eBook Marketing
The Handsome, Mysterious Writer
http://allthewaytoo.blogspot.com/
7/6/2006
allthewaytoo.blogspot.com
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1 Why Write an e‐Book?
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It's not true that everything that has been said has already been written. Since that unfortunate axiom came into use, the whole universe has changed. Technology has changed, ideas have changed, and the mindsets of entire nations have changed.
The fact is that this is the perfect time to write an e‐Book. What the publishing industry needs are people who can tap into the world as it is today ‐ innovative thinkers who can make the leap into the new millennium and figure out how to solve old problems in a new way. E‐Books are a new and powerful tool for original thinkers with fresh ideas to disseminate information to the millions of people who are struggling to figure out how to do a plethora of different things.
Let's say you already have a brilliant idea, and the knowledge to back it up that will enable you to write an exceptional e‐Book. You may be sitting at your computer staring at a blank screen wondering, "Why? Why should I go through all the trouble of writing my e‐Book when it's so impossible to get anything published these days?
Well, let me assure you that publishing an e‐Book is entirely different than publishing a book in print.
Let's look at the specifics of how the print and cyber publishing industry differ, and the many reasons why you should take the plunge and get your fingers tapping across those keyboards!
Submitting a print book to conventional publishing houses or to agents is similar to wearing a hair shirt 24/7. No matter how good your book actually is, or how many critique services and mentor writers have told you that "you've got what it takes," your submitted manuscript keeps coming back to you as if it is a boomerang instead of a valuable mine of information.
Perhaps, in desperation, you've checked out self‐publishing and found out just how expensive a venture it can be. Most "vanity presses" require minimal print runs of at least 500 copies, and even that amount will cost you thousands of dollars. Some presses' minimal run starts at 1,000 to 2,000
copies. And that's just for the printing and binding. Add in distribution, shipping, and promotional costs and ‐ well, you do the math. Even if you wanted to go this route, you may not have that kind of money to risk.
Let's say you already have an Internet business with a quality website and a quality product. An eBook is one of the most powerful ways to promote your business while educating people with the knowledge you already possess as a business owner of a specific product or service.
For example, let's say that you've spent the last twenty‐five years growing and training bonsai trees, and now you're ready to share your knowledge and experience. An e‐Book is the perfect way to reach the largest audience of bonsai enthusiasts.
E‐Books will not only promote your business ‐ they will help you make a name for yourself and your company, and establish you as an expert in your field. You may even find that you have enough to say to warrant a series of e‐Books. Specific businesses are complicated and often require the different aspects to be divided in order for the reader to get the full story.
Perhaps your goals are more finely tuned in terms of the e‐Book scene. You may want to build a whole business around writing and publishing e‐Books. Essentially, you want to start an e‐business.
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You are thinking of setting up a website to promote and market your e‐Books. Maybe you're even thinking of producing an ezine.
One of the most prevalent reasons people read e‐Books is to find information about how to turn their Internet businesses into a profit‐making machine. And these people are looking to the writers of e‐Books to provide them with new ideas and strategies because writers of e‐Books are usually people who understand the new cyberspace world we now live in. E‐Book writers are experts in Internet marketing campaigns and the strategies of promoting and distributing e‐Books. The cyberspace community needs its e‐Books to be successful so that more and more e‐Books will be written.
You may want to create affiliate programs that will also market your e‐Book. Affiliates can be people or businesses worldwide that will all be working to sell your e‐Books. Think about this? Do you see a formula for success here?
Figure out what your subject matter is, and then narrow it down. Your goal is to aim for specificity.
Research what's out there already, and try to find a void that your e‐Book might fill.
What about an e‐Book about a wedding cake business? Or an e‐Book about caring for elderly pets?
How about the fine points of collecting ancient pottery?
You don't have to have three masters degrees to write about your subject. People need advice that is easy to read and easily understood. Parents need advice for dealing with their teenagers. College students need to learn good study skills ‐ quickly. The possibilities are endless. After you've writtten your e‐Book
Getting your e‐Book out is going to be your focus once you've finished writing it, just as it is with print books. People will hesitate to buy any book from an author they've never heard of. Wouldn't you?
