Executable Ebooks – The Early Years

In the infancy of the Internet, ebooks were nearly always stand alone software programs that attempted to simulate the experience of reading a physical book. Or, it was simply a way to bundle up a small website and deliver it in one tidy package to an end user.  Content for these old-school executable ebooks was often run through an “ebook compiler” (you can still find them for sale – but don’t waste your money) and a software file popped out the other side.

These early ebooks had some fundamental flaws which quickly killed the popularity of the format. First, they were Windows only files. If you wanted any other device to display your ebook, you needed to create (and maintain) a separate version.

Second, it was very easy for malicious people to slip some nefarious code into the file and infect a readers computer with the latest and greatest virus. People quickly became suspicious of any executable file they downloaded from the Internet.

Finally, the quality of executable ebooks was all over the map. People quickly tired of gimmicky page turning effects and bad layouts inherited from the website design software used to create the pages that were compiled into the finished book.

Adobe PDF Ebooks – Technology Matures

Adobe rides to the rescue. The Portable Document Format (PDF) was launched by Adobe in 1993. The PDF format captures the text, the fonts, the graphics and the layout of the document which means that every user gets pretty much the same experience when they open and view the file. It also allows hyperlinks so viewers can jump directly to web based resources. And,  PDF documents can also be opened on every major computer platform, so one file serves a wide customer base. But the thing that makes PDF continue as a dominant ebook format is what Adobe did on July 1, 2008…

…On July 1, 2008, Adobe made PDF an open standard. This basically means that anyone can include the tools to produce a PDF document into their software for free.

Now, PDF making tools are everywhere. Open source software like Open Office Writer and industry standard tools like Microsoft Word can all export documents directly into the PDF format.

The PDF formatted ebook is alive and well today and will likely continue to be viable for years to come thanks to Adobe’s decision to turn the format into an open standard. But, it does have limitations.

While most tablet computers and smart phones can view a PDF ebook, they don’t play nicely with e-readers like the Kindle. E-readers like to allow the reader to adjust font sizes easily which changes the way the text flows on the screen. When viewing PDF files on these devices, the resulting display can easily get distorted.

So, PDF is very good , but not perfect.

Kindle, Nook, iPads and the E-reader Revolution

Since the earliest days of the Internet, there have been many attempts to create the perfect electronic device for reading ebooks. It wasn’t until 2007, when Amazon released the first Kindle, that the e-reader began to emerge as a mainstream device.

The Kindle has now had several new versions released and software allows users to access their library on many devices. Apple has launched the iPad with built-in ebook reading capability and ebooks available through the iTunes store. Waves of Android based tablets are arriving that can also tap into a variety of ebook formats (including Kindle books and books from the iTunes store.) And, the Nook and the Sony e-Reader are also viable options for ebook consumers. The e-reader has finally arrived as a viable consumer electronics device and a digital book publishing platform.

By January of 2011, Amazon reported that ebook sales had surpassed their sales of hardcover books. According to American Publishing Association, by mid-2010, ebook sales made up 8.5% of all book sales in the US market.

One of the key factors behind the success of this latest round of e-readers are the integrated marketplaces behind the devices which make finding and accessing new content easy. To sell your content for viewing on many of these devices, you have to use their sales platform. They set the rules and the marketplace establishes an expected price range for content (which tends to be low).

Most e-readers can display PDF documents, but the owners of the devices are more likely to get content from the official marketplace.

Current State of the Ebook Market

Selling ebooks today means publishing for e-reader devices and selling through their marketplaces and also delivering PDF formatted ebooks and selling and delivering products through your own delivery system.

Both approaches have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Your specific business goals will determine which approach is best for you.

Here is a quick rundown of the major strengths of each format.

Strengths of PDF Format:

• Control over look and layout of your ebook
• Live web links within the document
• Broad range of pricing possible
• Total control over the selling platform
• 3rd party marketplaces available to sell through

Strengths of E-Reader Formats:

• Well established (and trusted) marketplaces
• Easy one-click ordering within the device
• No customer support on sales
• No website or merchant account required to sell

Each platform can achieve a wide range of goals, from building a mailing list to generating a major portion of your income. In fact, most people will ultimately end up publishing through both platforms depending on the project goals.

