Netskills - Gillian Lee
Aug
Documents On Call haven’t just barracked from the sidelines as Gill’s netball coaching manual business, Netskills, has gone from strength to strength – we’ve been delighted to work right alongside her for the last ten years as she’s gone on to develop a wonderful range of books that sell worldwide.
This is her story.
I'm a professional Netball Coach, coaching throughout Australia but I also write coaching manuals. I didn't start off as an author. I just started writing down a few ideas and tips that people were interested in. One thing led to another and suddenly I had a netball skills manual that people wanted.
The challenge for me in building my business has been to self publish up-to-date, quality books on a limited budget and not have a huge number of books to store nor to go out of date. I've worked hard to make the manuals affordable which means carefully managing the production costs.
Originally I only sold to people I came in contact with but then started to market over the internet through my website. More and more interest developed and the demand for the manuals grew. I now sell manuals to netball coaches and netball distributors across the world via my website.
Before working with Documents On Call I was outlaying a lot of money upfront printing my manuals in large numbers to try to reduce the costs per book. I found quality with this approach was a real problem. I was also running to at least two different companies when printing - a printer and a binder. The large print run meant that I was left to find storage space for all the books and carry the risk that some of the information may go out of date before all the books were sold. Clearly I had to find a better way of getting my manuals made.
That's where Documents On Call came in.
Documents On Call suggested that unless I had need for many thousands of books all at one time, it was no more expensive to print just as many as I needed, say two hundred at a time. DOCs suggested I get the colour covers (that don't change often) printed in higher numbers and they would store them. So I simply email my order, DOCs use the covers on hand and print and bind 200 more manuals for me. I repeat this process on demand many times a year.
Now I can test the water with just a few hundred books without having to commit to thousands of copies and I have a continual stock of manuals on hand, and minimal storage needed at no extra cost. I can update the manuals as required and the printing and binding time for more manuals is very quick and always presented with a smile.
My relationship with Documents On Call has allowed me to grow my business and better serve my customers. Because I don't have to store and pay for large numbers of stock at any one time it's meant that I can develop more products and make them available to my customers. Documents On Call provides me with a workable and affordable business solution to my printing needs. It's all so much easier now. One phone call to Documents On Call and my printing is done.