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Special reports
People who are unfamiliar with e-books generally ask, “What’s the difference between
an e-book and a special report?”
The short answer is: Nothing really. The technical answer is: It’s all in the marketing.
An e-book is an e-book. What defines an e-book is the mode of delivery. It is electronic,
also called digital. A special report can be delivered electronically just as well as it can
be sent physically. When it is, it’s an e-book.
That said, allow me to explain why you might want to give your customers a FREE
special report:
First, it’s free and people love free stuff.
Secondly, by giving them something of value – a free special report – you can ask for
something of value in return. What you’ll ask for is their e-mail address so you can
send them their special report. If they want the special report they’ll be more than will-
ing to give you the e-mail address.
So what's a special report? Generally speaking, a special report is any report that pro-
vides useful and valuable information to the customer. You can charge for it or give it
away for free, but it must be something of value. Giving out useless information is not
only considered bad taste but you will likely not make many sales on your other prod-
ucts if you don’t provide value right up front. So make sure you are giving away some-
thing the customer can use.
A special report is also generally smaller than an e-book. Some people define an e-
book as more than 50 pages and a special report as less than that. I don’t think it mat-
ters how you define the terms. A special report, from a marketing perspective, implies
more value than “e-book.” Therefore, call it a special report even if it’s a couple hun-
dred pages.
