship books but do not generally create demand for books. They do not offer the full range of services that distributors provide. Publishers and authors still have to pitch, market and sell books to book retailers. But wholesalers might offer a relatively inexpensive method compared to distributors to have books made available to a multitude of potential buyers.

With the growth of self published authors has come a viable alternative method for authors to reach potential book buyers…directly online. Social media and single focused book sites offer book reviews and relevant articles and the opportunity to sell directly to readers. For example, bookhitch.com allows authors and readers the opportunity to “meet,” sell and buy without having to go through distributors or wholesalers.

                                                                                               

And, should authors choose to sell books from personal websites, companies such as NetPublications’ NetSource distribution service can establish a shopping cart connection allowing the fulfillment of orders and processing of payments placed via authors’ websites.  

Each of these methods offer a unique value proposition and each must be thoroughly considered and evaluated to understand which offers the best distribution route, and value, for an individual’s particular situation.

But, ultimately, they all allow authors the opportunity to put their books in front of an audience of potential buyers after the solitary time spent writing and completing their books.

www.netpub.net

Your books cannot earn revenue if your books are not in print.

Over the years, museums, historical societies and cultural sites have published town histories, event books, documents, journals, meeting records and cookbooks.

While these printed books and documents serve to preserve history and to offer insight into past lives and events, they also represent an opportunity to create needed revenue for these institutions.

Now, however, many of these publications are either out-of-print or exist in very low quantities. And, if these books are not in print, they are not available for sale.

Today’s printing technology allows for these “old” and treasured books to be reprinted quickly and easily while permitting the printing of books for the very first time.

Digital printing provides the ability to scan pages of previously printed works and put them into digital image formats. A case in point was the reprinting of a book that was out-of-print for over fifteen years and has now resulted in sales of $1500 a year for one historical society.

Real-life nostalgia articles on "how it was back then" can be reformatted as books. Fragile and fading original documents can be preserved and protected, and their reprints utilized for museum and store displays or sold on-site at the gift shop or at special events. Books and documents can be printed as needed, in small quantities, ordered online with excess inventories stored and fulfilled by an outside vendor.  

Museums, historical societies and cultural sites can take the first step to uncovering overlooked and potentially valuable documents by conducting a thorough inventory of their books and documents to identify those that will be in demand and capable of generating additional revenue.

Summer and the tourist season are upon us. Now is the time to start preparing to generate revenue from books and documents that can easily and quickly be reprinted.

NetPublications Historical Publication Services