The key to choosing the right format(s) for your ebook is to have a well defined goal for each project before you get started. Know who the target audience is and how and where they purchase content. Know whether your aim is to generate income from the sale or build a customer base and upsell them to other products and services.

Finally, don’t forget good old fashioned print books. New print-on-demand publishing options (POD) make it easy and inexpensive to release your products in physical formats as well.

Authors and publishers have never had more options for releasing their work and building an audience. The challenge now is getting the word out and breaking through the clutter. But that is a subject for another time.

Fortunes and reputations are being forged right now on the blazing hot Amazon Kindle e-reader.

Every single day, thousands of ebooks are being purchased and downloaded with the push of a button. In fact, Amazon.com now sells more ebooks than physical books – this is a tectonic shift in the landscape of the book publishing world. And, the beautiful thing is.

… Amazon makes it drop-dead easy to jump on the Kindle Publishing bandwagon.

Publishing Information With Amazon

Amazon actually wants you to create products to sell through their online stores (special ones requiring no inventory or profit splits with publishing houses.) It is not just e-books they will help you to create and sell. Amazon has spent years building publishing platforms for physical products like books, CDs, and DVDs (that service is called CreateSpace) and the digital publishing platform for Kindle called Kindle Direct Publishing.

Taking advantage of the Kindle Direct Publishing tools gives you fast and easy access to one of the worlds biggest (and most trusted) online sales platforms.

Check out Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing service for more details on how you can publish your information products in physical formats.

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Process

The process of marketing ebooks on the Kindle is not dramatically different than publishing in any other digital format. You still need to do good research (the Amazon Bestseller lists are excellent resources here) and plan and write a good product. You still need to create a salespage style website and write some compelling sales copy. And you need to get out and drive traffic to your offer.

The big difference for publishing on the Kindle is that you will need to format your book properly and use the Kindle Digital Publishing tools to upload, proofread, and publish your ebook on the Amazon website.

The process is NOT hard…

The Kindle ebook format is not much more than a stripped-down version of HTML with a couple of custom tags to help you establish chapter breaks, etc. A full set of instructions (and a publisher’s discussion forum) are available on the KDP site.

There are a number of resources and services available to do the conversion work if you’d rather pay someone else and avoid the learning curve.  This is a useful Amazon Kindle ebook template for Microsoft Word that can help you bypass the learning curve.

Conclusion

The process of publishing your digital content on the Kindle is both cheap and easy. I’ve done it myself and recommend you give it a try. Millions of Kindle owners are out there waiting for you!

Ebooks are small, so they can readily be downloaded by clients without placing excessive demands on a server. There are many services available, such as E-junkie, PayDotCom, Clickbank, and others designed to handle the order processing aspects of selling ebooks. Services like E-junkie will even deliver the file from their servers.

When delivering the ebooks from your own server, it is important to take steps to prevent people from sharing the link to your download page. Software like DL Guard will protect your download pages and your download links.

When you are just starting out, it is likely you will use PayPal to process your payments. Later you might move on to a full fledged merchant account for your business.

Services like E-junkie and PayDotCom interface with PayPal. Payments are processed there and order tracking and delivery are handled on the site.

Ebooks are easy to produce using free tools, easy to deliver on your own website or through digital product payment and delivery services, and can command a very high price. That makes them one of the best products to sell online.

Choosing the right price for your E-Book is one of the most critical parts of the marketing process. The first rule of pricing E-Books is to never underprice. Determine the highest price your audience can afford, and then if you find your book isn’t selling, you can always reduce the price. Before you take that step, make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on the Internet and on websites. The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your E-Book ? before they buy it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an E-Book is particularly difficult because E-Books are a fairly new commodity. Since they are digital, the value of an E-Book is as confusing as the understanding of what digital actually is to the average layperson. This means that we must look at E-Books in a different light in order to determine their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let’s look at the difference between a book in print and an E-Book. A printed book is an object you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production costs, and marketing.

But the fact that unites E-Books and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have the ability to change, or possibly transform, people’s lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink?

