Ebooks Bonanza – Boost your Writing Income with Ebooks

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(This article first appeared in this week’s issue of Fab Freelance Writing Ezine.)

Writing ebooks is lots of fun, and it’s very profitable too, if you sell those ebooks online yourself. Your ebooks can sell profitably for years to come. I know several writers who are making high six figures each year, just from a couple of ebooks.

Yes, the writers promote their ebooks extensively, but the ebooks enable them to live enviable lifestyles. One writer calls his ebooks his “retirement fund”, even though he’s many years from retirement.

In this article, we’ll consider how you can boost your freelance writing income by writing ebooks for yourself, rather than for others.

When you start writing ebooks, you can write them for others so you know how the process works – writing for others gives you valuable experience in: the selection of a topic, the style of an ebook, and of the writing experience itself.

I’ve been writing/ selling ebooks online for five years; I love it for the interaction I have with my customers, and for me, producing ebooks is much more fun than going the traditional publishing route, as I did for many years, when I wrote for major publishers.

There are essentially two types of ebooks you write for yourself: for promotion, and commercial – to sell.

Types of ebooks – promotional, and to sell

You’ll write two types of ebooks: as promotional tools for your writing business, and as commercial ventures.

Your promotional ebooks are part of the marketing process for your commercial ebooks. They tend to be short, anywhere from five to 20 pages.

Your commercial ebooks will be longer, up to 100 pages. I’ve found that for ebooks, 100 pages is the limit. Reading on a computer screen is stressful, and your purchasers will appreciate it if you give them the information as quickly as you can.

Long ebooks of 200 pages of padded information are just annoying to your customers: they want useful information delivered in an entertaining, actionable form.

How much to charge – proprietary information is worth more

Setting a price for their ebooks is difficult for writers, because most writers have zero business experience.

The key to charging is working out how much NEW information is in your ebook, and how much that information is worth to the purchaser. For example, many business sites sell ebooks in to $500 to $900 range, because the information is proprietary information they’ve gathered via research, and because the information is worth much more than the cost of the ebook to their purchasers.

Ask yourself: how much VALUE am I providing? If an ebook is just a rehash of information that’s available elsewhere, it’s worth less.

Promoting and selling your ebooks

Before you start writing your ebook, you’ll need to work out how you’ll sell it. The marketing is just as important as the writing process.

Will you advertise? Where? Will you send out press releases?

Each ebook is different, and your marketing processes will vary. I like to use a combination of blogs, press releases and advertising. Over time, you’ll discover what works for you.

So, get started today, and write an ebook. It will boost your income from your writing, and you’ll have a lot of fun too.

Get started writing and selling your own ebooks.

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