The answer is simple: give it away! You will see profits in the form of promoting your own business and getting your name out. You will find affiliates who will ask you to place their links within your eBook, and these affiliates will in turn go out and make your name known. Almost every single famous e‐Book author has started out this way.
Another powerful tool to attract people to your e‐Book is to make it interactive. Invent something for them to do within the book rather than just producing pages that contain static text. Let your readers fill out questionnaires, forms, even crossword puzzles geared to testing their knowledge on a particular subject. Have your readers hit a link that will allow them to recommend your book to their friends and associates. Or include an actual order form so at the end of their reading journey, they can eagerly buy your product.
When people interact with books, they become a part of the world of that book. The fact is just as true for books in print as it is for e‐Books.
That's why e‐Books are so essential. Not only do they provide a forum for people to learn and make sense of their own thoughts, but they can also serve to promote your business at the same time.
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2 How to Write an E‐Book
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The hardest part of writing is the first sentence. When you look at the whole project, it seems like an impossible task. That's why you have to break it down into manageable tasks. Think of climbing a mountain.
You are standing at the foot of it and looking up at its summit vanishing into the clouds. How can you possibly scale such an immense and dangerous mountain?
There is only one way to climb a mountain ? step by step.
Now think of writing your e‐Book in the same light. You must create it step by step, and one day, you will take that last step and find yourself standing on the summit with your head in the clouds.
The first thing you have to do, as if you actually were a mountain climber, is to get organized. Instead of climbing gear, however, you must organize your thoughts. There are some steps you should take before you begin. Once you've gone through the following list, you will be ready to actually begin writing your e‐Book.
Beginning Steps to Writing an e‐Book
First, figure out your e‐Book's working title. Jot down a few different titles, and eventually, you'll find that one that will grow on you. Titles help you to focus your writing on your topic; they guide you in anticipating and answering your reader's queries. Many non‐fiction books also have subtitles. Aim for clarity in your titles, but cleverness always helps to sell books ? as long as it's not too cute. For example, Remedies for Insomnia: twenty different ways to count sheep. Or: Get off that couch: fifteen exercise plans to whip you into shape.
Next, write out a thesis statement. Your thesis is a sentence or two stating exactly what problem you are addressing and how your book will solve that problem. All chapters spring forth from your thesis statement. Once you've got your thesis statement fine‐tuned, you've built your foundation. From that foundation, your book will grow, chapter by chapter.
Your thesis will keep you focused while you write your e‐Book. Remember: all chapters must support your thesis statement. If they don't, they don't belong in your book. For example, your thesis statement could read:
We've all experienced insomnia at times in our lives, but there are twenty proven techniques and methods to give you back a good night's sleep.
Once you have your thesis, before you start to write, make sure there is a good reason to write your book. Ask yourself some questions:
* Does your book present useful information and is that information currently relevant?
* Will you book positively affect the lives of your readers?
* Is your book dynamic and will it keep the reader's attention?
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* Does you book answer questions that are meaningful and significant? If you can answer yes to these questions, you can feel confident about the potential of your e‐Book.
Another important step is to figure out who your target audience is. It is this group of people you will be writing to, and this group will dictate many elements of your book, such as style, tone, diction, and even length. Figure out the age range of your readers, their general gender, what they are most interested in, and even the socio‐economic group they primarily come from. Are they people who read fashion magazines or book reviews? Do they write letters in longhand or spend hours every day online. The more you can pin down your target audience, the easier it will be to write your book for them.
Next, make a list of the reasons you are writing your e‐Book. Do you want to promote your business? Do you want to bring quality traffic to your website? Do you want to enhance your reputation?
Then write down your goals in terms of publishing. Do you want to sell it as a product on your website, or do you want to offer it as a free gift for filling out a survey or for ordering a product? Do you want to use the chapters to create an e‐course, or use your e‐Book to attract affiliates around the world? The more you know upfront, the easier the actual writing will be.
