Do you or have you sold e-books?
Discussion
I've written a lot of marketing content for various industries which I could collate into a short book for new market entrants and smaller existing companies in these sectors. I have enough skill and experience writing suitable content to create high enough quality e-books and I can position the books well enough, I believe, to differentiate them from other similar publications, but I have never marketed an e-book before.
My belief is that PPC will not be cost effective (although I need to research this) and I will probably need to list them on existing e-book publisher websites. However, I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any experience of selling e-books.
My belief is that PPC will not be cost effective (although I need to research this) and I will probably need to list them on existing e-book publisher websites. However, I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any experience of selling e-books.
Maybe not the answer you're looking for, but I've always been a big believer in giving the information away for free.
In this case I'd create a blog, either your own or on a site like Medium. If you know your stuff and can write then the blog should become quite popular, you'll become known as a leader in your chosen field of expertise, gain a good reputation and get work off the back of it.
If the blog doesn't take off, then you either can't write, or you don't know what you think you know, and writing an e-book and spending time and money on marketing would have been a waste of time anyway.
In this case I'd create a blog, either your own or on a site like Medium. If you know your stuff and can write then the blog should become quite popular, you'll become known as a leader in your chosen field of expertise, gain a good reputation and get work off the back of it.
If the blog doesn't take off, then you either can't write, or you don't know what you think you know, and writing an e-book and spending time and money on marketing would have been a waste of time anyway.
I disagree (and cant' help thinking of a t-shirt I once saw with the wording 'Nobody reads your blog' 
)
My e-book is meant to be concise, offering all the information in one place, quickly and easily. My target market aren't the type of people to follow blogs. Also, there's a ton of free information on everything on the web if you can be bothered to look for it and often the perception that if it's free it's crap. I bought and read a book on a niche sector of marketing recently. The information was probably all attainable on the web but I don't have the time to search for it all and then piece it all together.
) My e-book is meant to be concise, offering all the information in one place, quickly and easily. My target market aren't the type of people to follow blogs. Also, there's a ton of free information on everything on the web if you can be bothered to look for it and often the perception that if it's free it's crap. I bought and read a book on a niche sector of marketing recently. The information was probably all attainable on the web but I don't have the time to search for it all and then piece it all together.
I'm pretty sure I've seen you mentioned Lean Startup before, so I think you know the concept.
It wouldn't be too hard to set up a blog to be similar to an e-book. In fact one of the best blogs I've read has sidebar 'Reading Lists' set up so you can read it in a similar fashion to an e-book.
You could even present the articles as excerpts from your up-coming new book, and have an email signup for people who are interested. Then set a criteria that if 10 in 100, for example, readers don't give you their email address, that there isn't enough interest for you to bother about writing the book.
FWIW, Joel created quite a following for that blog, so much so he's published four books off the back of it, containing much of the information you can read for free on his blog, just collated in a nice, easy-to-read package.
It wouldn't be too hard to set up a blog to be similar to an e-book. In fact one of the best blogs I've read has sidebar 'Reading Lists' set up so you can read it in a similar fashion to an e-book.
You could even present the articles as excerpts from your up-coming new book, and have an email signup for people who are interested. Then set a criteria that if 10 in 100, for example, readers don't give you their email address, that there isn't enough interest for you to bother about writing the book.
FWIW, Joel created quite a following for that blog, so much so he's published four books off the back of it, containing much of the information you can read for free on his blog, just collated in a nice, easy-to-read package.
Rules on ebooks mean that for EU customers you have to charge the VAT applicable in the country of the buyer (technically in the country the buyer is in when they buy the book).
The easiest way to handle it is to use a seller that will take care of everything and just pay you your commission, for example Kindle Direct Publishing
The easiest way to handle it is to use a seller that will take care of everything and just pay you your commission, for example Kindle Direct Publishing
jammy_basturd said:
FWIW, Joel created quite a following for that blog, so much so he's published four books off the back of it, containing much of the information you can read for free on his blog, just collated in a nice, easy-to-read package.
I think this is quite common among bloggers - people will pay for the convenience of having it available all the time, and to be sure it never disappears like a website can.Frimley111R said:
I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any experience of selling e-books.
I'm just about to publish two e-books - one's a student's study guide for the Scottish English Literature exam at Nat 5 level, the other's a guide to playing a rather obscure musical instrument...I'm using Kindle Direct Publishing and have created separate video and audio channels on YouTube and SoundCloud to handle the linked multimedia content.
Creating the content is straightforward, it's the marketing and promotion that's the challenge! Luckily, we're targeting very niche markets, so it'll be interesting to see what impact our publications have.
mellowman said:
Frimley111R said:
I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any experience of selling e-books.
I'm just about to publish two e-books - one's a student's study guide for the Scottish English Literature exam at Nat 5 level, the other's a guide to playing a rather obscure musical instrument...I'm using Kindle Direct Publishing and have created separate video and audio channels on YouTube and SoundCloud to handle the linked multimedia content.
Creating the content is straightforward, it's the marketing and promotion that's the challenge! Luckily, we're targeting very niche markets, so it'll be interesting to see what impact our publications have.
jammy_basturd said:
Do you mind me asking how much time you've spent putting the e-books together so far? And whether you've done any test marketing or anything to gauge interest?
For the study guide I was lucky in that the author correctly formatted the Word document for easy translation, after getting guidelines from me. I then used Amazon's tools and software to prepare the final document. Because of the cost per MB of embedding multimedia files we decided to create external channels for this content. This has taken much of the time and work so far (probably around 40 hours so far), but we felt it necessary to give added value and mark out our e-books as being different from the competition. I am prepared to put in whatever time it takes as part of the learning process - there will be a time when e-books are ready for the primetime and, just like digital music downloads, they'll become the norm. The market for a national English exam study guide is much larger than the musical instrument tutor book, but we are counting on the specialist press and reviews for much of the publicity. We have existing websites to further market and promote the books. We've canvassed colleagues, friends and associates, but nothing formal - just a gut feeling having been involved in each of the target areas for many years.
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