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 101 Home Office Success Secrets
By Lisa Kanarek
This unpretentious little paperback is arranged broadly by subject -- clients, work habits, and marketing, among others, but Kanarek has turned what could have been a list of banal truisms into a collection of business tips with a bright style and a slight edge. The author, who has written other books on self-employment, has written what the jacket copy aptly calls the IP's substitute for a company handbook. Slick isn't always better, the reader is told in Tip 37; it's more important that your image match the reality of your business. Kanarek is especially good on client relations -- on making it easy for them to reach you, on promoting their businesses, and remembering important dates. She advises finding out whether they are more responsive to calls in the mornings or afternoons. She even tells you the best days of the week to call. And the book actually has 102 tips -- the last one being always to give more than expected.
Buy it
 The Home Office
By Candace Ord Manroe
This book teaches you how to set up an efficient and harmonious home office
space in three steps. According to the author, you begin by evaluating your
needs and your work schedule. Next you examine the space you have, not
leaving out stairwells, closets, attics, or pantries. Lastly, you put your
own stamp on the workspace by means of color, furniture and lighting
arrangement. Manroe also explains how to tuck an office unobtrusively into
part of a bedroom or kitchen, and inventive ways to store papers and
materials. The book's color photographs look great -- and the offices they
depict look neater than any office anyone has ever worked in.
Buy it
 The
Home Office Book
By Donna Paul
A fascinating commentary on how to set up
an innovative home office. Okay, the offices depicted here are expensive,
but just looking at the photographs (there are 250) ought to give even
the most frugal IP a few imaginative ideas -- how to use bowling balls
as accents and ornaments; how to convert a stainless steel shoe rack
into a book and magazine holder; how to use restaurant shelving to hold
office papers; and how to fit a fax machine into an antique cabinet.
The offices depicted and described are classified by category: those
belonging to solo practitioners, to working couples, and to businesses
with employees; those in loft areas and those situated in outbuildings.
The author is a contributing editor to Metropolitan Home magazine, and
the photographs by Grey Crawford are of high quality. Buy it
 The
Home Office and Small Business Answer Book
By Janet Attard
In a Q&A format, Attard examines the basics in a strictly business
style; there isn't much on the psychology of working at home or how
to balance business and personal life. Instead she systematically works
her way through frequently asked questions on such matters as starting
up, keeping business records, getting attention, and writing a business
plan. The second edition, revised and updated to include new material
on e-commerce, is a big book of almost 600 pages. The author runs the
Business Know-How Forum on America Online.
Buy it
 The
Home Office Solution: How to Balance Your Professional and Personal
Lives While Working at Home
By Alice Bredin with Kirsten M. Lagatree
For many self-employed people, the most difficult
part of working at home is the boundary problem. Some are continuously
leaving the office to water the plants or see why the kids are so quiet;
for others, the arrival of bedtime finds them back in the office trying
to get a little more done. How to handle the psychological and time-management
aspects of working at home are the paramount concerns of the authors,
who offers advice on the burdens of isolation, stress, burnout, family
and relationship problems, procrastination and depression. The authors
puts sleep, nutrition and exercise in the context of business decisions,
and offers suggestions on controlling interruptions and dealing with
friends and family who think that working at home isn't really working.
Bredin, described as a virtual office expert, writes the syndicated
newspaper column Working at Home. Buy it
 Home Offices: Your Guide to Planning and Furnishing
By John Riha
Riha takes the reader step by step through the creation of a home office,
from planning the location to plumping the pillow. An expert on space who
has also written a book on the use of basements, the author advises the
novice on squeezing an office into an existing room, converting an unused
space, and remodeling. He offers tips on electrical, telecommunications and
lighting systems and devotes a whole chapter to soundproofing for peace and
efficiency. He also makes telling points on the use of desks, ergonomic
products and storage units. There's even some counseling on zoning
ordinances and tax deductions for a home office. Buy it
 Organizing Your Home Office for Success: Expert Strategies That Can Work for You
By Lisa A. Kanarek
Kanarek writes about how to work from home, how to make that arrangement
work, and how to have a life at the same time. She wants order, efficiency,
and a clutter-free environment -- but not just by lining up your pencils
from longest to shortest. Home offices, she says, have to be geared to the
personality and style of the individual. "Being a perfectionist," she
writes, "is counterproductive because obsessing over details takes time away
from working." This guide, the second edition of a book that has sold nearly
200,000 copies, includes material on streamlining paperwork and setting up a
personalized filing system. The author, head of a Dallas-based consulting
firm, reassures her readers: "No matter how bad you think your office is,
I've seen worse."
