1Who Can Write eBooks?

Sometimes writing is brain-racking and requires one to have specific amounts of time dedicated for the task. As such, many employed people do not really qualify to write e-books unless they have ample time to spare after attending to their normal daily engagements. Housewives, retired folks, students on holiday and independent-minded people looking to be self-employed can all write e-books. If you feel up to the task you should get started by all means!

2How Can You Make Money Writing eBooks and what is the Profit Potential?

Everybody knows how to perform one or more tasks and this knowledge can be put down in the form of an e-book. There are also people looking for information on specific areas of life about which you can write. Those people seeking information will have to part with some money in order to obtain that knowledge and in this way, you will get paid for your written e-book. To get a lot of money from such a venture, you need to write about topics which are classified as current affairs. People will pay for such information without paying too much attention to how much it costs. This aspect makes writing e-books quite profitable.

3Where Can You Sell Your eBooks?

E-books are generally cheaper compared to printed books and people love them because they do not have shipping costs and they are delivered in a few minutes. Authors prefer selling them online where they can easily maintain full rights and they can edit and republish the documents in a very short time. Several sites are available where you can easily sell your e-books. These include the following:

• Lulu.com where you upload your e-book, select some options, publish and then determine the selling price. Lulu handles the credit card processing, delivery and customer service. Lulu also offers DRM services to prevent any unauthenticated copies of your document being made. The author gets about 70% of the listed price.

 

• Tradebit acts as a middleman for e-books, MP3 music, audio books, etc. Tradebit deals with distribution, credit card processing and customer care. The author also gets about 70% of the sales of their e-book.

 

• The Smashwords site offers publishing, distribution and sales of e-books. They are interested in fiction and children’s e-books. They however do not deal in “get rich quick” e-books. Smashwords offer to publish the e-books in several formats such as those readable by the Apple iPad, the Sony reader, Amazon reader and so forth. Authors get between 70 to 85% of the sales.

 

• The e-Junkie site does not have set-up fees, transaction limits/fees, or bandwidth limits on e-books. E-Junkie has a system that automates and ensures the secure delivery of e-books and their codes. Their shopping cart calculates the cost of the package and sales tax.

 

• The Kindle store site publishes original content but it does not accept many e-books to sell. What they do is for persons with blogs that are becoming increasingly popular, they help by marketing your blog subscriptions. Kindle blogs are very popular because any updates are wirelessly transmitted to the Kindle reader and hence the readers have current information throughout the day.

4How Can People Market their eBooks?

By creating an atmosphere of anticipation before the actual release to the market, you can keep readers anxious to know and subsequently purchase your e-book. You can do this by blogging about your upcoming e-book and asking the rest of the bloggers to suggest the titles and the content they expect your e-book to be about. Their feedback will mean they are poised to see what you will deliver.

Word of mouth among your friends also helps in that they too will tell their friends of the upcoming e-book. Your friends will be your first readers and thus sharing this information with them is a good marketing tip.

Offering free samples, such as the first two or three chapters for free, will attract people to want more of your e-book and will encourage them to purchase it in its entirety.

Another good strategy is to keep the price of the e-book within reasonable cost. This is because the internet has a lot of free stuff and also a lot of related material, hence, anyone who overprices his/her book could lose out on sales opportunities.

Other good marketing strategies include the following: creating a good, descriptive landing page for your e-book, getting the readers to review the e-book, using online forums to advertise, etc.

5Other General Tips for Writing eBooks to Sell:

• Be original in your work.

 

• Have your writing time well planned-out to accommodate for replying to emails, checking bank accounts, etc.

 

• Set achievable targets and work to attain them.

 

• Working at home has several distractions; discipline is key to overcoming those distractions.