#002: White Papers: A Real and Lucrative Opportunity for Business Writers (Part 1 of 2)

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia. Hey everyone, thanks for joining me for episode number two of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who who want to learn how to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent of that. I'm very excited about my guest today and the topic we're going to be covering. And joining me today is Gordon Graham, also known as that white paper guy and author of the newly published book White Papers for Dummies. I've known Gordon for many years, about eight, nine years now. He's been in invaluable resource for me on writing white papers and he's one of the most knowledgeable people out there on that topic. He's personally written almost 200 white papers on everything from designing virtual worlds for kids to how to select a document management system for billion dollar engineering projects. Gordon has taught writing at two universities and in house at many firms including Cisco, IR Erickson and Sprint. His book White Papers for Dummies, as I said, just came out a few weeks ago. And if you write white papers for a living or even if it's something that you're considering, this is a must have book and reference guide. You can find it at Amazon.com or wherever books are sold. I have a lot of questions for Gordon on the business of writing white papers. So I'm actually doing a two part series with him. And in today's session we're going to start by talking about white papers themselves and what are they, where and how are they used, who uses them, how long are white papers, why do they continue to be so popular? We're then going to move into the opportunity. So specifically, is this a dying fad or is this still a strong trend? What kind of future does Gordon see for white papers? What industries publish them and what industries represent the hottest white paper opportunities for writers. We're going to get into how much to charge for white papers if you can really make a good living just writing white papers or writing mostly white papers. We're going to talk about clients and how they view white paper writers and if they really are struggling to find white paper writers. Gordon is even going to tell you a little bit about what Google, which is one of his clients, had to say about white paper writers and what they look for in a white paper writer. And then we're going to wrap it up with this whole issue of what happens if you're just starting out and you have no white paper samples. So that chicken and egg scenario, what do you do? Where do you get started? Anyway, I think you're going to find this very valuable. I hope you enjoy this two part series. Let's get right to it. Gordon, it's super to have you here.

Great. Thanks for asking.

Absolutely. You know, I never told you this, but I'm actually kind of a. Not actually. I'm really a fan of yours and been a big fan of yours for years. Probably before you even knew who I was, I was like stalking you. Because back this is back right when nobody was really talking about white paper writing. You're one of the few and I'm talking about 2000, 2003, 2002. And you're the only one out there who seemed to have any information about white paper. So I would print out your information and study it and highlight it and try to kind of make sense out of this whole world of white papers. I've been stalking you for years. You probably never even knew that.

No, I didn't.

But it's. This is a true honor to be speaking with you because again, you're one of the guys who's been doing this and writing about this and thinking about this whole field of white papers for so long that it's one of those fields that even though we've come a long way, there's still not a ton of information out there when it comes to white paper writing. We should probably start there. Let's talk about white papers for those people who are not very familiar with the term, who are still wondering what they are. I mean, what is a white paper technically? How would you describe it?

Well, a white paper is a form of marketing document. It's 98% B2B. So they're not the sort of things you see as a consumer. They're the sort of things you see in a business when you're going to make a big expensive purchase. And so they're, they're generally six to eight pages long. And they're what I call persuasive essays. They use facts and logic to promote a certain point of view or a certain offering from a certain vendor. So they're definitely promotional, but they kind of straddle two different fields. That's what makes them so challenging. They have to explain and offer useful information at the same time as they persuade and promote a certain type of product. I really have a mantra for white Papers where I say an effective white paper has to help a business reader to understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision. That's really the goal of a good white paper.

I like that. That makes sense. So it kind of falls into this educational marketing realm.

Yeah, yeah. Or marketing with content. But I consider white papers the king of content because they're really pretty. Well, the longest and the most challenging to produce and the most long lasting they can be. I have clients that have had white papers I've written online for seven years, you know, and they continue to generate leads. So very few types of content work as hard for as long as a good white paper. So they really are intended to help B2B companies kind of build their recognition, build their mind, share, generate leads, engage prospects, undercut competitors, and ultimately help to close sales. And they can do that for years.

How are they used? Obviously this is what they're intended to do and this is what they, when they're used correctly, this is what they can achieve. But how are they used?