It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you determine the cost of your E-Book.

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Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help you sell more books.

One is to give something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several E-Books under one price, which lowers the price for each E-Book if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current customers. If these customers have already bought an E-Book from you, ask for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new book, but don’t include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to your E-Book.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.

Ultimately, if you’ve written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch your market come to you!

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Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing customers to your business or service, or to establishing the credibility of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price on the low side. Some authors have even priced their E-Books at a profit loss to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes your profits and the number of books you sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you again and again as long as the first E-Book they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable and more importantly NEW information, references, or techniques then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out what your audience’s need is for your E-Book. For example, does your book solve a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn’t been written about in one hundred other E-Books, you will be able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer your E-Book at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.

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Next, using the transcript as a launching point, I revised the content and created an e-book (some people just publish raw transcripts, but I prefer to take the opportunity to revise and expand on the topic.)

After completing the manuscript, I then published a PDF version of the text for the people who signed up to watch the video. Finally, I set out to learn just exactly what you have to do to create a Kindle e-book.

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Process

Preparing your book for Kindle publishing is relatively simple if you are familiar with the basic HTML coding for websites. Amazon has a few Kindle specific tags to add in, and then you can upload the file through their digital publishing platform known as Kindle Digital Publishing.

If the previous paragraph sounded like a foreign language to you, there are many templates available for Microsoft Word that will simplify the process (or you can pay a king’s ransom to someone to ” convert your document” for you.)

Amazon provides an online “virtual Kindle viewer” which allows you to preview your e-book in a Kindle like environment to catch and correct formatting problems before you publish.

The second major component to publishing on Amazon’s Kindle is creating your sales material. This material includes the publisher’s description of the content and a virtual cover. This is what appears on the item description page and Amazon. [Click here to view the 7 Secrets of Profitable E-books page as an example]

Teaching the process of e-book cover design and advertising copywriting are beyond the scope of this article. If you need help with either, there are many copywriters and graphic designers who can help you. If you want to try doing yourself, I recommend looking at other similar books and modeling your efforts after theirs.

Secret Shortcuts to Publishing Fast

Would you like to avoid the trial and error method of learning to publish on the Amazon Kindle? Well, then you are in luck. These days there are several training resources available that will lead you step-by-step through the process (wish they had been available when I was getting started.) Other than paying someone to do the work for you, this is the fastest way to get your e-book selling on the Kindle marketplace.

Kindle Publishing Made Easy – This is a straight to the point step-by-step guide to preparing your manuscript and publishing it on the Amazon Kindle.

Kindle Revolution – This comprehensive guide shows more than just how to prepare and publish your book on the Kindle. It also teaches strategies to promote your book and maximize sales by using the powerful Amazon search engine to increase exposure for your book.

Kindle Profits Exposed – Comprehensive training course which includes details on picking profitable book topics and how to leverage your work to build a thriving business. Step-by-step videos guide you through all of the technical aspects of the process.

No Reason Not to Try Publishing On Kindle

There is no neat reason not to publish your e-book on the Amazon Kindle. Amazon doesn’t charge anything to listed. It is very possible to do all of the formatting work yourself, and you don’t even need to purchase an ISBN number to register your book.

Just think, in a few days (maybe even hours) you could be an author with a book for sale on Amazon.com.

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The term ‘infoprenuer’ has been coined to describe people who sell information based products like ebooks. In order to get started selling online you need 3 things: a website that promotes your product, a method of receiving payments, and a method to deliver the product to your customer after payment.

How To Create Your Website

Your promotional website should not be a complicated site. It should be a one page HTML document that is focused on selling your product (you’ve probably encountered many of these ‘salespage’ style sites on the web.) The content will consist of a headline to catch people’s attention, a short story to hook them and get them reading, a bullet list of the major benefits they will get from buying your product, testimonials from previous customers and reviewers, and a ‘call to action’ (otherwise known as the sales pitch.) Most people include a P.S. or two that summarizes the major benefits and repeats the call to action.

You don’t need any fancy software to make this page. There is an excellent free software package called Kompozer that will help you design the webpage.

