The Pocket Small Business Owner's Guide to Starting Your Business on a Shoestring


Book Description

Most businesses that close their doors have one thing in common: They ran out of money. Don’t let this happen to you. This indispensable book, part of Allworth’s popular Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide series, will help you to save money on every aspect of your business, from advertising to overhead. With invaluable cost-cutting tips for all types of businesses, from e-commerce and home-based operations to services and retail, this guide will help you create a blueprint that will allow your business to survive and thrive. You’ll save on: Advertising Marketing Purchasing Transportation and shipping Labor Financing Facilities Operations Taxes And more! In today’s economy, small business owners must seize every opportunity to keep costs down, and every penny saved goes to your bottom line. Follow this street-smart advice to lay the foundation for a business that will be profitable for years to come.




The Pocket Small Business Owner's Guide to Working with the Government


Book Description

The Pocket Small Business Owner’s Guide to Working with the Government is a thorough mentor that explains how to find, secure, and succeed with government contracts. Designed for any business eager to expand into the governmental arena, it also covers special small business opportunities for companies in areas with chronically high unemployment and for companies run by minorities, women, veterans, and disabled veterans. Cutting through the red tape, this careful guide also informs the reader as to the legal and financial pitfalls that must be avoided when doing business with the government. Coverage includes: Where do you find government procurement needs? How do you register to qualify for special opportunities given to companies owned by women, minorities, veterans, and other special groups? How do you prepare bids, offers, or proposals? What are the various types of government contracts? When can you negotiate with the government, and what’s the best way to do it? What types of free government grants and loans are available? What regulations govern your hiring regulations, payrolls, contracts, and other dealings with employees? What is the best way to settle disputes? This book covers all of the most up-to-date regulations that affect business owners and entrepreneurs today, and helps them to navigate such issues as foreign trade agreements and the timely submission of bids. It also discusses how owners can team together, proper and improper business practices, and how to handle controversies over who gets a contract and disputes about contracts that have already been awarded. All in all, this is a unique and definitive source for anyone seeking to sell to the government. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.




The Pocket Legal Companion to Patents


Book Description

Many great ideas fail because the inventors do not take the appropriate steps to protect, promote, and profit from their ideas. This friendly guide will walk you through everything that needs to be done before you can expect to realize financial gain from your invention. Experienced patent attorney Carl W. Battle provides methods for commercializing your invention, sources of information and assistance, and helpful guidelines for obtaining a US patent on your idea. Specific topics include: Using patent attorneys and agents Dealing with invention brokers and promotion firms Maintaining confidentiality of your ideas Obtaining foreign patent rights Enforcing your patent against infringement Licensing opportunities And much more This invaluable handbook also offers information that can assist in the selection of an attorney or patent agent, and will help you to get involved and monitor the patent and marketing process. Finally, easy-to-use forms and step-by-step instructions give you the option of saving money by handling the patenting and commercializing processes without hiring a patent attorney or invention broker. If you have an idea for an invention that could improve productivity, create jobs, or solve some long-standing problem, then pick up this Pocket Legal Companion™ and learn how to maximize your profits.




Legal Guide to Social Media


Book Description

How should you respond to a request to remove copyrighted materials from a Facebook page? If you create a Twitter handle at work, who owns that handle when you change jobs? Can you be sued for libel if your posts are defamatory? If you’ve ever asked yourself these kinds of questions, this pioneering legal handbook is for you. Despite the enormous growth in social media, scant legal advice is available to help the many people who are posting online. Easy-to-understand, comprehensive, and current, Legal Guide to Social Media provides the latest information on case law and statutes. It covers everything from privacy laws to copyright issues to how to respond to employers’ requests for your social media passwords. This plain English legal companion offers examples of and solutions to the kinds of situations you can expect to encounter when posting online content, whether for personal enjoyment or on behalf of an employer. You’ll learn how to avoid liability for defamation and third-party posts, the legalities of copying and linking to content, how to protect your own content, and much, much more. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, business owner, new media manager, or simply one of the millions of social media users in the United States, this must-have guide will help you to understand and mitigate the most common legal risks inherent in social media use.