Well, I've been thinking lately as I was writing my book, I was thinking about the so called sales funnel, where at the top you've got the universe of possible prospects. And then your goal as a marketer is to draw people into your sales funnel and then engage them and nurture them and bring them down through the funnel and then ultimately have them drip out the bottom as customers. The classic use of white papers is at the top of the funnel to generate leads. But as I thought about that, I realized that white papers can be used just about anywhere in the funnel. The classic use is at the top of the funnel. You write a white paper that helps someone understand the problem that your product is solving. And then you put that out there on the web and you get some good keywords for it. And then people searching for that problem will come across a link to your white paper, hopefully be interesting it and click and download it and read it and be impressed with the good advice you're giving. That's sort of the most common use of a white paper, but there are different types that can be used at different points in the funnel. And once you've got a prospect engaged, you can continue to nurture that lead or nurture that prospect by continuing to offer them good content. And some of the, the most meaty content and the most engaging content you can offer is a white paper. As they go down the sales funnel and then towards the bottom. Often companies, well, most companies draw up a short list of vendors when they're Making an expensive buy. This is called a complex sale. A complex sale is really an expensive purchase that touches a lot of different areas of a company. Say it's something like, it could be as prosaic as buying a phone system or it could be something much more future oriented like putting part of their business online. Whatever it is, it's something that's very expensive, it's very complicated, it's going to take some time to figure out and more often than not it's quite a new innovative idea that a company is trying to implement. So white papers are great for doing, for explaining those kind of things and for justifying the cost of investing in something like that. But towards the bottom of the funnel, towards the end of the sales cycle, what most companies will do is have a short list of vendors, two or three vendors on it, and they'll need to really start doing a head to head comparison. So at that point they generally will name somebody from the company to do a technical evaluation or a business case or a cost benefit analysis, some real head to head comparison of the remaining vendors that they're most interested in. And this is towards the bottom of the sales funnel. But this is when white papers can be very useful, that late in the process as well, when you offer the kind of information that will help a technical evaluator size up your product or a kind of justification that will help them see the benefits, the gains that they'll make by buying your product. So that's an example of the kind of white paper that works deep down in the funnel.

So you're seeing basically everything from lead generation to once somebody is engaged with the vendor, all the way down to the shortlisted a few and they're trying to make a final decision and they need more specific information.

Yeah, yeah. Does that make sense to you?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I've experienced the same thing where the bulk of the ones you see tend to be at the top of the funnel. But there are a lot of opportunities to write white papers for clients that are further down once they've engaged with prospects. So then that brings up something else. Obviously white papers have been around for a long time. There's always been a lot of talk about white papers and how popular they are. But I mean, do you think this is a dying fad? I mean, is this hype or is there really a huge demand to create white papers and for companies to, for companies who are on the buying end really demanding more white papers?

It's a great question. It's really, I'm almost amused by this because almost every day I'll see some discussion or tweet or question on, on LinkedIn or something about are white papers dying? Are white papers dying? And you get a lot of people that will come on and say, oh yeah, they're so nobody reads anymore. You know, nobody reads. Everybody just want to watch video and do use social media. That's what everybody wants. But these discussions are so kind of sloppy because what you, what you want in your personal life, as you just graduated out of college and you want your work experience to be a lot like going to college may not necessarily be what your employer wants, you know, and I think there's a bit of a generational divide there. But I certainly like going to YouTube. I certainly like watching videos. But I have seen this firsthand and I have talked to many, many, many people in businesses who are, who have to do a complex purchase. They can't get away with watching videos or reading some tweets or looking at an infographic. If they're a vice president of a company or a C level executive of a company about to spend a million dollars or maybe bet the future of a division of the company, they got to do some serious homework, they have to do some reading. It's a little different asking people what do you like than asking people what do you actually have to do on the job when you're in that position to spend that kind of money. And I think most of the people I got to give credit to, the people making noise about social media, they know how to make noise. It's incredible. But when you get right down to it, no top executive of a company is making serious business discussions based on reading a few tweets or watching a few videos. It may be an enjoyable way to package information, but if you're. I don't know how else to say it. If you're spending a lot of somebody else's money in a company, you have to do your homework. And white papers are the ultimate way to provide that kind of research material for people making a serious decision. So I get people every single day coming to me from all different sizes of companies. They could be startups. A white paper is pretty much a must do item on the checklist for any kind of technical or innovative startup these days. That's in the B2B audience market. You just can't start a B2B company without having at least one white paper that explains what you're trying to do. Then at the other end of the spectrum, these massive companies like Google, Oracle, hp, Microsoft, Apple, they're putting out white papers all the time. Yes, even Apple puts out white papers. Hard to believe. I've seen a white paper from Apple about using the iPad in the medical sites. And there's a white paper from Apple about the security provisions of using iPads in business. So when there's something serious and complicated to communicate to a business buyer who's got to make a big decision, white papers are needed. And there's another way to look at it. Okay, there's another way I can answer this. I don't mean to be too long winded about this, but it kind of pushes one of my buttons.

I figured it would, that's why I asked it.

