Pricing an eBook

You've written and compiled an ebook. Now you have todecide how much to charge for it. Finding the rightprice is essential to the success of your product. Ifyou charge too little, people will think it's oflittle value, and they won't purchase it, or even itthey do buy your book, you will have to sell thousandsof copies to get to the point where you can begin tosee a profit. If you price it too high when comparedwith your competition, you will find yourself steadilylowering the price, which will cause you all kinds ofnew problems in the future. For example, if you sellyour ebook at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to$24.95, don't you think the people who bought it for$39.99 are going to be PISSED?

Choosing the right price for your ebook is one of themost critical parts of the marketing process. Thefirst rule of pricing ebooks is to never underprice.Determine the highest price your audience can afford,and then if you find your book isn?t selling, you canalways reduce the price. Before you take that step,make sure you are promoting your book like crazy onthe Internet and on websites. The price should beaimed at bringing in profits, but you should neverforget that price is one of the factors that peopleuse in judging the value of your ebook ? before theybuy it. So always start with the highest price, andthen launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an ebook is particularly difficult becauseebooks are a fairly new commodity. Since they aredigital, the value of an ebook is as confusing as theunderstanding of what digital actually is to theaverage layperson. This means that we must look atebooks in a different light in order to determinetheir actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let's look at the difference between a book in printand an ebook. A printed book is an object you can holdin your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand downto the next generation. It is priced on factors suchas paper stock, design and production costs, andmarketing.

But the fact that unites ebooks and print books isthat they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas inthese books that have the ability to change, orpossibly transform, people's lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluatedagainst the cost of paper and ink?
It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how youdetermine the cost of your ebook.
What should I charge for my ideas?

There are all different formulas and methods fordetermining the correct price for your ebook. Let'sbegin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution andmaximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawingcustomers to your business or service, or toestablishing the credibility of your reputation. Ifthis is your main goal, you should aim to keep yourprice on the low side. Some authors have even pricedtheir ebooks at a profit loss to draw a high number ofnew customers. The key is to find a price thatmaximizes your profits and the number of books yousell.
This is an excellent pricing strategy if you arelooking to acquire long-term customers. Long-termcustomers are extremely likely to buy from you againand again ? as long as the first ebook they buy is ofexceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable ? and moreimportantly 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 outwhat your audience's need is for your ebook. Forexample, does your book solve a particular problem? Ifit does, and solves it in a way that hasn't beenwritten about in one hundred other ebooks, you will beable to achieve high sales at a high price. If yourbook solves a problem or answers questions in a newand unique way, you should price your book as high asyou can go. You will achieve larger profits this way,but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure thequestion or problem that your book solves is one thatis important and relevant to the majority of yourmarket audience. If your ideas are not commonknowledge, or you are presenting a brand newtechnique, you will be able to sell books at a highprice. Just be prepared for your competition toundercut you on price as soon as they hear about yourbook.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy istemporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books atthis high price. So figure out in advance how long youplan to offer your ebook at this high price, and whenthat 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 solutionsto their problems at a low price. If your book isaimed at solving one particular problem rather thangeneral advice, then you can charge more. Start at thehighest price the market will bear to bring in thelargest profits, and plan to discount the book anumber of times throughout the year.

Marketing Strategies

The key that unlocks the sales potential of your ebookis to find a single sentence that becomes your sellinghandle. This sentence states what question or problemyour book answers and the benefits your ebook canprovide. Then be sure to use that sentence in everypiece of sales and promotional material, and everytime anyone asks you about your ebook.
Besides promoting your books assiduously online, thereare several other strategies that can help you sellmore books.

One is to give something away for free with your book,such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle severalebooks under one price, which lowers the price foreach ebook if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is tosend out a survey to your current customers. If thesecustomers have already bought an ebook from you, askfor their opinion in terms of price. Do this bycreating a sales page for the new book, but don'tinclude a price on that page. Instead, add a number oflinks to survey questions that ask pointed questionsto aid you in assigning a price to your ebook.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating anumber of duplicate sales pages with different priceson each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly thesame on every page, and includes your selling-handlesentence. Then figure out for each page the conversionratio between visitors to your site and sales of yourbook. This will tell you what your optimum price is.
Ultimately, if you've written a book that solves aproblem or presents a new technique, your book willbring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to writethat selling-handle sentence that sums up what problemyour book solves and what the benefits of your bookwill be to the customers who purchase it. And thenwatch your market come to you!

Why Write an eBook

Writing an ebook

Writing an ebook is an excellent income generating activity. The most effective ways of being successful at it would be discussed in a few upcoming posts.

Why Write an eBook

It's not true that everything that has been said hasalready been written. Since that unfortunate axiomcame into use, the whole universe has changed.Technology has changed, ideas have changed, and themindsets of entire nations have changed.

The fact is that this is the perfect time to write anebook. 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.Ebooks are a new and powerful tool for original thinkers with fresh ideas to disseminate informationto 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 writean exceptional ebook. You may be sitting at your computer staring at a blank screen wondering, "Why?Why should I go through all the trouble of writing myebook when it's so impossible to get anything published these days?

Well, let me assure you that publishing an ebook 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 whyyou 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 shirt24/7. No matter how good your book actually is, or how many critique services and mentor writers have toldyou 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 outself-publishing and found out just how expensive aventure 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. Somepresses' minimal run starts at 1,000 to 2,000 copies.And that's just for the printing and binding. Add indistribution, 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 aquality 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 orservice.

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 andexperience. An ebook is the perfect way to reach the largest audience of bonsai enthusiasts.

Ebooks 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 mayeven find that you have enough to say to warrant aseries of ebooks. 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 ofthe ebook scene. You may want to build a whole business around writing and publishing ebooks.Essentially, you want to start an e-business. You are thinking of setting up a website to promote and market your ebooks. Maybe you're even thinking of producing an ezine.

One of the most prevalent reasons people read ebooks is to find information about how to turn their Internet businesses into a profit-making machine. Andthese people are looking to the writers of ebooks to provide them with new ideas and strategies because writers of ebooks are usually people who understand the new cyberspace world we now live in. Ebook writers are experts in Internet marketing campaigns and the strategies of promoting and distributing ebooks. The cyberspace community needs its ebooks to be successful so that more and more ebooks will be written.

You may want to create affiliate programs that will also market your ebook. Affiliates can be people or businesses worldwide that will all be working to sell your ebooks. 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 avoid that your ebook might fill.

What about an ebook about a wedding cake business? Oran ebook about caring for elderly pets? How about thefine points of collecting ancient pottery?

You don't have to have three masters degrees to writeabout your subject. People need advice that is easy toread and easily understood. Parents need advice fordealing with their teenagers. College students need tolearn good study skills - quickly. The possibilities are endless.

Getting your ebook out is going to be your focus once you've finished writing it, just as it is with printbooks. People will hesitate to buy any book from anauthor 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 andgetting your name out. You will find affiliates whowill ask you to place their links within your ebook,and these affiliates will in turn go out and make yourname known. Almost every single famous ebook author has started out this way.

Another powerful tool to attract people to your ebook 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 outquestionnaires, 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 forbooks in print as it is for ebooks.

That's why ebooks 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.