ebooks - A Great Way to Market
What's a busy entrepreneur to do? You are always being told to build your brand. You must find new ways to market yourself and diversify your offerings. Sure, you’ll just squeeze that in between your regular marketing, client meetings, projects, family life and sleep, right?
Never fear. There is a tool that can expand your marketing and your products at the same time. It’s an ebook. A recent New Yorker article reported a 177% increase in ebook sales in 2011. Your audience is waiting for you.
An ebook allows you to showcase your expertise. You can create a free offering for clients and prospects to access through your website. It can be a promotional tool, allowing people to test drive your work before buying your services. You can also create ebooks for purchase, giving you a new product for your lineup.
Creating an ebook costs less than self-publishing a traditional book, an important factor for any budget conscious entrepreneur.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s too much work and you know nothing about technology. An ebook can be created faster than a traditional book. They are shorter, with many running only 30-45 pages. I’ve seen a few with only 14 pages. My first ebook runs 22 pages and I pumped out the content in two days.
What about technology? If you plan to create an ebook for your website, you can use a PDF. If you don’t know how to create one, you can convert Word documents into PDFs in the “save as” function of Word.
If you plan to release your book on Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iBooks or other eReaders, their sites are user-friendly. Most will accept Word documents and can convert them to the proper format for you. They offer handy guides on their sites to help you through the process.
If that still sounds daunting, an industry has cropped up to help you publish your ebook painlessly. Companies called aggregators, such as Smashwords, BookBaby and Outskirts Press can handle the technology for you. You hand over your manuscript; they convert it and send your ebook to the stores for you. Some will charge a flat fee for this service and others will take a portion of each sale.
Don’t let technology or time scare you away. An ebook can be easy to produce and it’s a great product for your arsenal. Happy writing.
Susan Portelance is a freelance writer, editor and storyteller. She owns Prairie Scribe in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and helps her clients craft quality communications, from web content and case studies to ebooks and blogs.
