Reading Fanatic Reviews
BusinessBig Heart Ventures by Tina Ruseva
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Big Heart Ventures*
Purpose Beyond Profit for Entrepreneurs
What are big-heart ventures? In this book, the author discusses the concept of purpose-driven entrepreneurship. What is this? The author defines it as a business with both effect and efficacy, meaning that it can add value for customers (thus allowing profitability) while keeping ethics and the bigger picture in mind (the heart part). She believes that a false dichotomy exists between for-profit and non-profit businesses. A purpose-driven business is profitable but not at the expense of long-term values, both on a personal and global level. She discusses this dichotomy, a little about the history of entrepreneurship, and goes on to detail what she means about purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
I think, in general, that her ideas are good ones. We definitely have seen lately, and throughout history, how businesses quite often do what we as consumers and humans considered to be reprehensible or unethical. Big companies have made recent headlines about how they’ve abused the trust we put in them to keep our data and privacy safe. As consumers, we would be able to trust businesses more if they weren’t just about the bottom line but saw the bigger picture and acted ethically.
The author is of Bulgarian descent and has spent much time living in Europe. It is clear that English is not her first language. Still, having chosen to write this book in English, she should have had it edited by a native English speaker. I am not sure if it was edited at all. There is definitely awkward phrasing, wrong words, and incorrect punctuation. This does distract some from reading, and therefore, from the message.
Advertising, Branding & Marketing by Dixie Maria Carlton
Available at Amazon only
Free with Kindle Unlimited
Advertising, Branding & Marketing*
May Help New Small Business Owner with Lack of Marketing Knowledge
This brief guide’s original subtitle suggests that it will help a small business owner make their branding, marketing, and advertising more effective. However, in my reading of it, I didn’t get the sense that this book was about effectiveness; the author must have agreed because the subtitle was changed to say that the book is a “quick and easy guide achieving great marketing outcomes in a small business.” I think both subtitles overstate what the book can offer. It is more like a rough sketch describing aspects of marketing including, but not limited to, branding and advertising. Some topics she touches on include targeting your market, positioning your business, customer service, networking, promotions, and online marketing. The author’s goal is to help you understand the basics of these so that you can grow your business through a good marketing plan.
Just to be clear, this guide is aimed at small business owners of actual brick-and-mortar establishments. While some information may be relevant to online businesses, it is mostly about local, walk-through-the-door businesses.
As I stated, this book is very short, just around 120 pages. So if you are looking for an in-depth discussion of the book’s topics, you won’t find that here. Within each topic, though, the author does provide definitions of key concepts as well as what the topic means to your business. Nearly every chapter could be a book itself. Some chapters are very short, positioning your business being only 5 pages and increasing your market share only 3!
Some ideas in this book seemed to harken back to business ideas that were more suited to business in the last millennium before the internet became such a prominent feature in our lives. I wonder at the efficacy print, TV, and radio advertising in the modern age where many get their news online and stream or read content that used to only be available through traditional media sources. I actually ran a brick-and-mortar small business in the early 2000s, and even back then, marketing and advertising were rapidly changing. While there is some mention of online marketing and social media in this book, it is a very small portion of the contents. I’m wondering at the relevance of some of what she talks about regarding advertising and promotion.
I think this book might be of value to a brick-and-mortar small business owner, or someone who is considering becoming one, so long as they understand its limitations in scope. The book gives a glimpse of critical factors that are important to the success of your business and does provide some idea of what needs to be done for each. Don’t expect to learn enough about, say, promotion or networking to fully execute a strategy. You will need to look elsewhere for more actionable ways to implement them.
Indie with Ease by Pauline Wiles
Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Mondadori, Angus & Robertson, Indigo (Chapters)
Indie with Ease*
Ideal Companion on Road to Indie Authorship
Being an independent author is not an easy feat. You have to juggle many tasks and often work with freelancers to get things like your cover and editing done. You put your book out there, and you may or may not see the sales that you’d hoped for. This book, written by a successful independent author, is meant to support you in your indie journey by giving you the inside scoop on a variety of topics, from self-care to productivity to marketing. Most importantly, the author wants you to help you have the correct mindset so you don’t stress out about the process or lose the desire to keep writing.
To this end, she shares information and insights in this book on a wide range of topics. She first looks at understanding your writing personality, time constraints, and other issues that have strictly to do with you. She’s a firm believer in self-care, and she encourages you to be realistic about what is achievable, both professionally and personally. Chapters in the middle section of the book range from organizing your time to the minimum viable needs of your book to the use of social media (or not). It’s not really meant as a how-to; you’re not going to get specific Instructions about how to do most of what she talks about. Instead, she brings up what she believes is essential to know about each topic. You learn not only from her; she quotes several other independent authors directly as well as linking to websites and suggesting books to read. Each chapter ends with a set of questions to get you thinking about how the chapter topic relates to you and your writing.
The book has one major drawback that I found frustrating. There is no written or clickable table of contents. I did receive a review copy, so I double-checked at Amazon to see if that version had one. It did not. There is so much useful information here that I would like to be able to get back quickly to a particular topic when I have a question or want advice. Too, as a reader, I always go over the table of contents of a nonfiction book before I start to read it so I know what to look forward to. I feel like it helps me organize my mind so that I am better able to assimilate the knowledge in the book.
This book is chock-full of information and support that will help you if you choose to become an independent author.
Pinterest Marketing by Kerrie Legend
Pinterest Marketing*
The Definitive Guide to Using Pinterest to Market Your Blog
The foreword to this book offers a short but exciting reveal by the author: After she employed the methods used in this book–using Pinterest to market her blog–in 3 months (starting in December of 2018), her blog views went up from 80K to 400K. As she states, Pinterest isn’t social media; it’s a search engine.
In this book, she takes you by the hand from the very beginning of understanding how to set up your profile, boards, and pins and then moves on more detailed information like analytics, setting up a mailing list, and adding videos. Each chapter starts with a fun Pinterest fact and then goes on to explain the topic at hand, sometimes in steps, usually with tips, and ending with a recap. This book is well-organized and straightforward. The author knows an amazing amount of information about Pinterest and how to work effectively with that system to bring people to her blog.
If you have any interest in using Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog, this is the book you should pick up for a solid action plan.
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