Books Help Deliver Even the Most Difficult Content

In the last days of life, heart-to-heart conversations come easy for some, not so much for others.  Lynn Devlin witnessed firsthand the fear that kept patients and their families from talking honestly about their illness, death, and the days after. 

After losing her husband to stage four cancer, nurse practitioner Lynn Devlin became hospice and palliative care certified.

To document her experience for others, Devlin wrote a book called Cancer Widow.  But Devlin soon found she had more to share. In her work as a palliative nurse practitioner, she noticed that end-of-life conversations emerged with common themes even across clinical settings.

In response, she published a three-book series: The Caregiver’s Journal, The Last Days and Hours of Life, and The Seven Stages of Alzheimer’s.

Using her publications as marketing tools has not only taken her career down new roads, but it has also paved the way for families to dive deep into difficult, end-of-life conversations.

  

Why are books important to your particular business?  

The original book that I self published was Cancer Widow in 2012. This book led to numerous speaking engagements, including a television interview at Mayo Clinic.  

Professionally, the success of that book encouraged me to write the three-book series of end-of-life ‘conversation starter’ booklets. This in turn launched a speaking career to colleagues and healthcare professionals across the state and at national conferences.   

How do you use your books as marketing tools?  

The booklets have never had an official ‘launch’ and all the copies so far have been sold through word of mouth. The booklets are a terrific way to reinforce the presentations.

How did you choose the topics that you wrote about?   

I have written about topics that essentially chose me!  I had been a family nurse practitioner for many years when my husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer. This experience prompted me to become hospice and palliative care certified. 

The end-of-life conversations that I have every day, with families have a great deal of similarity across clinical settings. There are only so many consults I can do every day and the booklets are a great way to share the information. 

Has self-publishing been worth it? Why or why not? 

SO worth it! My life has changed because of the book and booklets in every possible good way. It’s been overwhelmingly positive, with people buying one for themselves and one for a friend.

If you could do it again, would you do anything differently? 

I would have done it earlier! I also would have a marketing/distribution plan in place. That is still a work in progress.

Lynn Kelly Devlin is a nationally board-certified hospice and palliative care nurse practitioner who lives and works in New Hampshire. She often speaks to health care professionals, corporate audiences, students, and small groups about end-of-life issues.

How Books Help Sales

Books are powerful messengers for your customers. The written word is one obvious way, but the packaging of words subconsciously tells your buyer much more about you and your company. 

It’s not just making your words pretty. Packaging is a sophisticated design process that is often passed over in favor of saving money.

That is a critical error. Prospects might open the book, but the design horror show inside will turn off even your most interested sales lead.

The before/after you see below is a great example of how design can send critical subconscious messages about content.

The cover on the left used an amateurish color palette with flat text on the front and back covers.

A professional redesign used richer colors and a sophisticated font. It obliterated the unwritten “shlock consultant” message in favor of a sophisticated and professional impression.

When you’re weighing costs, remember this: Lower cost production solutions most readily found on the web can be very inexpensive, but you also end up with something that doesn’t present your product/business/service well.

Those months you spent writing and editing? Wasted.

You don’t paint your own car. You didn’t make your golf clubs. Your precious content deserves the very best presentation possible. Invest in good design and watch your content sell itself and your business.

The Joy of Engineering

The dearth of fresh, engaging engineers has American manufacturers sweating bullets. Two men believe it is high time for a higher ed engineering revolution.

In their book, A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education, David E. Goldberg and Mark Somerville say a lack of creativity, imagination, and people skills are putting today’s engineering grads at a huge disadvantage.

Elevated to rock star status at some companies (Apple, anyone?) today’s engineers are seen as mission critical to manufacturers across the spectrum.

Traditional engineering schools, however, reward students with a fixed mind-set, emphasizing logic and rote memorization, say Goldberg and Somerville.

This archaic combination – in the Age of Ubiquitous Information – is completely useless in today’s team-oriented culture of personality.

Combine a slate of fear-inspiring “weed-out” courses with the traditional dry approach, and voila … an uninspiring program is born.

Engineering, it seemed, was ripe for a revolution.

In 2008, two colleges – the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign – partnered to inspire its engineering students with positive emotions.

The authors write:

“Despite vast differences in size, age, governance, location and mission, the two very different schools found that the difference between a challenging education and an environment that only fosters positive emotion rests on five pillars: joy, trust, courage, openness and connection. To help change from an operating system of fear to one of joy and trust, [there are] five technologies of trust: wholeness, intrinsic motivation, coaching, culture and change management.

Has the new approach worked? Indeed, say Goldberg and Somerville:

“Old-style engineering education shut engineering practitioners and employers out of the education process. This revolution demands a more active engagement between practitioners and educators, both to help drive out the old style and bring in a new, welcoming yet rigorous culture in engineering education.”

If ever there were a student body that needed joy in their lives, engineering majors would be it. Here’s to the next revolution … and may it come equipped with mechanical pencils, hugs, and the next Great Idea.

