In 1990, a well known direct mail expert approached me aboutwriting a brochure for him. His goal was to launch his new businesswith that brochure. To me, it seemed like the wrong tool for thejob. After several conversations, I finally convinced him that heneeded to publish a book. That book has now been reprinted manytimes and it launched the business into a long successful run.

There are two points to that story: 1) make sure you select theright tool for the job; and, 2) a book can give you the biggestpayoff. Now, let's look at both of those points and figure out howyou can capitalize on the biggest of guns.

Common to all serious manuscripts is a checklist of elements orqualities you need to address. How may of them you succeed at willdetermine how much credibility you get from the project. As anexample, a few years ago, an author in the insurance industry sentme an autographed copy of his book. He was very proud of it.Unfortunately, it was terrible. It failed at most of the points inthe following checklist. If you want to establish yourself as anexpert or thought leader, You might want to refer to this checklistthroughout the process: