Is Publishing an eBook in Your Future?
Have you ever considered publishing your own eBook? Do you wonder how publishing eBooks could help you? Do you have experiences that could teach others?
If you own either a ‘bricks and mortar’ or an ‘online’ business, write a blog, or just want to tell ‘your story’, eBook publishing might be for you. Do others consider you to be an ‘expert’? You might want to use that expertise as the framework for your own eBook to spread your knowledge.
eBook Publishing Builds Your Credibility
Publishing eBooks is a huge step forward in building your personal reputation and your Brand’s as well. If you’re just beginning to build your brand, publishing eBooks could cement your credibility as an expert in your field.
Marketers, Bloggers, and business owners should care about what’s happening in ebook publishing. Keep reading and you’ll learn how ebooks can increase your credibility and help you close business deals.
The really good news is that it’s never been easier to publish a book. Just sit down with a pad and think about topics that you could write about. Your goal needs to be to genuinely help people.
How can “YOU” best help people? The answer is that people are all hungry for information. For you to write successful eBooks, you need to provide people with enough information that they will want to give you their business.
Publishing an eBook can help you do that. You can’t find a better business card to give people than an eBook that helps them solve a problem that they have. eBook publishing is a game-changer.
The Benefits of Publishing an eBook
Years ago, the only people who could publish content online were those who could write HTML. Then robust and easy to use Content Management Systems like WordPress were developed. Today publishing your online your content is easy and anyone can put their thoughts and expertise out there for the world to see.
If you want to publish a book today, you don’t need to have a publisher and you don’t need to print books that sit in a warehouse. Traditional publishers are in the business of paper, however the world is rapidly becoming digital. We haven’t seen innovation evolve so quickly since Gutenberg invented the printing press.
Of course you can still do print and print-on-demand. But why print thousands of books to sit in a warehouse, when publishing and selling an eBook is so much easier? The world has embraced digital over print books. According to the New York Times, on Amazon digital books are outselling print books.
eBooks can be Lead Generating Machines
You can use your eBook to boost your business. Building Landing Pages can be a great lead-generation tool, using them as platforms offering your eBook for free in exchange for someone’s email address helps build your opt-in email list.
You can also include strong calls to action in your books. This tactic leverages your offering free eBooks to build your email list, reaping immediate rewards from recipients making positive choices.
When someone reads your book and reaches out to you, they are “warm leads” responding positively to what you have written. They are also more likely to do business with you.
Another benefit is that after reading your book, people feel like they know you. This makes it easier for you to connect with them.
Where Consumers Find eBooks
Today eBooks are available on Amazon and other websites like Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and Apple. There is also a growing number of websites that recommend their favorite Kindle books. If you already like an eBook, you can recommend it or loan it to someone through your Kindle device.
Amazon has the Kindle Direct Publishing Select Program which is a great way to publish your eBook. Using this program, authors give Amazon a 90-day exclusive right to sell their eBook. In return, Amazon allows you to give your eBook away for free for up to 5 days during this 90-day period.
If you want to discover the top 100 paid or top 100 free Best Sellers on Amazon to give you a picture of the diverse types of books published.
How eBook Pricing Benefits Authors
You may be able to earn money with your book, depending on how you publish it. There are many options for revenue and pricing in different publishing methods available.
With a traditional print book publisher like Wiley, you’d be paid 15% royalties on your books wholesale prices. If published traditionally, if your book is sold for a retail price of $20, you’ll only earn $1.35 per book. This amount would vary, depending on the quantity of books you sell.
Another consideration is the publishing “earn out agreement“: often under these agreements if your publisher prints 10,000 copies of your book, you won’t earn any royalty until they have sold all 10,000 copies. Although sometimes you can get a signing bonus.
However with eBooks, the advantage of a digital book on Amazon is you can upload the eBook you wrote last night and set the price you want.
Currently Amazon says if you choose to price your eBook between $2.99 and $9.99, you’ll get 70% of revenue generated. Pricing your eBook outside of this price range, between $0.99 and $2.99 and more than $9.99, you’ll only get 35%.
This pricing structure simply reflects Amazon’s desire to set the market on eBook prices and Amazon knows what sells at what price point. The opportunity to earn revenue is actually much greater with a digital book compared to a print book.
What eBook Authors Need to Keep in Mind
You’ll find out how long your book should be and why. Jim says a book can be anything from 1,000 words to 100,000 words. You could write a book of 5,000 words, upload it and sell it if you want.
A story and information are not about length. Jim has a book on Amazon that is a short story of 8,500 words. He priced it at a couple of dollars and sells around 40-50 copies a week or so. The length is not huge, but it’s a great story.
Amazon has a Look Inside feature that allows people to read the first 10% of a book, which gives them a chance to try before they buy. This is why it’s good to put some of your best content at the beginning of the book.
Amazon’s Look Inside feature is a great way for people to read 10% of your book before they decide to buy it.
Listen to the show to find out why it’s important to include some of your best content in the very beginning of your book.
Many blog owners have the potential to go from blog to book.
Listen to the show to find out how you can have both a blog and a book.
How to Launch and Market Your eBooks
Jim explains the importance of marketing your eBook before the product is finished. Book marketing always starts at the conception of the book. The day you have the idea for the book is the day you start marketing it.
You can use Facebook and Twitter to share your book idea with friends, and from this you can get some great feedback regarding title, and so forth. Once you have a cover made for the book, you can show it to your audience on Facebook, Twitter and your LinkedIn groups and get their input.
This way you can build a warm list of people who will potentially buy your book once it’s published.
Engage your community, having them involved in the creation of your book.
My Top eBook Publishing Tip
Everyone out there who is thinking of writing a book is to believe that you can do it. Believe you can do it and start writing.
Begin by opening a Word document, Google doc or download Scrivener and start writing. The time spent creating content and putting it into book format is going to be one of the greatest things you’ll ever do.
You have to get past the fear. The format is not difficult and you can even upload a Word document to Amazon.
The feeling you’ll have when you see your book on Amazon, or show it to a potential client or employer, is amazing.
My Discovery of the Week
Clicktotweet gives you an easy tool to pre-craft a tweet. You simply write a message in a box and then click the “Generate” button to create a custom link.
When you share this link and someone clicks on it, it will show your message in their Twitter status box and all they have to do is click to tweet your message.
Use clicktotweet to generate a custom link for sharing on Twitter.