Decide on the format of your chapters. In non‐fiction, keep the format from chapter to chapter fairly consistent. Perhaps you plan to use an introduction to your chapter topic, and then divide it into four subhead topics. Or you may plan to divide it into five parts, each one beginning with a relevant anecdote.
How to make your e‐Book "user friendly"
You must figure out how to keep your writing engaging. Often anecdotes, testimonials, little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and tips will keep the reader turning the pages. Sidebars are useful for quick, accessible information, and they break up the density of the page.
Write with a casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction. Reader's respond to the feeling that you are having a conversation with them. Break up the length and structure of your sentences so you don?t hypnotize your readers into sleep. Sentences that are all the same length and structure tend to be a good aid for insomnia!
Good writing takes practice. It takes lots and lots of practice. Make a schedule to write at least a page a day. Read books and magazines about the process of writing, and jot down tips that jump out at you. The art of writing is a lifetime process; the more you write (and read), the better your writing will become. The better your writing becomes, the bigger your sales figures.
In an e‐Book that is read on the screen, be aware that you must give your reader's eye a break. You can do this by utilizing white space. In art classes, white space is usually referred to as "negative space." Reader's eyes need to rest in the cool white oasises you create on your page. If your page is too dense, your reader will quit out of it as soon as their eyes begin to tear.
Make use of lists, both bulleted and numbered. This makes your information easy to absorb, and gives the reader a mental break from dissecting your paragraphs one after the other.
Finally, decide on an easy‐to‐read design. Find a font that's easy on the eyes, and stick to that font family. Using dozens of fonts will only tire your readers out before they've gotten past your introduction. Use at least one and a half line spacing, and text large enough to be read easily on the screen, but small enough so that the whole page can be seen on a computer screen. You will have to experiment with this to find the right combination.
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Of course, don't forget to run a spell and grammar check. You are judged by something as minor as correct punctuation, so don?t mess up a great book by tossing out semicolons randomly, or stringing sentences together with commas. (By the way, that's called a "comma splice.") Last of all, create an index and a bibliography. That's it! You've written a book! Now all you have to do is publish your e‐Book online, and wait for download request from your website visitors.
allthewaytoo.blogspot.com
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3 E‐Books are Promotional Powerhouses
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E‐Books are part of the new frontier of cyberspace. They are an entirely new medium for sharing marketing information, ideas, techniques, and expert knowledge. Each day the number of people accessing the Internet grows, causing the exposure of your e‐Book to increase incrementally. It's obvious why electronic self‐publishing has become so popular so quickly.The publishing industry, I hope, does not intend to forever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. Books in print have their own special qualities and merits, and the world would be diminished by their disappearance.
Having said that, let's look at what makes e‐Books so important and so unique. E‐Books have certain abilities and qualities that other mediums do not possess.
For example, e‐Books are fairly easy to produce, and their production cost is inexpensive. Just think about it: you don't need a publisher, an agent, a printing press, offset film, ink, paper, or even a distributor. You just need a great concept, the ability to write it or to hire a writer, and the right software.
Additionally, e‐Books are easily and rapidly distributed online. They are also easily updated; they do not require a second print run. All you need is to go into your original creation and modify the text or graphics. Because of this flexibility, e‐Books can change and grow as fast as you can type.
E‐Books are also immediately obtainable. You don't have to go to a bookstore or search through endless titles at an online bookstore. All you have to do is download it from a website, and presto!
It's on your computer, ready to be read.
E‐Books are interactive. This is one of the most unique and specific qualities that e‐Books offer. You can add surveys that need to be filled out, order forms for customers to purchase your products or goods, sound and video that draw your reader into the virtual world of your e‐Book, even direct links to relevant sites that will expand your e‐Book outward. The potential is virtually limitless.
E‐Books have a particular kind of permanence that other mediums do not possess. Television shows and radio shows air once, and then may rerun a few times. E‐Books remain on your computer for as long as your choose, and they can be read and reread whenever you choose to. They can even be printed out and stored on the shelves of your traditional home library.
