What you NEED to know about eBook publishing

By Chris Dorning
Posted Tuesday, October 5, 2004

When you produce or compile your own ebooks, it is important to remember that graphical representation is almost as important as actual content and sometimes more important. When somebody wants to buy your product they don't have the luxury of reading you eBook to access how good it is, so they have to rate it based on something else. This is more often than not based upon Graphical Representation. By that I mean the graphic that will act as presentation for your product.

FACT: No one will buy a product they perceive to be of low value, and the way people determine the value of a product on the Internet is through association. Potential customers associate the quality of your graphic with the quality of your product. There are fantastic deals to be found online, including YOUR product, but if you're trying to sell something, you have an additional challenge of giving your product a REAL, IMPRESSIVE, and PROFESSIONAL appearance.

You must do this so that people know your product is real and of good quality. Would you pay good money for a product that has a poor quality graphic? No. because you immediately associate the poor quality graphic with a poor quality product. Even if your product is virtual, your product has to include a graphical representation that looks like something customers want to buy.

And besideslet's face itthere are THOUSANDS of similar products on the NET, all at shoppers' fingertips. So not only do you need a pictorial representation of a quality product, but you have to make that graphic stand out above the others. The importance of having your own individual graphic different from all others cannot be overemphasised.

By placing your URL on the cover of your graphic, as an example lets look at one of my own branded products "eBook Essentials" click here to see.

By placing my URL own my product image I differentiated it from all the similar yet inferior products on the net. When a potential customer sees the graphic they have no doubt that the product belongs to me and gives the impression that it is only available at my site. This makes the perceived value rise, since all that is rare is valued. There are a few ways to Create top quality graphics for your eBooks or digital products. You could, for instance, pay a graphic designer to design your graphic for you, this would involve finding a good graphic designer, informing retaining their services then being in constant contact with them for input reasons. Finally receiving your graphic 1-3 weeks after ordering it.

The cost these days to hire a graphic designer is anything between $50-$500 per graphic. This is a viable option, as a real professional graphic designer will usually deliver a magnificent graphic for you and your product. The only problems are of course the need for constant feed back with the designer, the cost and waiting at least a week to be able to launch your product with the image.

The alternative to hiring a graphic designer is to purchase a 3D cover-designing program. Ironically this is the same software that the graphic designers use to design their clients graphics. What software like this does is give the user total control over the image in both 2Dimensions and 3Dimensions. In 3D mode, you will have the freedom to specify various options including cover dimensions, shadow direction and intensity, lighting direction and intensity, camera angle, floor reflection, anti-aliasing level and more.

You will be able to edit each cover face individually; front, spine and top, using various tools built into the 2D graphic editor, and apply advanced graphic filters to your covers to produce interesting effects. You have 9 cover types to choose from: Two-sided box, Three-sided box, Book cover Electronic magazine, CD Cover, Special report, Thin book, Wide box, Books-in-a-box. Really good software like this usually sells for $100-$197.

I have used many different 3D cover-designing programs and the best one I have ever used is Virtual Cover Creator 2.1. It is the most feature program out there and even comes with 100 templates. If you go to (http://www.smallbizadvisors.net/vcc.htm) you will be able to see what VCC is capable of.

About the Author
Article by Chris Dorning Chris is the webmaster of (http://www.smallbizadvisors.net). Visit his site for free articles and tutorials focusing on Internet marketing and website development issues. (http://www.smallbizadvisors.net)