Do you or have you sold e-books?

[Frimley111R]

I've written a lot of marketing content for various industries which I could collate into a short book for new market entrants and smaller existing companies in these sectors. I have enough skill and experience writing suitable content to create high enough quality e-books and I can position the books well enough, I believe, to differentiate them from other similar publications, but I have never marketed an e-book before.

My belief is that PPC will not be cost effective (although I need to research this) and I will probably need to list them on existing e-book publisher websites. However, I thought I'd ask on here to see if anyone has any experience of selling e-books.

 

[eesltd]

Hello m8

Since I start to learn SEO in 2003, ebooks was and still are my main source of income. Im selling ebooks on polish market through Google.pl

I think that this is the best way to monetize your traffic, because what is most important this type of business is 100% automated and you can start with few pounds in your pockets.

E-books can be send to your customer by php script (hands free), instead of material things that need to sent via courier.

This is the most comfortable business I've ever driven.

But the magic begins when you need to drive traffic to your target page.

In many cases PPC will fail, but if You will find market with a wide range of customers, PPC can be very profitable.

I just delivered my own way to get traffic from Google to my ebook sales pages and I get thousands of sales every day in polish market.

My method can be copied on any other market like: google.co.uk, *.de, *.fr, *.it, *.es, *.pt... etc etc...

But language barier seems to be the biggest obstacle for me.

Please contact me via PM, it seems that we need each other to do good business.

 

[RealEcon]

I tried my hand at selling short stories on Amazon for the last year or so. You have to be publishing a book quite often to keep rankings and buzz within Amazon, is what I found to be key. But recently Amazon change their borrowing program rules, where they dont pay authors per book borrowed but instead for each page read.

Since I have short stories instead of long novels, my pages read are never a lot. And ebook sales vs borrows are going down, as more people are going towards the borrowing program.

There are still other channels to sell through (like Barns & Nobel's) but Amazon was where the good money used to be for short stories.

 

[garyk]

Yes ppc probably won't be effective as the cpc is too high for what is essentially a low ticket item. I get a few sales per month on my book but nothing amazing, my wife does better with hers but then its got a wider appeal I guess.

You might be as well to put together a site and write some content, get some traffic to it and sell it as a higher priced item. The problem with kindle is the same as all platforms. Once you lower the barrier to entry the cost comes down and people expect stuff for free or next to nothing. Same thing has happened on the app stores.

It might be better to re-purpose as either a podcast or turn into videos and do as an online course using a platform like Udemy (which is what I do).

By the way @Frimley111R have you got a 111R? I've got an S1 Elise.

 

[Deleted member 252819]

I've written a lot of marketing content for various industries which I could collate into a short book for new market entrants and smaller existing companies in these sectors. I have enough skill and experience writing suitable content to create high enough quality e-books and I can position the books well enough, I believe, to differentiate them from other similar publications, but I have never marketed an e-book before.

I'm thinking of writing something similar, but I'm not sure there's enough earning potential. I've written another book (paperback/Kindle) which is marketed and sold by a proper publisher, and the income from that is very modest. I don't see how I could gain any traction at all without that support. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic.

 

[Frimley111R]

Yes ppc probably won't be effective as the cpc is too high for what is essentially a low ticket item. I get a few sales per month on my book but nothing amazing, my wife does better with hers but then its got a wider appeal I guess.

You might be as well to put together a site and write some content, get some traffic to it and sell it as a higher priced item. The problem with kindle is the same as all platforms. Once you lower the barrier to entry the cost comes down and people expect stuff for free or next to nothing. Same thing has happened on the app stores.

It might be better to re-purpose as either a podcast or turn into videos and do as an online course using a platform like Udemy (which is what I do).

By the way @Frimley111R have you got a 111R? I've got an S1 Elise.

Thanks, makes sense, problem is that I want to keep everything concise and simple and building a big site will do the opposite of what I want to achieve. I want to write books that don't use 1000 words where 100 will do. These put people off. I am going along the KISS principle.

(Yes, had a 111R for 7 years, then Evora S, now RS265, back to Lotus in a couple of years).

 

[Deleted member 252819]

Maybe a single-page site plus Amazon Kindle account is the best outlet for it? I'd be interested to follow your progress.

 

[Frimley111R]

Maybe but then it needs some way to drive traffic to it cost effectively.

 

[garyk]

Thanks, makes sense, problem is that I want to keep everything concise and simple and building a big site will do the opposite of what I want to achieve. I want to write books that don't use 1000 words where 100 will do. These put people off. I am going along the KISS principle.

No, I didn't mean a big website, in fact one of those whizzy single page templates would probably do.

(Yes, had a 111R for 7 years, then Evora S, now RS265, back to Lotus in a couple of years).

Thought I knew cars but had to look up what an RS265 was!!!

 

[Frimley111R]

Car fail Lol!

So, I could write a book, put together a small site but then need to drive traffic to it...

 

[garyk]

I would say at least get the book written and then you can look at whats viable. Kindle can be viable if you have more than 1 book, in fact if you have enough content that might be the way to go a series of smaller books priced quite modestly.

The only issue is that the quality of many cheaper ebooks is poor. Unfortunately perpetuated by those who make money selling courses on 'how to make money with Kindle books' and then suggest that you can take 1000 words and turn it into an ebook (I kid you not).

Get first one done, give away a few free copies and ask for reviews, I would happily read and review for you.

 

[Ashley Wright]

Facebook Ads we have seen in the past are the best way to shift ebooks, even try offering a few pages free via an article/blog post and then remarket to those who take you up on your offer

 

[Whitefish Marketing]

We have worked with an E-book publisher for a number of years. It is difficult to drive traffic to buy your site at a cost effective rate, as I'm sure the profit margins on E-books will be low. PPC is likely to be out of the running, but consider Facebook PPC, guerilla social media marketing, SEO, and some traditional PR.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Could you do it as a App for both Apple and Android computers, probably far more use that a ebook

 

[Frimley111R]

How many words should my book be roughly?

 

[Deleted member 252819]

I've written them from 3,000 words up for marketing purposes.
Longer books over 5,000 words tend to be more effective (providing you aren't padding it out, obviously).