Another wonderful quality is that e‐Books have no barriers in terms of publishing. You don't need to go through the endless process of submitting your manuscript over and over again, and then once you land an agent, having the agent submit your manuscript over and over again. Nor do you have to shell out thousands of dollars for printing a self‐published book. All e‐Books require is a writer and appropriate software. Figure out your market, write your book, post it on your website, and with the right business savvy, your audience will come to you.
Finally, you have creative control over your e‐Book. You don?t have to compromise with an editor or the publishing trends of the time. You don't have to haggle with a designer or wait for copyedited galleys to arrive by snail mail. You are in complete control of the design and the text. How to Use eBooks for Marketing and Promotion
There are innumerable ways to use e‐Books to promote your business and drive quality traffic to your website. Once posted on your site, you can turn them into a daily course, which brings your allthewaytoo.blogspot.com
allthewaytoo.blogspot.com
customer back to read the next chapter. You can use them as a free gift for making a purchase or for filling out a survey. Put your e‐Book on a disc, and you will have an innovative brochure. Blow your competition away by inserting the disc into your sales packages.
The most effective marketing products are those that are unique. Copyright your e‐Book, and immediately, you have a powerful tool that you, and you alone, can offer to the public. People will have to visit your site to acquire your e‐Book, which increases the flow of quality traffic and the potential of sales and affiliate contacts.
Make sure that you keep your e‐Book current. Update it frequently as the market and trends change. Add new advice and techniques to show your prospects how your goods or services can enrich their lives. By constantly keeping abreast of new trends and techniques, you can continue to see profits from your e‐Book for years after your original creation.
Another phenomenal advantage of e‐Books is that you can test their marketing potential without putting out hardly any cash at all. You can even produce an e‐Book one copy at a time, each time you receive an order, eliminating the need for storage and inventory. By this method, you can gauge the saleablity of your e‐Book, and make adjustments as necessary until the orders start pouring in. EBooks allow you to learn about your market and customer habits and motivation over a period of time, without risking your precious financial resources. They also provide you with an invaluable way to gather marketing information, which you can use in many different facets of your business.
Use your e‐Book to discover what the specific goals and problems are in your specific industry. Then figure out how to solve these problems, and publish an e‐Book with this invaluable information. This will increase the value of your business, upgrade your reputation, and get you known as an expert in your field.
You can extend the value of single e‐Book by breaking the book down into chapters for a serial course, into special reports available on your website, or into audio or visual tapes. E‐Books can be broken down into several different promotional materials by excepting some of the articles and using them to promote your product. You can include a catalog in your e‐Book to promote all the products or services you sell. You can include a thank‐you note for reading your book and an invitation to download a trial version of your product. Or you can include a form for your audience to contact you for further information or with questions, thereby building your business relationships and your mailing list.
Using e‐Books in this manner helps to cut the cost of individually producing separate promotional materials. You can use a single e‐Book to entice new prospects and to sell new products to your current customers.
No other medium has this kind of flexibility and ability for expansion. Think of your e‐Book like a spider spinning a beautiful and intricate web. Now go and create that web, and see how many customers and prospects you can catch!
allthewaytoo.blogspot.com
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4 Ovecoming Writer's Block
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What is writer's block?
Well, I just can't think of a single darn thing to say. Oh well, I'm outta here!
Sound familiar? No! Oh, get real! We've all experienced this phenomenon when we absolutely have to write something, particularly on deadline. I'm talking about. . . . .uh, I can't think of what the word is . . . oh, yes, it's on the tip of my tongue . . . it's:
WRITER'S BLOCK!!!!
Whew! I feel better just getting that out of my head and onto the page!
Writer's block is the patron demon of the blank page. You may think you know EXACTLY what you're going to write, but as soon as that evil white screen appears before you, your mind suddenly goes completely blank. I'm not talking about Zen meditation stare‐at‐the‐wall‐until‐enlightenment‐hits kind of blank.
I'm talking about sweat trickling down the back of your neck, anguish and panic and suffering kind of blank. The tighter the deadline, the worse the anguish of writer's block gets.
Having said that, let me say it again. "The tighter the deadline, the worse the anguish of writer's block gets." Now, can you figure out what might possibly be causing this horrible plunge into speechlessness?
