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Writing and selling ebooks: create value to create a bestseller

June 11th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

Ebooks are easy to write, and to publish. An ebook with a hungry market will make money for you much more quickly and reliably than a traditional print book. But you must provide value.

You need to create an ebook which provides value

I’m a member of a number of Private Label Rights (PLR) sites, and some of these sites offer ebooks. The quality ranges from so-so to abysmal.

I’m also a copywriter, who writes sales letters for people who want to sell their ebooks. I refuse many more copywriting gigs than I accept, because most of the ebooks provide little, if any, value. This isn’t an ethical judgment - it’s completely practical: if an ebook provides no value, it’s impossible to write a good sales letter for the ebook. You can’t write about non-existent benefits.

The over-heated market for ebooks leads to a proliferation of junk

Because ebooks can make so much money, it leads some publishers to think that they can call any collection of 10,000 words an ebook and be done with it.

Yes, they can, but not only won’t they make sales, but people who’ve been burned buying junk won’t be rushing to buy ebooks in the future.

How do you provide value? You provide information people can use. That’s all. It’s not complicated.

Ask yourself WHY people buy an ebook on a topic, and then provide the information they want. Research both print and ebooks currently on the market. If there are many other books on the topic, work out what information isn’t covered, and use that as the basis of your ebook. Don’t hire a writer to do a “rewrite” of what’s currently available.

Provide value. If you do that,  you’ll sell thousands of copies of your ebook, and you’ll have a head start on selling ebooks in the future, because people who are satisfied with the information you provide will buy from you again.

Can you sell an ebook first, and then sell to a traditional publisher?

May 24th, 2007    Subscribe To Our Feed

I received this interesting question today: “Can I sell it as an ebook first?” from a writer who’s in the middle of writing a book.

She’s been trying to interest an agent in the project, without success, so far. She’s also sent out a number of queries to publishers, and hasn’t received any responses at all.

It’s a hard question to answer, because it depends on how proactive this writer wants to be, and how much she wants the cachet of being published by a “real” publisher.

My inclination would be to write it and sell it as an ebook, and if a publisher’s interested, they can get in touch. Many writers self-publish, and are then made the proverbial offer they can’t refuse by a publishing house.

There are also many writers who’ve had the traditional publishing experience, and would never go that route again. They know what’s involved, and once bitten, etc.

Here’s what I suggested to the writer:

* Sell several chapters as an ebook, so she can get some numbers and some reader reaction;

* Develop a blog, on which she discusses her book’s topics, so she can build a platform and a community.

Once she’s done this, she’s going to be in a much more powerful position. She’ll have more information, and will have build an audience as well. Whether or not a publisher comes calling won’t matter at that stage, because new doors will open for her.

Copyright © 2007 Top Ebook Writer

Credits: Angela Booth's Writing Blog | Fab Freelance Writing Blog | Fab Web Writer Blog | Matteo Turchetto | Andreas Viklund