Yeah, well, I've been following these things, I've been doing some research and white papers are more than 100 years old. They started in England as basically as government publications where the government had two categories of documents and they kept getting them mixed up. So then they started putting different covers on them. So they had these blue covers on these, on the documents that were actual legislation or things that the government had actually done. And then they had white covers on these things that were more research reports or studies or possibilities or trial balloons, you know. And some of these so called white papers were really, really good summaries of a whole industry. So I've seen some of these. I'm trying to get it back as far as I can. The original, very, very early precursors of these were something like 1880-1870-1880-1890. I've seen PDFs of ones that have been scanned in the British Archives from 1907, 1906. And at that point they started to be called white papers. And what happened was they would do a white paper about industry in the UK and all the people in that industry, the leaders of that industry would look at this and say, gee, that's pretty informative. I didn't know that. That's pretty neat. Gee, maybe we should do something like that to help our customers understand things. So the companies picked up this idea and started producing their own documents that were kind of modeled after these really informative reports that the British government had done. So, you know, fast forward about 50 years. These became like sort of classic business reports that companies would do. And fortunately since the 50s, they have evolved quickly and become much more interesting and much more visual and more colorful and shorter. What I'm saying is they're a venerable document form which just makes a lot of sense. They're factual, they're not fluffy, they're not salesy they're not trying to find, they're not trying to use those copywriters tools of making you feel something, making you feel fear. What are the two things that drive the stock market?

Fear and greed.

Fear and greed, yeah, yeah. They're not trying to make you feel fear and greed. They're trying to make you feel. They're trying to make you understand something or make a decision about something based on concrete information. So if we look into the future, will companies continue to need that? Gee, I think they probably will. You know, white papers are ideal for a vendor that has something relatively new to sell, something relatively expensive to sell, something relatively complex to sell. Do you think in the future there are going to be new, expensive, complex products and services? Yeah, I think there probably will be. Yeah, I think there probably will be. And you think there'll be prospective buyers that will need information to decide which ones to pick? Yeah, I think there probably will be. You know, so since we've got this venerable form that solves that problem that you can tick off all of those boxes with, why would we say it's dying? You know, it's similar to whenever there's a new media form, right. So if you look at it, radio was supposed to kill off the telegram, right? And then TV was supposed to kill off radio, and then the Internet was. Or cable was supposed to kill off the networks, and then the Internet was supposed to kill off TV and print. You know, but really what happens is each new media just sort of jostles and nestles its way into the spectrum and the spectrum gets richer and richer and richer. So we still have just about all those other media forms. The Telegram. The telegram I think, has died, but we just about have every other media form that's been invented and they just have a. They just have their niche where they do it really, really well, their particular thing. And then there's beside them is the next media form that does something else really, really well. So I can't see print really being irrelevant. You know, like if you look at Star Trek and they're talking to the computer and the computer's giving them answers, but sometimes they look at their little tablets and there's a whole bunch of print on there they're scanning through, you know, and print is a very effective way to package information. And so if we're still going to have text and print, then I think we're still going to have something like white papers. Now we could talk about the future of white papers. I think they're going to evolve and continue to evolve, but they're not, they're not going to die. And you know what? The other way I look at this is, even if they do die and somebody like me has no business, my business completely dries up for doing white papers. And like, my phone is not ringing and I'm getting no emails, I've still gained some really, really valuable skills by doing so many white papers. And if any other writer kind of goes into white papers and learns about them and becomes good at writing white papers, that's a transportable, transferable skill that they will be able to redirect to whatever other media form comes up later, you know, because.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I would add something, Gordon. I think you get into an argument of the medium versus the message. And I think this is what you're also driving at is, okay, so what if at some point there's no such thing as a white paper, it's something else, there's still going to be a need to justify an expensive purchase. This has never ended in business history. Somebody always has to answer to somebody else, assuming it's a decent sized business and it's not just the owner making all the decisions you have to justify this million dollar purchase. So whether it's a white paper that's going to help you do that or some other form of document or item or content, there still has to be something in that category that a potential buyer can use. Let's talk about, because you mentioned some of the industries that use white papers. But let's talk about the industries represent the hottest markets for white paper writers.

Sure, they come out of the technology world. So really any company that is in technology, hardware, software, gear, medical devices, even parts or assemblies, even cars these days have a lot of electronics in them. So any kind of industry like that is, is already going to be using white papers. And just as a little aside, I wanted to mention something that writers often ask me. Sometimes established copywriters say, oh, okay, I'm really sold on this idea of writing white papers now. Now how can I convince my clients that they should be doing white papers? And I say like, don't bother, you know, don't bother trying to push some company into doing white papers. Just look for one that's already doing it. If they haven't already heard of these and thought of these, they're probably not going to. A few words from you may not be enough to convince them. It's much easier just to go to a company in your industry, in your specialty that already recognizes the need for them and Maybe hasn't done one lately or hasn't done a very good one. I actually have in my book a table. Oh, this will probably interest your listeners. I've got a table where I researched this a few years ago, but then I looked at it again. So I went through these NAIS codes, North American Industry Standard codes. Right. And for the entire economy. And I grouped them under three main types of companies. So there's any kind of equipment manufacturer, anybody making any kind of machine or equipment or gear, and then that's one sort of big domain. And then I've got a ton of codes that people could look up for what for those different specialties. And there's over 60,000 companies like that in the US then any company that's providing any kind of scientific or technical service. So this could be testing or ISO or any kind of consultant or any kind of measuring company or anybody doing any kind of science as a service. There's labs that test pharmaceutical products, all kinds of stuff like that. There's some codes for that. There's over 350,000 companies like that in the States.

