The Advantages and Disadvantages of Writing E-books for Profit #EBookPublishing

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Writing E-books for Profit #EBookPublishing

There is a multitude of online opportunities open to the wannabe e-entrepreneur. From building membership websites, selling products on e-bay, blogging, publishing your own e-books and affiliate marketing, it is all a question of choosing the right opportunity that matches your demeanor and interest.

Perhaps the most open of all the opportunities available to wannabe e-entrepreneurs is the world of e-book writing and publishing. If you are passionate about a particular topic and you can write about it with some authority, then writing and publishing e-books might just be for you.

Writing and publishing your own e-books has several advantages over other areas of Internet marketing. The most notable of these advantages is the control that you have over the revenues you receive on the sale of your e-book product. In most cases you will be able to keep 100% of the profit.

E-books also have a sense of immediacy about them, which makes them the ideal e-commerce product for Internet marketing. Buyers of e-books can download their chosen e-book within seconds of paying for it, thus satisfying their need for instant gratification.

The other advantage of e-book authorship is the relatively low cost of production and distribution. Once written, you can reproduce and sell unlimited copies of your e-book at no further cost to yourself or your business.

Moreover, unlike affiliate marketing, you do not need a blog or a website to host or promote your e-book product. You can simply upload your e-book to an e-book publishing platform/host.

E-book publishing platforms are the Internet's equivalent of a book store. Visitors can browse e-books much in the same way visitors browse books at the local bookstore.

E-book publishing platforms handle the payment transactions related to the sale of your e-book. When your total sales reach a certain threshold, say $100, you get paid. E-book publishing platforms normally charge a 20% handling fee for the use of their facilities.

Reliable statistics on how much e-book authors actually make from writing and publishing e-books are relatively hard to come by. But if you write your own e-book and sell one hundred copies of your work for $10 each, you do not need to be Einstein to know that $1000 is a sizable chunk of pocket change. Considering your e-book might have only taken you a day or perhaps even a week to write, $1000 is not a bad return on your effort.
The downside to writing e-books is the fact that the Internet is awash with e-book publications. These publications vary in size and quality but they are all, nonetheless, vying for the same dollars as your e-book. Your problem as an e-book author is one of differentiation. You need to differentiate your e-book offering from the rest of the market.

The key to differentiating your e-book from the rest of the market rests in your ability to identify a niche that is not saturated by competitors. So be prepared to do market research before you dive into your e-book writing project. Market research will save you time and energy and will help you to produce a better e-book product.

Marketing your e-book will be time consuming, but it need not be a difficult process. One of the most efficient and popular ways to market your e-book is through article marketing. If you can write an e-book, then you are certainly capable of writing articles related to your e-book's topic. With so many article directories on the Internet, you should have no problem in finding a home for your articles.

Article directories act like a repository where webmasters can view and select relevant material for their websites or e-newsletters. In return for using your article, the webmaster acknowledges the source of the article by providing the author with a small resource box. Ideally, as the author of the article, you can use this resource box to direct readers to your e-book product.

With a good article marketing plan, and some good quality articles, there is no reason why your e-book product should not get the attention it deserves.

The alternative to article marketing is to harness the power of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. But be warned, social networking can be a brittle affair so try to avoid the hard sell. Instead, you should focus on building up a positive relationship with potential customers. You can do this by creating a community around your chosen e-book topic or specialty. Most social networking sites provide subscribers with a useful set of tools for creating communities based on a common interest. Use them.

In the final analysis, whatever your e-book niche and marketing method, you should always bear in mind that it is the quality of your product that will deliver on going sales. There is no point in having good sales copy if your e-book does not live up to the hype. E-book buyers can be extremely fickle. If they feel short changed by your initial e-book offering, then they are unlikely to buy your next publication.

Source: Joseph Escott