Homepublishing Made Easy
By Tom Kelly Dodd
Necessity is the mother of invention and the need to eat was our necessity.
With our last few dollars, no experience, and no equipment my husband and I began a publishing business, TableTop Tidbits News. That was seven years ago. Today our paper is in six cities, the papers content is generic and can work in any town.
Now we want to expand and help others do the same. After a corporate disaster, my husband took off on a cross-country bicycle trip. He came home with the idea that we could make money by publishing a paper for restaurants.
Neither of us had any journalism, advertising, or publishing know how. We definitely needed to find a business that did not require capital to start. We did some cut and paste and developed a prototype of our paper. We then took the prototype around and got support from the restaurants. We were off.
At first it was a lot of work, selling ads, writing stories, getting cartoons and trivia. The longer we did it the easier it became. Today we have professional writers helping and advertisers are calling us. We even have a waiting list for ad spaces. Best of all we have a good deal of free time as well. Tom and I are certain that by syndicating the paper it will be a perfect stay-at-home business for parents. When the kids are in school a Mom or dad can put their education, computer and personal skills into a career that generates substantial supplemental income. If Mom and dad want to make a team of it, Table Top Tidbits News can be a family's entire income and all done from home.
The paper is successfully syndicated in two states, Price, Utah and Colorado Springs, Colorado. The local publishers pay a fee for special software, training, printing and the exclusive territory. The money from the ads they sell is theirs to keep.
When we were raising our three children, I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home Mom. It saddens me to see so many of our little ones being raised by day care centers today. Hopefully Table Top will be an avenue for more Moms and/or Dads to spend more time with their children.
If this sounds like something that would appeal to Dr. Laura listener and they would like to know the nitty gritty details they should look at our website
www.tabletoptidbitsandnews.com
or e-mail us at
tabletop@gj.net
.
We hope to have several more local publishers going this year.
Tom Kelly Dodd, Loma, Colorado