Wow.

Now, admittedly they're smaller probably than the big equipment companies, but still you could start at the top and the top ones are going to be, going to be huge. For instance, what would be the top one? Underwriters Laboratories is probably the biggest one in that category for sure. They have a lot of white papers that they're putting out to explain when they come out with a new, a new code, they've got to explain that to people. That's a serious, serious thing that they have to explain. Then the third classic category, software and information providers, in here I include not only just software companies, but also information providers is a category that's becoming broader and broader. And really I've had inquiries from cable companies and lots of people making video codecs, compressors and decompressors. Lots of people in the media business are putting out, are putting out white papers because that's again, a very technically driven business that's changing really fast. There's over 26,000 of those. So potential white paper clients in the US alone is over 450,000. Now I've also had clients from other countries, from Australia, Canada, of course, Finland, the uk. So I added in pro rated amount of companies from Australia, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway and the UK because all those companies do business. All those countries do business primarily in English and they're trying to sell to the English speaking market and mostly the U.S. right. So I looked at the figures from the UN about the GDP of those countries and stuff. And I took an estimate that about, I could say that about one third of all the. No, I could say that the world market, the US market is about three times the size of the rest of the market in these other countries. So I added in a 35%. So if you can follow those numbers, the bottom line is the total potential clients for white papers in the English speaking world is over 600,000 companies. 2,000. No shortage. Yeah, yeah. So that's why people sometimes ask me, aren't you afraid you're just creating your own competition? I go, there is like such an overwhelming need for these documents to be written, you know, and even if out of that 600, we could cut it in half, so say 300 of them are not doing them yet or are never going to do them or are too small or too backward looking. Okay, you've still got 300,000 companies in the world that could use a white paper. Even if you cut it down to 20%, you've still got over 100,000 companies. That's a big market, a big underserved market.

That is a huge market. And I guess maybe to sum it up, this is what I've. You clarified what I was thinking already in terms of the hot markets, which is basically anything, anything that needs to be explained. So if it's something that's just so commonplace that it's a widget. A widget is a widget is a widget. You don't need to write a white paper to explain why your approach to widgets is different or better. So if it's something that needs to be explained to the target market that you're selling to, that is a potential market for a white paper. Correct? I mean, if we were to sum it up.

Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it. And you can look at the life cycle of different technologies, you know, so say one, one example I use is lasers. Remember there's one of the early James Bond movies. He's being menaced. I think it was Goldfinger. He's being menaced by a laser. And the bad guy is, I think Goldfinger is the bad guy. He goes on this long spiel explaining to James Bond what a laser is and how it could cut him in two and how it could vaporize metal. And this is in the 60s. You and I think the first industrial lasers were used just after that movie in 1965 or so. So you can bet they cost a fortune and they had A lot of explaining to do with those things. Nowadays you can go buy a little laser at your corner store, you know, and then I've got one I use to play with my cats, you know, like I think it was $10 or something. So you don't need a white paper any longer to explain what a laser is. What happens is new, innovative, expensive high end gear tends to get repackaged as simpler, less expensive, more of a commodity item. Over several decades that will happen, and it happens in software as well. I had a customer who wanted me to write a white paper about how to pick an ERP system, Enterprise Resource Planning. I told him that topic is dead, it's old hat. You can Google how to pick an ERP system and you get something like 7 million hits. ERP emerged in the end of the 80s as a replacement for the older MRP systems. And they're basically big accounting systems to let you keep track of everything that's going on in your company and especially in a manufacturing company. So in the early 90s there were white papers about how to pick an ERP system and what is ERP and what does ERP mean to your company in our era? Now, 20 years later, there is no need for a basic white paper about ERP or how to pick an ERP system or what does emar. They're on to the next genre now where they're writing about online versions of this and how to pick an online version of an ERP system. And even that's about five years old. So technology tends to be repackaged as a commodity. And that's the thing that makes this field so interesting is you get to write about the latest and the greatest stuff, the newest stuff. So as far as keeping people interested, I find this is fascinating. Every day I'm learning about something new that most people haven't heard of.

