Beyond Traditional eBook Publishing

by Rick Carbone

 Why today’s Internet marketing requires more than a single purpose eBook

It wasn’t that long ago that you could write and publish an ebook and actually make money on the sale of the ebook. After all isn’t that why you wrote the ebook in the first place?

What has happened to the simple days or in Shakespearian terms the "salad days" of ebooks? The truth is that writing an ebook and publishing it on the Internet has become easier and cheaper. There are literally thousands of PLR (Private Label Rights) ebooks for the taking so that you don’t even have to be concerned about actually writing an ebook. Ebook software is easily obtainable and a lot less expensive, and if you don’t like to write or don’t feel that you have the talent (Just about anyone can write an eBook) you can have a ghost writer do it for you, if you can afford to job it out.

With all that said, why even bother to write and publish an ebook?

There is most definitely a place for single purpose eBooks on the market today. I would categorize them as highly defined and technical information based ebooks. That is they discuss in great detail how to manage a specific task or function. A good example would be how to utilize RSS feeds on your website, and how they can become a silent marketing tool for your products or services.

The aforementioned is a very tight niche but there is a market for this type of information. Unless you have this type of technical expertise you aren’t going to write this type of ebook.

So why should you consider ebook publishing as a marketing tool? The answer is in the details. Internet marketers are using ebooks in many different ways to improve their sales.

A good example would be to create a free give-away ebook that discusses the merits of other products that you may be selling. This is done quite often and has increased sales and conversion rates for products and services. Within the ebook you discuss the rational for the use of your product or service and create active links to your sales page.

Another method of non-traditional ebook publishing is the "branded" or viral ebook. This is when you create a similar ebook to the above example but allow your affiliates to brand it as their own ebook and distribute it to their customers. The ebook can be branded so that the sales links can be personalized for each affiliate.

Viral PDF ebooks have been around for a while and the software to create them is well within reach of the average Internet marketer. For example the Adobe PDF format is the worldwide standard for creating an ebook. There is no question that Adobe Acrobat^® is the premiere tool for creating pdf ebooks, however there are alternatives that are less expensive that will create and convert to the pdf format. Viral PDF ebooks are very attractive because they provide an unusual way to distribute an information or software product.

The concept is simple. Let's say that you have a great widget making software program. You decide to write an ebook that explains ll of the benefits of widgets and how they will change the world as we know it. Instead of selling this ebook you give it away with free software that creates proprietary links for anyone who joins your affiliate program. This means that your affiliates can now offer an ebook that is branded with their name and their affiliate links to anyone that they choose to send it to. This means that whenever someone purchases through those links you get a sale and the affiliate gets a commission. A win-win situation.