It’s one of the most lucrative businesses ever, one requiring very little in the way of starting capital; yet surprisingly, few people have even heard of ‘Home Publishing’. Good news indeed for those business men and women currently earning anything from 1000% to 4000% profit on each and every sale they make, often charging £20 or more for an item that has cost £1, perhaps less, to produce.

Just how much home publishers make each and every week depends entirely on the time and effort they put into their businesses; into the analysing of advertising trends and techniques; into selecting suitable titles to offer their customers; into establishing a good and regular list of customers who, being satisfied with past purchases, will continue to buy from them in the future.

‘Publishing’, loosely defined, is the preparation and distribution of printed material, from which we can conclude that a ‘home publisher’ is a home-based entrepreneur, needing no special business premises, and requiring no stock other than one master copy of each publication he or she intends offering for sale.

Some home publishers deal exclusively in publications relating to one particular hobby or interest, for instance, consumer competitions or stamp collecting. Others deal in a wide range of subjects, from leisure interest, to self-improvement, to perhaps the most profitable line of all, namely that of information concerning business and income boosting opportunities.

Basically, the publisher selects and acquires those titles that form his or her stock, decides upon the means by which they will be advertised for sale, and subsequently places appropriate advertisements to which prospective customers are invited to apply.

He or she then forwards the publication or publications, where cash in advance has been requested, or else provides the potential customer with a detailed sales leaflet, from which the inquirer will decide whether or not to order the publication. The publisher usually takes the opportunity to include details of several other publications in which the potential customer might be interested. If the original enquiry does not result in a sale, there is every chance that one of these other publications will appeal to the inquirer.

Customer manuals and folios may be produced as photocopied versions of the master document, or in professionally printed form if the publisher desires. By shopping around for the best rates in photocopying, or else installing a photocopying machine at home, the cost of manuals can be kept extremely low, thereby making for far higher profit margins.

The market for information is vast, some would suggest unlimited, and the means of reaching potential customers are similarly many and varied, and perhaps best of all, inexpensive. Without costly business premises and similarly prohibitive overheads, the publisher can afford to concentrate his or her efforts and financial resources into reaching that vast clientele awaiting each and every publication brought onto the market.

To build and maintain a good customer list you must of course offer only quality information, and for this reason the prudent publisher will always choose the titles that form his stock with the utmost care. It’s surprisingly easy to acquire a good, extremely saleable title for anything from £10 to £40 for reproduction rights; more of course for sole copyright, the latter affording an enviable situation indeed for the publisher to find himself in, for he alone will have authority to offer the copyrighted manuscript for sale. Your titles may come from one or more of several sources; direct from the writer or his agent in the case of copyright; from the writer or agent, or other publishers in the case of reproduction and resell rights.

Reproduction rights as the name implies, allow you to produce and sell as many copies of the document as you wish, often at a price you yourself decide. If these rights come with ‘resell rights’ you may also transfer reproduction and resell rights to other publishers, thereby making very handsome profits indeed, and usually recouping the cost of your own outlay with your very first order.

With exclusive copyright you might, quite rightly so, feel reluctant to share your market with other publishers, which of course would happen if you decided to sell reproduction rights, with or without resell rights. Many publishers jealously guard their copyrights, especially in the case of titles much in demand. Such a title could well continue selling to the public for many years to come. With copyright the profits are entirely yours; pass on reproduction rights and the chain grows rapidly, until after just a few transactions your title is shared by many publishers. If selling by direct mail, remember too that the very same people contacted by you will almost certainly have been approached with the same title by several of your competitors - a huge waste of time, energy and money.

Home publishing is one of many sub-sections falling under the umbrella of mail order, and as such those rules, tips and techniques that make for increased profits in mail order apply equally to home publishing.

The vast majority of home publishing material comes either from the Public Domain (items out of copyright) or, otherwise, from specialist sellers and distributors, and this type of material is commonly referred to as Private Label Rights Publications. You’ve no doubt seen “Private Label Rights” and “Resell Rights” titles all over the Internet.

And there’s so many variations as to the publishing rights of these products and can be confusing. But it’s important to know the difference because they are NOT the same and you can get into serious trouble by violating copyright laws if you’re not careful.

Furthermore, you want to make sure you understand them so when creating and distributing your own products you don’t give away more than you want to by mistake or experience weak sales because you didn’t use the right language in explaining your offer.

So, really simply, in general terms here are the basic rights. They each have variations, but this will give you an idea:

1.Unrestricted Private Label Rights - the most flexible of all rights and therefore most valuable. You can do nearly anything with these products including renaming, branding and selling as your own, editing, and bundling with other products in a package. You can also give them away, and you can sell or give away rights for others to resell, master resell, or private label. The danger with giving these rights is nothing prevents buyers from turning around and selling them the same day at half price and “stealing” your sales, but a subscription membership, can change this.

2.Private Label Rights - similar to unrestricted in that you can rewrite, edit, and call products your own. But usually they have some limitations like only sell above a certain price and cannot give away for free.

3.Master Resell Rights - Resell Rights, vs. Private Label Rights allow you to resell products but not edit them in any way. You cannot call them your own, you cannot add or edit the content. With Master Resell Rights, you can also give away the resell rights to others, and often you can give away the Master Resell Rights, allowing others to resell the resell rights.

4.Resell Rights - these are the weakest of all rights and therefore least valuable. You can only resell the product. You cannot change it in any way and you cannot give away or sell resell rights.

Depending on the Private Label License that comes with each product in the membership area…but you can do VIRTUALLY ANYTHING YOU WANT! Here’s some some money-making ideas with these un-restricted private label products and what you can do:

You can use the products for personal use.

You can put your name on the products as the author! You’re the BOSS!

You can edit the contents, change the E-Cover, rename the products, modify the articles, and include your very own back-end affiliate links!

You can break-down the e-book contents down to articles for your, online courses, viral article submissions, blogs or even newsletters!

You can sell the products, individually or in a package at any price you wish and earn 100% profits! How much can you sell?

You can add the articles and the products into your (free/paid - depending on the rights) membership site for your members to enjoy and increase the perceived value of your membership content!

You can package it with another product(s) as a bonus!

You can offer the Master Resell Rights to the products and sell at a higher price!

You can sell the Private Label Rights to the products at an even higher price!

You can giveaway the products for viral part of your list building strategies

You can change and publish the products offline

Gives us a few options, doesn’t it? And, remembering that paper and ink costs only pennies these days, it’s easy to print them out if your not selling them on line by download. These products, incidentally, cannot be sold on eBay now due to a major policy shift in 2008 - if you want to sell on eBay, you’ll have to sell the products by burning them onto CD ROM.

If you’d like to sample PLR products, visit my web page here - you’ll be able to get a sample totally free of charge. I don’t want your email address or anything - just click the link, and they’re yours. Can’t say fairer than that now, can I?

Let me know what you think, OK?