And I do want to emphasize though, because we know a lot of the examples you and I have been talking about are technology related. They don't have to be technology related. I think that's one of the most common misconceptions, right? Oh, you have to be a technical person because you're going to be writing about technology. Not so. I've written white papers about professional services. It's just a different way that this particular company approaches this service and the way they deliver it. I mean, it could be a million different things, but it has to be explained because again, they're doing it or approaching it differently.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I wanted to tell people, I never studied, I'm not an engineer, I'm an arts bum. I studied English and philosophy and creative writing. So if I can pick this stuff up, I think most people can, that having to explain something complicated is a really good point. And then the other two points are something new because, say my example of lasers, now you can just Google Wikipedia and find out more than you ever want to know about lasers. I mean, the information is out there, but when something is new and innovative, and maybe one company is the only one that's thought of this approach to something, there's no other way to research it. My other example, erp. There's forums now, there's users groups, there's whole books about it. There's probably a dummy's guide to erp. There's lots of ways to find information. But when something is new, you can Google and come up empty. That's when a company has to explain what they're talking about, their different twists, innovation and new ideas. Any company with a new way to do something. But it's also got to be a fairly high end. It's got to be expensive because these documents don't come cheap. We'll probably get into talking about how much you can charge as a writer for them. But for a company to invest say 5 or $10,000 in a white paper, they got to be selling something that cost at least $50,000. Probably 100,000, probably 150,000. Some kind of system or service or engagement or offering or methodology or approach to solving some problem. That's really, it's best if they're up there in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. But then there's a sort of light version of white papers that I call special reports that small businesses and local businesses can use the same kind of approach as in a white paper. And of course they'll be much less ambitious. And of course writers can't charge as much for them. But the wonderful special report is sort of the light end of this format that's still marketing with content. It's still doing the very same thing. But it's, I think a fun example that, that our buddy Steve Sloanwright uses is, you know, eight things you must know about your plumbing, or eight jobs you can do yourself as a home repairman, and four things you must call a plumber for. You know, so if you Google, say you're looking for your local plumber and you Google, you Google and you get a bunch of lists and you know, you got Joe's plumber and Jake's plumber and John's plumber. And then you got, you got Ed's plumber and Ed's got a special report about. Here's eight jobs that you should be able to do yourself and the tools you need for them. And here's four jobs not to touch with a 10 foot pole because you're going to flood your basement. Who are you going to trust? Who are you going to be more engaged with? The guy who gave you some help and some guidance and some information or the guys who are just out there selling? This is another really important principle of marketing with content in general. But white papers certainly are a prime example of this is your go as a company, the writer's client, the vendor who's sponsoring the white papers. Their goal is to position themselves as a trusted advisor, someone who can help their prospects solve problems and discuss the things they're up against without always just be selling, selling, selling, selling, selling, selling. They're giving you some hopefully really useful practical help. And so the goal is that that elevates them above the run of the mill vendors who's just out there selling all the time, you know, makes a big difference.

Huge difference.

Yeah.

So, all right, so let's kind of move into as far as the, the writing business, the business aspect of this in terms of what you can, what you can earn, what you can expect. And then I know we'll have to continue the discussion in part two of this podcast, but let's talk about how much you can charge for a white paper. Can you really make a good living just writing white papers if that's what you wanted to do?

Well, I think the answer to your second question is absolutely. I mean, I've been focused on white papers, gee, for seven or eight years now, you know, and they're, and they're not everything I do, but I find that I'm doing more and more just white papers and less and less of anything else. I also write case studies because case studies are also very factual and fit right along beside white papers and the marketing with content kind of spectrum. But I'd say I just checked the other day. So far this year I'm 80% white papers and 20% other and 20% covers. Also giving a workshop here or there. But I did some research about the current fees for writing white papers and these are for, this is for a classic six to eight page white paper, seven to ten pages with the COVID and the front matter and the back matter. Some interviews that I had done with the content networks like knowledge storm and TechTarget was they said white papers range from a low of 3,000 to a high of 5,000. That gives an average of 4,000. There was a big survey of about 600 white paper writers taken a few years ago by Mike Stelzner and the white paper Source. They range from a low of 2000 to a high of 10,000 plus for an average of around 3300. The American Writers and artists that Ed and I are both involved with did a little survey or at least polled a few of our B2B copywriting colleagues and their estimates were from a low of 2500 to a high of 6500. And then writers market for 2012 said a low of 2,500 to a high of 10,000. So you know, we've got lows here. The starting point for white paper, 3000-2000-2500-2500. Basically, if you're in the developed world, you shouldn't be quoting less than $2,000 for a white paper. The highs go up to $10,000 or more. And I want to tell you quite honestly, I'm working on a project right now where I bid 9750 and it was for a white paper plus a couple of blog posts that are spun out of the white paper, which will really take me about half each to do or something. Don't tell my client that. But this is another case of where people can't write. So any writer could take a white paper and break out a blog post in just a few minutes. But for some business people, that would take them all day or two days to do that because it's just not their specialty. So I've personally almost hit the $10,000 mark. And if you look at the averages, I've got a table here, I'm looking at the averages of all of these sources. These four sources was $4200. So that would be kind of the average going rate for what people would expect to pay for a white paper. Now you'll get people that want to get it for less. But when I bid my 9750, the client came back and said, oh yeah, that's kind of what we were expecting.

Wow, wow. These are high dollar projects. And I'm wondering because you mentioned front cover, back cover, your deliverable as a writer, is it content only in a word document or content design? What's included?