The answer is obvious: FEAR! You are terrified of that blank page. You are terrified you have absolutely nothing of value to say. You are afraid of the fear of writer's block itself!
It doesn?t necessarily matter if you've done a decade of research and all you have to do is string sentences you can repeat in your sleep together into coherent paragraphs. Writer's block can strike anyone at any time. Based in fear, it raises our doubts about our own self‐worth, but it's sneaky. It's writer's block, after all, so it doesn't just come and let you know that. No, it makes you feel like an idiot who just had your frontal lobes removed through your sinuses. If you dared to put forth words into the greater world, they would surely come out as gibberish!
Let's try and be rational with this irrational demon. Let's make a list of what might possibly be beneath this terrible and terrifying condition.
1. Perfectionism. You must absolutely produce a masterpiece of literature straight off in the first draft. Otherwise, you qualify as a complete failure.
2. Editing instead of composing. There's your monkey‐mind sitting on your shoulder, yelling as soon as you type "I was born?," no, not that, that's wrong! That's stupid! Correct correct correct correct?
3. Self‐consciousness. How can you think, let alone write, when all you can manage to do is pry the fingers of writer's block away from your throat enough so you can gasp in a few shallow breaths?
You're not focusing on what you're trying to write, your focusing on those gnarly fingers around your windpipe.
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4. Can't get started. It's always the first sentence that's the hardest. As writers, we all know how EXTREMELY important the first sentence is. It must be brilliant! It must be unique! It must hook your reader's from the start! There's no way we can get into writing the piece until we get past this impossible first sentence.
5. Shattered concentration. You're cat is sick. You suspect your mate is cheating on you. Your electricity might be turned off any second. You have a crush on the local UPS deliveryman. You have a dinner party planned for your in‐laws. You . . . Need I say more. How can you possibly concentrate with all this mental clutter?
6. Procrastination. It's your favorite hobby. It's your soul mate. It?s the reason you've knitted 60
argyle sweaters or made 300 bookcases in your garage workshop. It's the reason you never run out of Brie.
FACE IT ? IT?S ONE OF THE REASONS YOU HAVE WRITER'S BLOCK!
How to Overcome Writer's Block
Okay. I can hear that herd of you running away from this article as fast as you can. Absurd! you huff.
Never in a million years, you fume. Writer's block is absolutely, undeniably, scientifically proven to be impossible to overcome.
Oh, just get over it! Well, I guess it's not that easy. So try to sit down for just a few minutes and listen. All you have to do is listen ? you don't have to actually write a single word.
Ah, there you all are again. I am beginning to make you out now that the cloud of dust is settling.
I am here to tell you that WRITER'S BLOCK CAN BE OVERCOME.
Please, remain seated.
There are ways to trick this nasty demon. Pick one, pick several, and give them a try. Soon, before you even have a chance for your heartbeat to accelerate, guess what? You're writing.
Here are some tried and true methods of overcoming writer's block:
1. Be prepared. The only thing to fear is fear itself. (I know, that's a clich?but as soon as you start writing, feel free to improve on it.) If you spend some time mulling over your project before you actually sit down to write, you may be able to circumvent the worst of the crippling panic.
2. Forget perfectionism. No one ever writes a masterpiece in the first draft. Don't put any expectations on your writing at all! In fact, tell yourself you're going to write absolute garbage, and then give yourself permission to happily stink up your writing room.
3. Compose instead of editing. Never, never write your first draft with your monkey‐mind sitting on your shoulder making snide editorial comments. Composing is a magical process. It surpasses the conscious mind by galaxies. It's even incomprehensible to the conscious, editorial, monkey‐mind. So prepare an ambush. Sit down at your computer or your desk. Take a deep breath and blow out all your thoughts. Let your finger hover over your keyboard or pick up your pen. And then pull a fake: appear to be about to begin to write, but instead, using your thumb and index finger of your dominant hand, flick that little annoying ugly monkey back into the barrel of laughs it came from.
Then jump in ? quickly! Write, scribble, scream, howl, let everything loose, as long as you do it with a pen or your computer keyboard.
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4. Forg