Marketing the Engineering Revolution

David E. Goldberg and Mark Somerville, both with deep roots in the higher education system, wrote A Whole New Engineer to promote a holistic approach within traditional engineering programs. 

After resigning his tenure and professorship at the University of Illinois to work full time for the transformation of engineering education, Goldberg now works with individuals, organizations, and networks around the world to collaboratively disrupt the status quo.

Mark Somerville, PhD is the associate dean for Faculty Affairs and Research at Olin College and professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics.

Somerville and Goldberg have used A Whole New Engineer to promote conversation about the evolving engineer and how to change engineering education.  

Because its program is featured widely in the book, Olin College uses the book to promote itself and to promote change in engineering education.  

A campaign is underway to send the book to thought leaders, college deans, and engineering leaders around the world.

A Whole New Engineer is available on Amazon.

On Jerry's Bookshelf: The Prosperity Track

James R. Peters takes the title Financial Expert to a new level. How does he do so? He holds impressive degrees in financial services and managerial finance, as well as the titles CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and CFP (Certified Financial Planner). He boasts over ten years of managing financial portfolios and advising both individuals and corporations. He offers his expertise as a speaker, the platform so crucial to being a recognized expert on any given subject.

Certainly these credentials make James Peters a Financial Expert, but do they significantly set him apart from every other financial advisor claiming that title? Perhaps not, but Peters has one thing that does set him apart, that validates his financial expertise – a book.

Peters’ book, The Prosperity Track: Energize, Enable, Empower, offers cohesive and relevant advice on reorganizing your life to be truly prosperous. By recognizing that prosperity means something different to everyone, Peters opens his audience up to include not just individuals and families, but businesses and corporations as well. In addition to being genuinely informative and helpful, the book effectively functions as the marketing boost that sets Peters above other financial advisors. Authoring The Prosperity Track enables Peters to showcase his insight into financial management in a respected and powerful medium: the book. It also beautifully showcases the empowering, encouraging attitude Peters brings into a subject that can seem incredibly daunting to many; the book includes sections on motivation, goal-setting, and overcoming excuses. With this book, Peters establishes himself as a cut above the competition.

Peters’ book, The Prosperity Track: Energize, Enable, Empower, is available on Amazon.

Using a Book to Help People in Their Hardest Period - Grief

Susan Alpert’s company, Susan Alpert Consulting, seeks to make the unbearable a little more bearable. “I started my company because people have a great need for assistance after they have lost their partner or their aging parents. Most of us aren’t prepared for the paperwork and formalities that come with the loss of a loved one. You can have accountants or attorneys but you are mostly responsible for dealing with the change – and the worst part is that you don’t know what you are expected to know.” Susan’s expertise in her business comes from her own painful experience, the death of her husband. “As an entrepreneur and head of a company, I thought I was very well-versed in business matters. But when my husband died, I found out I had no idea what to do; what needed to be filed, what to do first. It was an incredibly overwhelming period, and I realized that everyone needs help at these periods in life but they don’t know what they need.”

As Susan experienced, the grieving period is a bewildering and complicated time. “I’ve discovered in my line of work that one of the first things people very naturally worry about after the loss of a loved one is how their lifestyle will change. Regardless of what you have, you really can’t know how this loss will impact your life. You are going through a terrible grief period and you don’t know what’s going to happen to you.”

In a world where it seems like everyone is competing for your time and money, how can you know where to turn after such a devastating loss? You want to find someone who can guide you through this major life change without taking advantage of the precarious financial and emotional situation you are in – someone like Susan. Susan wanted to get her services out to people, without bewildering them in their most vulnerable time. So Susan decided to write a book.

“I knew there had to be a way that I could reach a lot of people; I had done television and radio but I really wanted to express that I had been through the same things, I had been in that same position.” Her book, Driving Solo: Dealing with Grief and the Business of Financial Survival, gives Susan the chance to communicate with people in a more effective way, to let them know that she has been there. “I know what it is like to be married to the love of your life for 46 years and then have to go through the pain of caregiving – on both sides of the experience. My book allows me to tell my story in a way that others grieving can relate to.” In dealing with aging and death, the personal side of Susan Alpert Consulting is just as important as the business side, and a book gives Susan the forum to balance these two sides of grieving. After sharing her own experiences and the life-altering decisions she had to make in the book, she can build that relationship of trust that is so necessary to guiding others through their bereavement. Susan’s book is designed to reflect that – after leading in with her own story, she transitions to the instructive portion of the book with forms, a timely charting course, and business explanations.

And finally, a book also allows Susan to broadcast her most important message – especially to those people who may not be able to afford her services, but can afford her book. What is this message? “You can brush yourself off, get back up and start moving and living. Though this is the most difficult time, there is life beyond the loss, and you are the author. There are more chapters in your book to write.” Take Susan – before her loss, she never expected to be an author. The worst tragedy she could ever experience, the loss of her husband, has resulted in new life: a book that gives Susan the chance to help others in their hardest moments.

Susan’s book, Driving Solo: Dealing with Grief and the Business of Financial Survival, is available on Amazon.