Anybody created an E-Book?

Discussion in 'The Library' started by thinktom, Aug 14, 2008.

  1. thinktom

    thinktom New Member

    I was wondering if anyone here has created an e-book? How was the experience and has it been profitable?

    Thanks.

    TT:)
     
  2. angelbabee1971

    angelbabee1971 New Member

    i am now watching this thread carefully as i am looking to create several of them ... reasonably soon :) :wave:

    thanks for asking the question TT! :thumb:
     
  3. Auswithspirit

    Auswithspirit FIREWALKER

    I have created a umm book of images i have borrowed of the net i take out to look at from time to time is this the same???
    :lildevil::lildevil::lildevil:
     
  4. Eisho

    Eisho New Member

    I have created an e-book, partly as an experiment to just learn how to do it, but also to give it away as a free gift to people subscribing to my site newsletter. It was fairly easy to create it, that was no problem really.

    As far as selling is concerned, based on my experiences with print publishing, frankly you will need to be an extraordinarily talented writer or otherwise have a very good idea that can make others rich if you want to make money. The other way to approach it is in support of some other service. A book carries with it kudos that a YouTube video does not. Even if you don't make money from the book, you can use it to promote your service, which is where the real money is.

    To give you some perspective, I am reading The God Code by Gregg Braden (complete crap - don't waste your time) and The Labyrinthe by Kate Mosse (good story). Next week I'll be finishing Getting Things Done and starting Soul Discovery (a book I got for free to review). So any e-book that I pay for (or even get for free) is competing for my time against those titles. I might read something instead of Braden's book...

    Cheers,

    Eisho
     
  5. Spider

    Spider Strictly business

    Creating an e-book is nothing - just write some stuff and convert it to .pdf with a pdf printer. It's getting people to download it that takes some doing! That's the bit I haven't figured out.
     
  6. thinktom

    thinktom New Member

    I'll try to focus my question a little better. I've got the book. It's selling pretty good, but now we are advertising our website more and I need to have an e-book.

    I can find LOTS of stuff on how to convert but I was wondering how it gets posted to a site, Paypal/Visa info., stuff like that. Do certain companies host them for you because I can't find any. Lulu.com was a bit too confusing.

    Sorry Spider, I guess I do ask too many questions perhaps. I AM willing to pay for these services, however.:D
     
  7. meljoshua

    meljoshua New Member

    Before you start to sell anything on the Internet, you need to upload the ebook to your website. Once this is done, you will need a paypal account to receive payment.

    If you have paypal account, just login and go to "Merchant Tools". In there you can follow the simple guide on generating a HTML code for a "Buy Now Button". In the steps, you will specify the url which points to your uploaded ebook in your website.

    Once this code is generated, all you have to do is place it in your sales page and you have a e-commerce page ready to collect money ! :)

    I hope I have answered your question.
     
  8. ShawnLim

    ShawnLim New Member

    I have my own eBook as well. And I'm giving it away for free for the readers
    in my blog.

    http://www.TheMillionaireSecrets.net

    It really help to inspire and motivate my readers..
     
  9. Jayhop

    Jayhop New Member

  10. Corinne Friesen

    Corinne Friesen New Member

    For some reason, I've always found my printed book sales far outstrip my ebook sales. I have had both posted in all my marketing efforts and people just gravitate toward the printed one. *shrug* So now I mostly focus on the printed ones.

    As usual, marketing is the big decider in any case. I've found I needed to market the e-books in all the same places as the printed books, and then some more places besides. There are a bunch of sites that get lots of traffic from e-book seekers, like amazon and google and lulu.com. These can be good places to flog it - as well as your own site.

    I suspect that my e-books aren't selling as well as my printed books because:

    1. My books are reference and instructional.
    2. People love to hold a book in their hands and stick in on a shelf where they can see it every day. (Just like it's great to have the mp3 to an album but you still want to buy the CD.)
    3. E-book people may well be bargain seekers and there's heavy competition when you get down to the item being a commodity market instead of a quality product market.
    4. Once you're into ebooks, you're competing with iPhone etc for cheap downloads. People are going to shop first at those massive stores where they know they'll get the $1 deals and they'll shop there first because they have to justify buying their iPhone somehow!
    5. If you discover the secret to getting your stuff accepted onto iPhone, iBook, let me know. There are so many middle men involved, I've yet to get anywhere with that effort.
     
  11. HAGITLOVE

    HAGITLOVE New Member

    I'm about to promote two ebooks on my new website.