In order for people to find and access your salespage, you will need a server to ‘host’ it on and a domain name. There are dozens of companies that will help you with domain name registration and hosting if you don’t already have this taken care of. The total cost should be under $10US per month. I use and recommend 2 companies: HostGator Web Hosting and 1&1 Web Hosting.

How To Accept Payments Online

Your salespage will have an order button on it for customers to click and purchase your ebook. This will link to some kind of online payment processor. Large businesses have accounts with a bank called ‘merchant accounts.’ These accounts allow them to accept credit card payments from customers.

Unfortunately, merchant accounts are expensive and can be difficult to setup for new businesses. Luckily, there is a very popular online alternative… Paypal.
A PayPal Premier or Business account can be setup easily by almost anyone. There are no monthly charges for a Premier account and PayPal charges a small transaction fee for every payment the process (merchant accounts have large monthly fees and transaction fees as well!) With a PayPal Premier or Business account, you will be able to accept credit card payments, electronic checks, and direct PayPal transfers from other members. It is the easiest way to get started accepting payments online.

PayPal includes tools on their merchant services area where you can create a ‘Buy Now’ button to place on your salespage. The form is very easy to use. Simply fill in all of the details about your product. Make sure that the ‘button encryption’ option is set to yes. If it is not, anyone with basic web skills can view the source code for your salespage and change the purchase price or simply steal the link to your download page without paying. Even worse, search engines will eventually find and index your download page.

At the bottom of the page is a link to “Add More Options.” Click this and look for the section labeled “Customize Your Buyer’s Experience.” There is an option here to enter a URL for people to be forwarded to after they make a successful payment. The link you put here is for the download page where the customer will get their product which leads us to…

How To Deliver Your Ebook

The last step in your ebook selling process is to deliver the product file to customers after they pay. The simplest approach is just to create a simple HTML page that has a short thank you message on it and a link for downloading the product. A common practice to keep people from finding this page is to give it a name that has lots of random characters in it to make it hard to guess and place it in a directory that has a similar hard to guess name. The download file should be placed in the same folder or a special sub-folder (also with a hard to guess name.)

If you choose this low-tech approach, make sure to put a blank file named ‘index.htm’ in each folder and also include ‘no-index’ tags in the header of the HTML of the download page and never link directly to the download page from anywhere online except from PayPal. These steps will reduce the chances of non-paying people downloading your product and search engines from indexing your download page and product links. But, if someone does find the page, this offers no protection from theft.

There are some more sophisticated software solutions available that will verify payment information before allowing access to download pages and files and will create a unique link to the product that hides its true location on your server and expires after a certain length of time or number of downloads. They might also include tools for running an affiliate program. DLGuard, Digital Product Guard Download System, and Download Defender XT are some of the more popular options for download protection.

These software solutions will cost you money and take some expertise (your own or someone you hire) to set everything up. But, in the long run, they will protect you as your business grows.

Using a Hosted Shopping Cart To Sell Ebooks

A third option for delivering your products is to use a hosted shopping cart program. This is the approach I use in my business.

There are a number of services at wildly different pricing structures that can handle this task. I use a company called E-junkie that is very inexpensive and offers almost every option I need to run a highly automated online business. They have a free one week trial and they don’t have any transaction fees to cut into your profits.

ClickBank, PayDotCom, and PayLoadz are other popular shopping cart options. The fee structures vary with each service.

Take Action and Get Started Now Selling Your Ebook

The most important decision you can make for your online business is to decide to start and take action. If you have to start small and cheap – do it. Use free tools and low tech solutions and take the money you earn and invest in better technology. If you wait for everything to be perfect, you will never start.

I recommend using Paypal and E-junkie to take payments and deliver products. The monthly fees are tiny and the technical skills required to deliver a secure product are low. E-junkie will make the buttons, send the thank-you emails, create the secure download pages and deliver the products. They even have tools for running an affiliate program.

Take action and have a profitable day!

Andrew Seltz is the author of “Selling Digital Goods Online with E-Junkie,” an illustrated step-by-step guide to setting up your ebook business fast.

Get Started Selling with E-Junkie Today…

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