Book Review: Writing White Papers by Michael A. Stelzner

In my 3+ years in writing content for the web, I have yet to tackle a white paper.  White papers are increasingly getting attention for their ability to educate, inform and influence their readers.  They are especially useful for those companies that deal in products and services that are not commonly and easily understood by the general public.

In my day job, I am in the business of selling virtual telecommunications solutions (virtual PBX, Internet fax, toll free number call capture systems for real estate agents, tele-verification solutions to reduce Internet fraud and soon a hosted VoIP PBX) and in my experience we definitely fall in the category of not always being easily understood.  We also run into the problem of people not knowing that our kinds of products even exist.  So in looking for a solution to this problem, I decided to see if writing a white paper might help us to introduce our products to people as well as educate them on how we can help them with a variety of problems they may face in their businesses.  My first step was to learn more about how white papers are used and of course how to write them.  This is how I found Michael Stelzner’s book Writing White Papers.  (I also subscribe to his blog strangely enough also named Writing White Papers.)

I have 2 pieces of advice for people that are going to be, or currently are, writing white papers.

1. Read this book.
2. Have a highlighter handy.

To be completely honest, I was not looking forward to reading this book.  I imagined a long tedious book that I would struggle to finish only for the sake of my research and end goal of producing a successful white paper.  I was pleasantly surprised.  It was an easy and extremely educational read.  Stelzner lays it out in an easy to understand step by step process starting at the planning phase and takes it all the way to the launch of your white paper. 

Here are just a few of the burning questions that Stelzner will answer for you in this book:

• What are white papers anyways?
• Who is writing them?
• Who is reading them?
• What can they do for me?
• How the heck do I write one?
• Now that I have written one, what do I do with it?

After reading this book, I feel like I have a firm grasp on how to write my white paper.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

** I am currently reading Naked Conversations - How Blogs Are Changing The Way Businesses Talk With Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.  I’ll let you all know what I think when I’m done.

Reader Comments

Michael A. Stelzner says...December 28th, 2007

Brandi - Thanks for the awesome review! I hope you will post it up on Amazon. - Mike

Got something to say?

Name (Required)*

Email Address (Required)*

Website

Comments (Required)*

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

Security Code (Required)*
To help prevent spam, please enter the text shown in the security image below:

Copyright © 2008 Telecentrex, LLC. All rights reserved.