eBook Marketing Takes Off: The Importance of eBooks For Internet Marketers!

3 Aug, 2013

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If you haven’t written an eBook yet, time you did! Most successful Internet marketers are ahead of the game, having written and promoted lots of eBooks. Some use them to market their businesses and others as a source of great income.

Goals vary but eBooks have taken over all forms of marketing and ebook marketing is here to stay.

Interested in knowing where the eBook came from?

The credit for coining the term “electronic book” or an eBook as we call it; is attributed to an Englishman from Paris, Van Dam. The electronic book goes back to the textual storage and retrieval system of electronic documents in the 1950s.

Although, it was not called an eBook back then, in the 1980s, many reference books, including the Oxford English Dictionary, were stored and marketed on CD-ROMs. Then slowly University Presses in the USA began to concentrate on the concept of electronic publishing. Even Wikipedia was a sub-genre of an eBook when it started.

The present day version of the eBook bears no semblance to its ancestors and is almost a reincarnation of the original digitalized versions.

While the thought of there being no printed books to curl up to, is saddening, the eBook is thriving in its existence today. It has spread its wings across all industries and even books by long-gone authors are flying off the digital shelves with a hurry.

Need I say anything about the value an eBook holds for an Internet marketer? Yes, we need to discuss this, as it’s a great suggestion put forth by Luqman, a valued member of my community.

The Importance Of eBook Marketing For Internet Marketers

Every Internet marketer who understands the importance of content marketing is talking about using eBooks in some form or another to promote the business. The reason is simple; eBooks have an excellent potential to attract prospects, convert prospects into customers and retain existing customers.

Because eBooks are information-based, they can establish you as a niche expert, helping you gain respect and credibility in your community.

For the uninitiated, it’s the fear of writing a book that stops them. But things are not like they were before. Over the last few years, there has been a gigantic shift and now anyone can use their knowledge and information to create an eBook as well as publish it overnight.

You don’t need publishers for eBooks. If you want to publish your eBook on Amazon, you can do it for free instantly. In short, ebook marketing is easier than ever before.

Selling And/Or Distributing eBooks

Once you have an eBook in hand, there are a lot of ways you can use it to promote your business. Here are the more popular methods that marketers are experiencing great results with.

Sell on your website/blog.

Sell on Clickbank.

Give away free on the site.

Give away free with a link in the email, to your subscribers.

Create a Facebook page to divert people to your website where you have the eBook.

Use other social networking sites to promote.

Give it away free at events.

Organize webinars and distribute digital copies.

Publish it on Amazon, iBookstore, Barnes and Noble

Convert it to different EPUB formats to use on various devices.

All the ebook marketing ideas listed above are great and work well in promoting your business. When promoted properly, an eBook can drive large amounts of traffic to your website or blog.

Looking for a unique Idea?

But there are ways you can transform your eBook from regular to “unique.” I was recently browsing through a website and what I found was interesting. I liked the way they promoted their eBook on the site. It’s a daily course, where one chapter is added each day. The course is for 14 days, which means the book contains 14 chapters.

I like the idea because it encourages the visitor to come back to the website the next day, to read the next chapter. Of course, that works only when the content in the eBook is very engaging and has the power to draw the visitor in.

If you plan on using this idea, the length of the course should be based on the content you have to offer. Don’t prolong it just for extending the length of the course. Offer a one-week course if that covers the information you have.

Think out of the box and come up with your own unique ideas. Of course, traditional eBook marketing continues to work very well and marketers are enjoying the immense benefits of offering great information to people.

The Actual Creation Of The eBook

The first thing to do is to start writing as soon as you decide to. Don’t wait or give it time, do it before you lose interest. When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to keep it aside for months.

Once the eBook is complete, format it properly. You can Google “eBook formatting” and there are plenty of sites showing you in detail how it’s done. It may take time initially, but it’s not complicated.

Make sure you keep the eBook updated at all times. If you’re written an eBook last year and if things in your niche have changed, update the eBook to include current ideas and remove anything that doesn’t work today. By constantly keeping in touch with the latest trends and updating your eBook, you’re making sure that it never goes out of date, and it remains fresh for years, resulting in leads or sales.

The eBook Formats To Use

When you’re just starting off with ebook marketing…

PDF eBooks are easy to create. It helps you test the idea of eBook creation. Once you’ve written the book, save it as PDF. eBooks look great when converted into PDFs. You can download the free version of OpenOffice, where the conversion from Word to PDF takes only a few seconds.

I somehow find it easier to catch errors in the PDF format. You can go back to Word, make the changes and convert again.

Later when you’re more confident and are ready to go advanced…..

You can publish in all sorts of formats. You can use the EPUB format that users can access on Kindle, iPad and Nook. Many marketers give away their EPUB eBooks for free or at throw-away prices.

You can also add audio interviews or video training, charts, worksheets etc to your PDF or whatever format you use.

When you add audio or video to your eBooks, they can be sold at higher rates than a text-based eBook.

Why not create a couple of EPUB books and sell them directly on Amazon, iBookstore or Barnes and Noble?

Advantages of eBooks and ebook marketing

They are easy to create and portable. One of the main advantages is that their marketing potential can be tested without investing any cash. You can gauge the salability and keep making changes until you perfect it and you see a stream of sales. They can also go viral very easily taking your name out there.

This Is Important…

Don’t forget to “copyright” your eBook. Even this will not stop people from copying it, but at least you stand a chance of taking action if you find someone stealing your content.

Ebook Marketing Summary

Concentrate on quality at all times. Once you get a hang of it, go advanced and choose a few beta readers from your community. Choose people who are active and it will also make them feel good that you trust their advice. You can then perhaps start using writers/editors to create a more professional eBook.

I hope these tips help you. If you’re interested, we can do a post on “How to write an eBook” in the future. Do leave a comment if you enjoyed this article on ebook marketing.