"Dividends may not be the only path for an individual investor's success," says Josh Peters, editor of the monthly Morningstar DividendInvestor newsletter, "but if there's a better one, I have yet to find it."

Many people believe that the key to success in the stock market is buying low and selling high. But how many investors have the time, talent, and luck to earn consistent returns this way? In The Ultimate Dividend Playbook: Income, Insight, and Independence for Today's Investor, Peters shows you why you don't have to try to beat the market and how you can use dividends to do the heavy lifting.

What exactly are dividends? Basically, a dividend is a transfer of assets, almost always cash, from a corporation to its shareholders. Not all corporations, even those with enormous profits and sizable cash reserves, are willing to pay them out to shareholders, but many corporations do. Some pay out only a little, while others--the kind of companies this book tells you about--pay out a lot, thereby setting the investor free from fickle market prices and unreliable capital gains.

This practical resource focuses on three essential elements: income, information, and independence. Most investors are familiar with income, but what you may not know is that dividends convey crucial information like a company's financial health and growth prospects, and that an investment strategy using dividends and dividends alone offers rewards not subject to the whims of Wall Street.

So let others chase capital gains, add up their statement values, and try to time the market. Dividends are the ultimate source of a stock's value for shareholders. The Ultimate Dividend Playbook will help you frame an approach--emotional as much as intellectual or financial--and assemble a portfolio of well-chosen, dividend-rich stocks that can deliver the income and growth you seek.