Well, I would say that the bigger the company you work for, the more likely that they're going to have an in house designer or a little team of freelance designers that they always work with. So the bigger the company, the more likely you're going to deliver text only. And that's fine. But you have to think visually as you write and you have to probably break it up with a few little sidebars and maybe suggest some PO quotes and put in some subheads. You still have to think that way and kind of break it out on the page a little bit like that. I usually write up the table of contents and the copyright notice and all that stuff and about the company. I usually paste that stuff in from the web and the contact information. I usually give them a little word version of the whole document with page breaks in it to help them visualize. Even though it isn't designed up yet. I want to leave lots of white space in there too, so they don't think they can cram out too many words on there. For a smaller company, they may say, can you just give me the whole thing? So this is where it's good for a white paper writer to have an alliance with a designer or two who are good at doing editorial design, who know how to put together a nice looking white paper. Just as there are different types of writers, there's different types of designers. And you really want to find a designer who has done say magazine design or page newsletter design, maybe some book design, not so much advertising or website design. That's kind of a different specialty. You want somebody who's used to designing text to be ready and won't just pour the text in as a clump. Sometimes I've had white papers ruined by designers who just, I guess they think white papers are supposed to be so serious, they're supposed to look terrible or look serious or something. But sometimes they just pour the text in with a half an inch margin on all around the page and it's absolutely unreadable.

Those are better.

Yeah. It's disheartening. You work so hard on the words and then the designer can really undermine it. So you want to offer to proofread the final design. And if you're working, you want to check that the designers have done some white papers before. Often in big companies, there's corporate standard templates for doing all their documents and they may not be appropriate for a white paper. So you may have to push a little bit to get the result that's going to be easy to read.

In terms of working with a designer, what do you think is best? Do you think it's best to bring them in under your company and then just mark up their services and bill the client directly or have the client work directly with them.

Well, if your question is, is it better to work with my designer or their designer, I'd say my designer for sure.

But this would be. If you bring in your own designer, smaller company, would it be better for you to deliver one deliverable and bill the client for everything or have your designer work with them?

I find that the smaller the company, the less paperwork they want to go through. Right. The less overhead they want. So they'd sooner have one invoice than two invoices. So you can just put it together and mark up the designer or not as you wish. And I usually say $1,000 for design and nice graphics, and my designers can often bring it in for less than that. But if you start saying you can do it for 600 and then there's a whole bunch of tables or some kind of graphic that needs to be redone, then that adds a few more hundred. So I use a ballpark of about $1,000 will cover pretty much any white paper of that length.

All right, so let's talk about. In terms of someone who's wondering if this is the kind of project for them and their skill set, what makes a good white paper writer, in your opinion, in terms of someone who's wondering if this is the kind of project for them and their skill set, what makes a good white paper writer, in your opinion?

I've been thinking about this more and more lately, and I would say that the number one, the person that's best prepared to write white papers is a former journalist. You know, there are. And there are thousands and thousands of journalists that have been laid off, and they're kicking around wondering what to do next, and they're depressed and morose. My God, they've got good skills already. You know, like, they know how to interview people. They know how to research. They know how to separate, find the, you know, needle in the haystack of a bunch of research. They know how to tell a story. They know how to write quickly. And most of all, the thing that I find is the toughest skill for other types of writers to pick up is this idea of handling quotes and sources and weaving the proof points gracefully into the text. Copywriters have a lot of. Have a lot of existing skills, but one of the things that copywriters are not so used to doing is handling quotes and sources and proving the claims in the piece and kind of writing to explain. They're good at doing research and understanding the motivation of the buyers and Maybe doing interviews and writing to persuade. They're great at writing to persuade, but they may need to. A copywriter may need to work on writing to explain, and most of all, handling these proof points and inserting them gracefully. You know, other people that are often. Other types of writers that are often asked to do white papers are technical writers working in software companies or hardware companies or equipment manufacturers or medical device companies. And they're already good at interviewing and writing to explain, and they're already good at formatting their documents so people can scan them easily. But where they've been, and I worked as a technical writer for 6 years full time, and years after that as a contractor, technical writers just get thumped for having any kind of style or any kind of writing flair. Your job as a technical writer is really just get the information out there, just the facts, and as far as any kind of persuasive or rhetorical writing that is just pounded out of you. So technical writers really need to stretch their wings and break through those constraints and be a little more lyrical, really, and be a little more rhetorical and persuasive. So those are the three kind of paths that I see most often that people writing white papers have come from. Either they've been doing copywriting, they've been a journalist, or they've been a technical writer. And of course, some people can just start from scratch and jump right into writing white papers. But in that case, I would say these are advanced, challenging projects. And we talk about, oh, yes, you can charge $4,000 average, but you can't charge $4,000, the very first one you write when you have no copywriting experience or no track record. Nobody wants to let you. Nobody wants to be your guinea pig, you know, or your learning experience or to have you as your intern. Remember, they're doing white papers because they've got a big product that they need to sell, you know, and they may have some kind of editorial calendar. They need to get a white paper out. They've already reserved some space. The last one that I just finished this week, they've already booked ads in two industry trade journals, and they've got their emails all written and all set to go. They've got a meeting coming up with all of their distributors. They've got events pegged in real time where they need this document to be deliverable. So they don't want to risk. They don't want to risk going with somebody who they aren't sure is going to deliver. So I'd say the hardest hurdle of all is to come into copywriting and say, okay, I haven't done much writing, I haven't run my own copywriting business. I want to do white papers. And I'm just going to jump in, start and start. That's tough. But I have something to advise there. I would say start with case studies. Start with case studies because they're the same type of. They're in the same kind of domain, they're factual. The same companies that use white papers often need case studies. They're shorter and easier to do. They get you lots of experience in interviewing and in weaving together a story out of quotes. And you can charge $1,000 or $1,500 or $1,800 for a case study. And they're usually only a interviews. So I would say that's kind of the way I just. Without any big plan. I had written all these magazine articles before as a freelance magazine writer and that kind of gave me really good, a really good foundation to build on when it came to writing white papers because I already knew how to tell a story studded with quotes and facts and statistics and stuff. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. In fact, that actually leads to my last question, which was, if you don't have any white paper samples, this traditional chicken and egg scenario, what do you do? How do you get started if you have nothing to show, but you'll never have something to show if you can't get started?