    I know they will do good and they will promote my website, lovehappyliving.com (comming soon).

    Good luck

    hagitlove:)
     
  12. Marcus C. S. Tan

    Marcus C. S. Tan New Member

    PLR ebooks

    Have you guys heard of public domain or Private Label Rights (PLR) ebooks?
    You have the rights to the content/articles, you just have to change the words a little, add a bit here and there, package it up with a good ebook cover and viola!
    Your ebook to giveaway or sell.
    What's your opinion on this?
     
  13. Corinne Friesen

    Corinne Friesen New Member

    I think something that makes things very successful is if they have:
    1. something highly unique to offer
    2. excellence
    In otherwords - to use the catch phrase of the day - if your product is something of value to the world.

    By repackaging something that other people can also repackage, and which is something that's already been out there, you're not likely to hit the first of those two points. That puts you into the commodity market rather than the quality market. Commodity markets are fast paced races for the money. They're highly competative on pricing, to the point where the product gets priced down to rock bottom and it's all about how much you can move before the product is no longer interesting to the public.

    I don't recommend it unless you already have deep pockets and the whole distribution and marketing well in place.
     
  14. Stoic_Jason

    Stoic_Jason Great Member

    I would say that what makes many things highly successful (in terms of sales) is not that they are unique or that they are very good. More important is the extent to which they satisfy a want, and are known to people who have that want. FAR more productive to identify and cater to a market than to create a good and then look for a market.

    Build a better mousetrap sounds like great conventional wisdom, but is the most innovative and excellent mousetrap out there the most profitable? I betcha it's not even close.
     
  15. Marcus C. S. Tan

    Marcus C. S. Tan New Member

    MMR

    Well said too.

    Sometimes I personally feel that a product with Master Resale Rights (MMR) depreciates the value of the product too.
    It is not as unique as copyrighting the product.
     
  16. Corinne Friesen

    Corinne Friesen New Member

    Well, yes, I agree. As far as the discussion on PLR books goes, though, many of them have identified and do cater to an existing market but then are tripped up by the points I mentioned in my post.
     
  17. Tahani Alhajri

    Tahani Alhajri New Member


    I am still trying to learn the correct steps to creat E-Book , I want to do PDF E-Book before I print my own book to the stores.

    I am working in my Arabic version , and will be working in the English version after that ..

    I'll follow-up responses on this subject so the expertise of members.


    :Garfield:
     
  18. successvibe

    successvibe Administrator Staff Member

    Once you have an e-book it might be worth thinking about turning it into an iphone app aswell This will help with marketing it and you could either just give away a few chapters to get people interested and get them to your site or sell the whole thing as an app.

    Although people might not see the value in iphone apps yet, I believe in the near future they will be a used as a valuable marketing tool.

    PM me if you want anymore info on them or if you would like one making.
     
  19. SueB

    SueB New Member

    Hey ThinkTom (fellow Vancouverite)...

    I've been selling a 'How To" ebook I wrote online for about 9 years now. I've gone through 3 shopping carts (2 closed shop and 1 had glitches) and now I use e-junkie for sales. It uses Paypal as the processor, which allows people to pay with credit cards or e-checks.

    One of their packages allows for your own thank you page (which I use to have purchasers submit their name and email to sign-up for my follow-up messages via Aweber) and I can have affiliates. (They had a 50% off special if you were a paypal user and signed up before Oct 30/10. I'm paying $9/mth for the service. It would be way cheaper if I didn't want my own thank you page and instead opted for the ebook to be downloaded from their site.)

    I'm curious - if you have a book that is selling pretty good, why do you need an ebook version? Will those who buy the book get the ebook version while they wait?

    I use docupub.com to convert my word doc to pdf. I host the ebook (in pdf) and bonuses on a password-protected page on my site. You can, as per the above paragraph, have a service such as e-junkie host and deliver the ebook to purchasers.

    I recall seeing an email from Paypal about their new shopping cart but I haven't looked into their features.

    You could just have people pay via Paypal and then set the thank you page to the download page on your site. The only thing is - if someone doesn't sign into their account to pay (which is an option) they won't be taken to the thank you page and then you have to deal with it.

    I used e-junkie instead of just paypal alone as I wanted purchasers to receive the ebook without me having to email them.

    Do you also need a service to sell your book? You can do that via e-junkie as well I think as they allow for physical products.

    I hope that helped. If I missed something, let me know.

    Sue
     
  20. Juvenate

    Juvenate New Member

    Kindle ebooks

    Has anyone gone the Kindle and amazon route?
     

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