Buy it
 Organize Your Home Office! Simple Routines for Setting Up an Office at Home
By Ronni Eisenberg with Kate Kelly
According to the author, time management and organizational skills can be
learned; and for the IP working at home, she contends, these skills often
spell the difference between success and failure. One helpful discipline,
Eisenberg advises, is deciding ahead of time how long you will focus on the
project at hand without distractions. If you are interrupted too often, keep
charts and records on how they occurred, review them later, and figure out
how to prevent them in the future. For the author, taking control of her
work time means not getting up for a drink of water or to see what the fax
machine is sending unless the time has arrived that you chose for a break.
She even advises on an efficient way to procrastinate. It sounds obsessive,
but if you're currently inefficient and need to increase your productivity,
this guidebook is worth a try. Eisenberg has co-authored seven books about
organizational skills.
Buy it
 Practical Home Office Solutions
By Marilyn Zelinsky
This book provides serious advice on why you should not move a desk into a corner of the bedroom or just drop your papers on the dining-room table and call it your home office. A proponent of ergonomic furniture, correct work-surface placement, and healthy work habits, Zelinsky cites the importance of appearances as well as eyestrain, back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome as arguments for proper office planning, the theme of her book. She fleshes out the theme by consulting with design professionals and ergonomic specialists, and -- to check on the results -- with their customers. There are first-person stories of home-office problems -- dealing with poor telecommunications services in rural areas, setting up an office to deal with physical disabilities, and fitting a retail business and showroom into a home. Zelinsky also fills in the reader on such details as the price of furniture, with every alternative from unassembled plastic units to expensive "computer armoires" that look like antiques when closed. And yes, there is a chapter on feng shui. Buy it
 The Stay-At Home Mom's Guide to Making Money from Home: Choosing the
Business That's Right for You Using the Skills and Interests You Already
Have
By Liz Folger
Finding a niche is the main theme of this book, which also includes advice
on getting started, working with children running around, and staying
mentally and physically healthy. Profiles of 34 mothers who have home
businesses provide a diversity of viewpoints. The author, a syndicated
columnist, advocates a balance of life and work that will lead to success
both as mother and businesswoman. This new and revised second edition has
updated material about business on use of the Internet. There's also a
valuable chapter on how to avoid scams and come-ons.
Buy it
 The
Ultimate Home Office Survival Guide
By Sunny and Kim Baker
The IP who wants to know about setting up
the technology for a totally plugged-in home office, avoiding the pitfalls
of working at home, and establishing a office routine will find guidance
on these and related maters in this "full-time-office-consultant in
book-form," as the authors call it. Interviews with successful home-based
workers supplement the views of the authors on subjects including telecommuting,
franchising, and marketing on the Internet. The book comes with a CD-ROM
that provides office forms, charts, and checklists of resources. The
authors, a husband-and-wife team, have written 25 books on various business
and self-help subjects while working out of a home office. Buy it
 The
Work-At-Home Mom's Guide to Home Business
By Cheryl Demas
When do husbands truly start supporting a wife's home business? At
the moment, says the author of this chatty and amusing book, that the
wife starts to make money. She takes mothers through the home-office
way of life in a supportive guidebook that stresses relationships as
much as it does business. Demas knows what she's talking about: she's
the founder of WAHM.com,
where she advises moms who work at home while caring for their children.
Buy it
 Working
at Home while the Kids Are There, Too
By Loriann Hoff Oberlin
Oberlin, who has done it herself, advises on all the aspects on combining a
home business with raising children. She explores such topics as how to
satisfy and even involve the children in work, creating a childproof home
office, dealing with limited space and resources, fitting housework into the
day (or night), finding family health coverage, and the value of support
organizations. The author gives considerable attention to the problem of
frequent interruptions and conflicting priorities. Composed with humor and
small doses of encouragement, the book also includes expert advice from Fred
Rogers (of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood) and parenting author Kevin Leman. The
author of two other books, Oberlin aims this book at fathers as well as
mothers.
Buy it
Working From Home: Everything You Need to Know About Living and Working
Under the Same Roof
By Paul and Sarah Edwards
The fifth edition of this comprehensive work, another revision, and
expansion, is now 664 pages, and is beginning to look like an encyclopedia.
As the subtitle claims, it has information about virtually everything about
running a business from home -- from incorporation to one-minute
housecleaning while you're on hold. Although the Edwardses write in clear
and intelligent prose, their observations and guidance are decidedly
general; the book doesn't talk much about specific businesses. One
observation they offer is this: the most frequent bad habit of people who
work at home is that they spend too much time in front of the refrigerator.
Buy it
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