Yeah, well, as I say, I think you can get started as a copywriter doing case studies fairly easily. And another thing to do is write a white paper for yourself, write a white paper for practice, or write a white paper as a so called buzz piece to build your own business about some topic that you feel quite passionate about. And then use that as a learning experience to dig out the proof and to tell a convincing story and to have a beginning and a middle and an end and a call to action and then use that as a sample. Something that you do to build your own business. There's another idea is to do one for some kind of nonprofit or do one for extremely low cost for some kind of local business before you break on the national scene. It's tough for the reason that nobody wants to think that they're your first client. But another reasonable thing to do is just start small and work your way up. Start with smaller companies that don't have the same expectations as somebody like Google, but on the other side. I want to tell you a little story which should be kind of encouraging. I've been fortunate that I've been number one in Google for white paper writer for several years now. And I was number one for case study writer for quite a few years, too. A marketing person at Google in New York Googled case study writer. And they found me and they contacted me, and the first time we ever talked, she said, you know, yeah, I'm here with Google in New York, and, you know, we have a really hard time finding copywriters. And I had to put my hands over my mouth so I wouldn't laugh out loud. I would say, new York, New York City. You cannot swing a cat in New York City and not scratch a writer. I mean, it's crawling with writers, and they couldn't find a good one. So what does that really mean? It means that she couldn't find a reliable writer who would take the trouble to understand their technology, who could deal with the new, innovative ideas that they were talking about, who could research, find proofs, interview people, and write up a compelling story. And they had gone through. Oh, and not be a prima donna to work with. They had burned through a few writers who had just been too difficult for them to work with. No, I mean, that's kind of ridiculous. Can you imagine writing for Google and being a prima donna and starting to tell them how they were going to do things? And no, you're not going to do this, and no, you're not going to do that. It's one of the coolest companies in the world. And the people that I have interviewed there have been so smart, smart as a whip. And, you know, it's been quite the interesting experience writing for them. And I think that one of the things you can do is if throughout your writing career is be easy to deal with, you know, be a nice person. That's easy to deal with. It's so basic. But really, if you're grumpy, don't take it out in your client. If they ask you to do a little bit more, don't complain and start nickel and diming them. You know, be easy and fun to work with. Laugh a bit. You know, I love laughing and telling jokes with my clients. And I send them pictures of my kids or my kid, and they send me pictures of their kids. Be a genuine person. You can do that no matter how much of a portfolio you have or don't have. Be a fresh face on the scene. That's fun to work with. That has an amazing difference.

Well, it's very, very good. You said this, Gordon, about the whole issue of Google not being able to find good Reliable writers. Because I keep telling people this, other writers who are starting out and they don't believe me. And the only explanation, the only analogy I've been able to give them is think about a remodeling contractor. If you've ever done any work to your kitchen, to your bathroom, anywhere in your house, you know how difficult it is to find a very reliable contractor to get that work done. Now you could go to your yellow pages, your phone book, you could go right to any directory and find a million of them. You can Google for a remodeling contractor in your area and find a million of them. That's not the issue. The issue is someone who's low risk, you can trust, is reasonable, easy to work with, and can get the job done quickly so you can actually have a usable kitchen in a few days and not be destroyed for a month. Month. To me, it's the same issue. There's a big disconnect. It's not that there's no writers and it's not that there's no demand. There's a lot of demand and there are a lot of writers, but they're not really sure where to go to find these writers. And that's why I'm glad you mentioned Google, because this is an excellent example of why sometimes you need to go outside of your comfort zone and approach companies that maybe you think, well, I'm sure they have some. Somebody. Well, maybe not. You'd be surprised.

