Presentation software can be a wonderful tool if used correctly. It can also be a dangerous distraction that interferes with communication rather than facilitating it. The line between the two is thin.

Over the course of my career, I have sat through hundreds of presentations. Most of them were done with PowerPoint. Most of them are done poorly.

Since publishing my new e-book, Creating Your Personal Life Plan, I have had several people ask how I created the e-book. Rather than try to answer these questions individually, I thought I would document the process here. You might want to try something similar.

I first did this when I published my two previous e-books, Writing a Winning Non-Fiction Book Proposal and Writing a Winning Fiction Book Proposal. I used the same basic approach here.

I don’t know about you, but our business runs on PowerPoint, and, to a lesser extent, Keynote presentation software.

One of my favorite marketing gurus, David Ogilvy, once wrote, “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.” How true.

I have argued for years that, “It’s the product, Stupid.” The secret to success in any business is to deliver a great, compelling product. No amount of marketing savvy, salesmanship, or operational excellence can overcome a weak product. This is especially true when it comes to publishing.

The purpose of marketing is to get a book launched—to prime the pump. But if people don’t want to read it and—more importantly—if they won’t recommend it to their friends, you’re hosed. You can’t spend enough money or be creative enough to overcome a lack of word-of-mouth marketing.