Branding for Bloggers


Book Description

There are more than 54,000 new blogs started every day around the world. The stark reality is that most will fail because bloggers don't have enough information on marketing themselves. The key to any successful marketing plan is a strong brand. Branding for Bloggers features tried-and-true, it-worked-for-me methods of branding from a rich mix of professional bloggers and branding experts. Bloggers will learn how to define their brand, establish it to grow the reach of their blog, and use their new brand identities to start earning money online. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.




The Fiction Writer's Guide to Dialogue


Book Description

Dialogue is often overlooked as a necessary and potent instrument in the novelist’s repertoire. A novel can rise or fall on the strength of its dialogue. Superb dialogue can make a superb novel. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “Action is character.” George V. Higgins said, “Dialogue is character.” They were both right, because dialogue is action. It comprises much, if not all, of the clarifying drama of any novel. How much physical action can there be in 300 pages, even in a crime novel or a thriller? And all conflict, even physical, begins as dialogue. Hough explains how dialogue can reveal a character’s nature as well as his or her defining impulses and emotions. He says there must be tension in every colloquy in fiction, and shows the reader ways to achieve it. Hough illustrates his precepts with examples from his own work and from that of the best modern writers of dialogue, including Cormac McCarthy, Kent Haruf, Joan Didion, Annie Proulx, Lee Smith, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, William Kennedy and Howard Frank Mosher. He cites early 20th century writers who refined and advanced dialogue as an art form: Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, and William Saroyan. Hough’s novel Seen the Glory: A Novel of the Battle of Gettysburg was praised by Lee Smith as containing “the best dialogue of the period I have ever read.” Hough on Dialogue will give writers and aspiring writers a fresh look at one of the essential ingredients of their craft. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.




The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting And Running A Coffeebar


Book Description

Brew up your own business. This is a step-by-step guide to realizing what for many people is a cherished dream: opening a successful coffee bar. The Complete idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Coffee Bar includes the dirt on what it's really like to work behind the counter and information of everything from how to build a business plan, to how to make the drinks and how to price them. - Only series book of its kind - The specialty coffee business is still growing - Small businesses create 7 out of 10 new jobs in America - Susan Gilbert has started and run five successful coffee bars




The Small Business Bible


Book Description

An updated third edition of the most comprehensive guide to small business success Whether you're a novice entrepreneur or a seasoned pro, The Small Business Bible offers you everything you need to know to build and grow your dream business. It shows you what really works (and what doesn't!) and includes scores of tips, insider information, stories, and proven secrets of success. Even if you've run your own business for years, this handy guide keeps you up to date on the latest business and tech trends. This Third Edition includes entirely new chapters devoted to social media, mobility and apps, and new trends in online discounting and group buying that are vital to small business owners everywhere. New chapters include: How to use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools to engage customers and potential stakeholders How to generate leads and win strategic partnerships with LinkedIn How to employ videos and YouTube to further your brand What you need to know about Groupon and group discount buying What mobile marketing can do for your business Give your small business its best shot by understanding the best and latest small business strategies, especially in this transformative and volatile period. The Small Business Bible offers every bit of information you'll need to know to succeed.




How They Started


Book Description

Lots of us have ideas we think would make great businesses. Most of us never do anything with those ideas. But for those that do, a world of opportunity awaits them. This book is about 30 people who acted on their idea, made the first steps to start their business and subsequently went on to turn it into a global brand. From Innocent to Cobra to Dreams to Dysone, we reveal how some of the UK's biggest businesses got of the ground, and those very first steps taken by their founders.




How to Start Your Own Business on a Shoestring and Make Up to $500,000 a Year


Book Description

To show readers how to turn their dream into reality, the bestselling author of How to Build a Million-Dollar Fortune offers over 1,000 business ideas, many of which champion the philosophy of working at home to maximize savings.