Yeah, I want to build on that comment. I'm glad we're talking about this because really I've done this, I've been a vice president of marketing. And what I realized at that level, and I've talked about this with other people too, part of your job is to have in your drawer some resources that you can call up to have some names and numbers and resumes of people that you can call up when you need them. You may have your little stable of, you know, your, your favorite writer and your favorite designer, but what happens if one of them gets sick or goes on a trip or, you know, gets pregnant or their parents fall down and break their hip or something? I mean, everybody, not everybody is available all the time or they get overbooked and you have a last minute thing that you need and they're not there? The job of all executives is to, is to build a network that they can call on, that can cover them for any sort of unforeseen circumstances. So if you contact a marketing executive and you say, I'm a white paper writer, thought that we should be in contact. And if you ever need any help, I'm out there. They're not going to say, oh, buzz off and get out of here. I don't need you. I don't need to talk to you. Why are you bothering me? No way. I. Have you ever had that reaction, Ed? Have you ever had anything?

No.

Never? No. Ever? Ever? They say, gee, it's good we're talking.

Great advice, Gordon. This is so true. It's humanizing the experience, it's humanizing yourself. And I say staying top of mind because we all assume, right, that clients and prospects are thinking about us all the time. People we've been in touch with, even done a lot of work for before, but many times they're so busy and they're so scattered that they forget. And it's just if you do this consistently, you increase the chances of getting a hold of them at the time when they're going to need something, either right there or soon. I've had that same experience. So that's. That's very, very good advice. And, you know, I want to. And we're going to do a part two where we going to get into the different flavors of white papers and all that. Before we do that, to end here, I. I want you to tell me a little bit about your books. I'm really excited about this, and this is exactly the kind of book I wish I would have had when I was starting out with white papers. And I'm actually kind of jealous for anyone who's picking it up right now and is just embarking on this career because it's going to be better equipped, many times better equipped than I was back when I started. So tell us a little bit about it.

Gee, it's kind of the book I wish I'd had, too. If we go back to what you were saying about you were stalking me and looking at everything that I was coming up with. I did my first white paper in 1997, and I looked around, I looked around for, you know, the web existed then. There was no Google then. But I did look around as hard as I could for what is a white paper? How do you write them? What are the best practices? There was next to nothing. And there was a. In the. Over the next few years, a couple of books came out. There were these books for $99 that you could buy, you know, PDFs of. I bought them both. I bought them, you know, I paid 99 bucks for these things, and they were. They were okay, you know, really. But there was A couple of articles on the web, how to write a white paper. And that was really it. And so I was able to read every single scrap that had been published up to then about how to write white papers, you know, and now of course it's pretty hard to keep up with, but because there's lots of blogs and lots of resources and lots of LinkedIn groups and stuff. But I tried to, in my book White Papers for Dummies, I tried to really sum up everything I've learned In the past 15 years of writing white papers. So I really crammed in as many tips and as many best practices and as many kind of definitions and distinctions as I could. So it starts off with a chapter for marketing people. Then there's a chapter for business writers that talks about the opportunity and has some of these numbers that we've talked about in this call. Then there's a chapter about the past, present and future, four possible future directions for white papers. And then there's my description of the three flavors and how to use them. And a whole 12 step process for organizing, managing a white paper project. And then lots of tips about doing research, writing and promoting white paper. And then there's those top 10 tip lists at the end. So it's 384 pages. I believe it's the most comprehensive book about white papers that's ever been published. It's the longest and it's crammed as best I could and I had a very good editor who really kept me on track. I hope that people will find that it's really, really solid and packed with good advice.

I know they will. And I'll tell you, it's not only comprehensive, but I found it to be extremely well organized, which is kind of what you need need for this book to work well for you as a writer because you want to read it, you want to grab the information, you want to absorb it, but you also need it to become a reference. And what I found with other books that cover similar topics, they're a great read, but they're not a very good reference because finding the information you need later is very difficult. And this book, the way you organize it, I love the way that you laid it out and everything is so logical and easy to find, plus all the tables and everything you included in there makes it very easy to become a reference manual. Great, great, great stuff. And guys, that's available White Paper for Dummies, Amazon online, of course, bookstores everywhere. So go check it out. Believe me, if you're serious about doing this if you're writing white papers today, this really belongs in your bookshelf. So, Gordon, it was great to have you, and we'll be back here very soon, soon with part two of this podcast. We'll talk about the three flavors of white papers. We'll talk about how you approach white papers, the whole process in a nutshell. And so some really good, detailed information coming up, guys. So stay tuned for that. So, again, Gordon, thanks so much for coming in today.

My pleasure. It was great, great conversation. Ed.

The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a production of BE B2B business launcher. Learn more at B2B launcher dot com.