Ebooks for Profit and Publicity

By Cameron Gikandi
Posted Tuesday, January 4, 2005

How would you like to find a great and easy way to get a lot of free publicity for your online business and also get a second stream of income?

Whether you wish to cost-effectively promote your current business or web site, or you wish to get a new significant income stream, publishing yourself is an excellent idea that deserves your serious consideration. Why? Because book publishing is a $25 billion industry in the U.S. alone, it touches millions of lives, it is very viral, it powers the information economy, it feeds the need to know things (a need that people will always have), and you can get into it right now very easily both for profit and promotional purposes. It is an industry that is growing tremendously as people feel the need to know more and more. The publishing industry is almost five times larger than Hollywood’s movie industry. You can get in on it right now, in a few minutes, and start using it to cost-effectively promote your business or have a new income stream.

Anyone can be an author, especially when it comes to nonfiction books and ebooks. Everybody has at least one book in them. You are a unique person, and that makes you posses a unique collection of knowledge, experiences and perspectives that thousands of people out there would wish to hear about. Perhaps you know how to make great candles at home. Or you may know how to market certain products well. Or you may be a great listener. Or you may have some great skills when it comes to looking after pets. Perhaps you know how to save and invest money very well. Or you notice that your friends love to listen to you when you talk sports because of all that you know. These and many other skills are in high demand and desired by certain people all over the world. You do have a book inside you. Everyone does. And with today’s electronic publishing and marketing options, you can produce it for almost no money and market it for very little and still profit very well.

Even if you do not wish to make money in publishing, ebooks and books are excellent ways to promote your regular business, especially online businesses. Ebooks especially are fantastic at achieving this. This is because the top three activities performed online are downloading, searching for information and emailing, and ebooks are downloadable information products that can be emailed. They are highly viral, getting passed on from one person to another if they contain useful information. Therefore, whatever business you may be in, by writing a short ebook with useful information related to your industry you establish yourself as a credible authority, get the trust of your customers, get yourself considered as a point of reference, and best of all you get a useful product that you can give away free at no cost to you and have people pass it on to each other thus giving you free promotion. An informative, small ebook can end up being passed on to thousands of potential customers! at no cost to you. Of course, your free ebooks would have to contain genuinely useful information that is somehow related to your products and services that you do sell. They would also contain references to your products and ordering information. Your ebooks would become your free sales reps, duplicated and passed on from customer to customer even while you sleep.

You can easily learn how to write ebooks by looking at the various web sites such as Dan Poynter’s Para Publishing web site and many others. (See (http://www.imagesofone.com/articles/reviews.asp) for over 100 URLs to useful sites regarding all aspects of ebook and book writing and promotion). Writing is easy for non-fiction works. Just write in a natural conversational way. Write the way you talk to people. Next, get it in the right format. If you are going to have it printed, you may wish to consider making it easy for yourself by using the services of iUniverse or Xlibris. These two companies will get your book in print for as little as $99 as a print-on-demand title and get it available on Amazon.com and 200 other online bookshops. Your book will also be available for order from any bookstore in North America. If you are creating an ebook, then the two most popular formats to make it in are Adobe Acrobat PDF and Microsoft Reader. PDF files can be read by over 30 million Acrob! at users (and new users can download the reader free). Microsoft Reader is also free and, as a bonus, can read the files even on Pocket PC computers. You can find a free PDF writer software package. The Microsoft Reader creator is free.

Writing is just 10% of the job involved. Most of the work, the 90%, comes in when it comes to getting people to know about your ebook. Like any other business, marketing is 90% of the job. Fortunately, it is extremely easy and affordable to market books and ebooks if you know exactly what to do.

Only a small percentage of all books published are sold in book shops! Yes, the vast majority of books and ebooks are sold outside of bookshops! This is probably the most surprising thing to new authors. So where are they sold? Well, they are sold in dozens of places, including:

Online
Book clubs
Corporations
Book clubs
Associations and foundations
Retail outlets
Specialty shops
Direct mail
Catalogs
Libraries
In cross-promotions
In the incentives marketplace
Packaged together with complimentary products
And dozens of other places!

However, getting reviews by the top reviewers and the press is the single most cost effective and powerful way of getting sales for your books and ebooks. First of all, the reviews will get you publicity and drive retail and wholesale sales your way. Also, when you do get the reviews, quote those reviews on your book cover, your web site, your press releases, your sales materials, when you ask for more reviews, and whenever you tell people about your book orally or in print. Reviews greatly increase your book sales by increasing the confidence people have in your book. People are often skeptical and will not trust you straight away until they see that many people already do trust you and your work. Reviews in the press also get you plenty of publicity. And finally, most wholesalers and libraries depend on reviews to figure out what books they shall buy. So use reviews and testimonials extensively!

But don’t stop there. There are hundreds of places and ways you can sell your book. For many books, bookstores only account for less than 10% of their sales. Yes, even best-sellers! Publishing a book truly makes you into a marketing expert because you simply have to sell, sell, sell. But worry not, for it is easy. Be willing to learn from people who know how to sell books and you will find it easy. Fortunately, there is plenty of material out there that shows you exactly how to sell books. Get into it! it could be the best thing you have done for yourself recently!

About the Author
David Cameron Gikandi CEO ImagesOfOne.com and author of Over 135 Proven Ways to Dramatically and Successfully Sell Your Books and eBooks Online and Offline. (http://www.ImagesOfOne.com).