H T Start a Mail Order (The 21st Century Entrepreneur)

There are valid suggestions concerning all of the details you must consider when launching a business. These, however are best covered in a book which addresses items in detail. For example, a short section mentions the pros and cons of selecting various business entities, partnerships, corporations and the like. But the author is not an expert in law, nor in many of the other sections he ventures into, so the end result is a lot of information that is better covered in other sources.

The crux of the book, are twelve steps one should use to start a mail order venture. All are valid and useful. But they are only a few pages. My reservation begins in the financial section (since one of the books premises is that this business can be started for about 10k). In the financial section, all of the numbers are out of date and some are ridiculous. For example, software is listed as $100.00. That wouldn't buy a word processing program today. The author also continues the poor illustration of the golf ball printer and add these example costs to a sample financial plan.

Overall, if you're looking to break into the mail order business and have no experience at all, this book might help. Or it might not. In any case, the reader and author would have gained more from sticking to mail order only and leaving legal, and the rest to experts. I would have liked to see a section for example on how to save costs ( printing, set-up and graphics). Instead, I got advice on advertising my products on matchboxes. Sure, it's fine for some products. But, unless you're selling those golfballs this may not be the book for you.