Should You Publish in Print or Electronic Format - or Both?

Once you've decided to create a booklet or special report, you need to
decide whether you will be offering the text in printed form or as an
electronic download - or in both ways. Do not use your personal
preferences or values as your sole criterion (e.g., "I like having
something printed and substantial when I pay money for something" or
"Anyone who doesn't understand that paper is obsolete isn't worth selling
to").

Why not? It may turn out that your preferences aren't as widely shared as
you think they are. And there may be important practical considerations
that you haven't factored in yet. Before making your final decision on
this question, consider these points:

* Perceived value may be higher for a tangible item than for a downloaded
one, particularly if the product is durably and attractively bound.

* On the other hand, a download may offer much higher perceived value
because the information is thereby immediately available.

* Printed and bound information may be less likely to get copied and
redistributed than a download that is not copy protected.

* Your target market may not feel comfortable with the process of
downloading files, or may have so many technical problems opening and
reading the download that the customer service headaches quickly mount up.

* If you want to provide another kind of item along with text, such as
audio or video tapes, a print catalog or an object, such as a
calculate-your-mortgage wheel or meatloaf pan, the print format makes more
sense.

* When it would be nice for people to be able to click on Web addresses
right from your text, a download may seem like the optimal choice.

* Fraud rates for downloadable products are very much higher than for
products that get sent by mail.

* You can gather a valuable, valid postal mailing list when selling
tangible items to be shipped or mailed, but addresses are less reliable for
download sales.

Now let me say a little more about a few of the factors above.

First, fraud is indeed a very serious problem for products bought and
received immediately online. Not only does the merchant almost always get
stuck with a loss when a customer disputes an online charge, if the rate of
"chargebacks" - sales reversed because of customer protest - gets too high,
the merchant can lose his or her credit-card processing account and find it
next to impossible to secure another one. On the other hand, established
third-party digital download services have address checking and fraud
detection procedures in place that may not be as available to individual
merchants.

Second, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files can be copy protected by the creator with
several security options available. For example, you can set up a file to
allow someone to read but not print, read but not copy and paste to another
application, download but not create a copy of the file or not allow the
file to be e-mailed to another computer. However, such restrictions
sometimes do more harm than good by annoying or even enraging honest users
who find themselves unable to make fair use of the material for which they'
ve paid. For instance, they may download a file at work and then be unable
to send it to their home computer, which is where they would have
downloaded it to begin with if they'd had high-speed Internet access there.

Third, don't underestimate the difficulties both novice and experienced
computer users may have in downloading files and accessing that
information. Nancy Hendrickson, co-author of a genealogy e-book, had to
stop offering her e-book as a PDF file because customers had a multitude of
difficulties:

* The buyer couldn't figure out where the saved file was on their computer.

* The buyer couldn't figure out how to open the PDF file (even if they
already had Adobe Reader installed on their system).

* Those without Adobe Reader couldn't figure how to download and install
it.

Even after including in the "thank you for your purchase" message a
detailed "here's how to download and run the file" note, Hendrickson
continued to get complaints from almost 25% of her customers. She and her
coauthor then converted the e-book to a self-executing .exe file and
complaints fell off to almost nothing. However, her e-book is now not
available at all to customers with Mac computers.

If you're tempted to dismiss her experience because your customers are
technically sophisticated, more knowledgeable or adept computer users,
consider my experience: I've been online since 1994, have purchased and
downloaded several e-books or special reports and have never been able to
figure out why hyperlinks that are supposed to be able to transport me from
a page in a PDF file to the corresponding Web page don't do anything when I
click on them. I've also downloaded a few PDF files that were practically
unreadable because I didn't have the font in which they were created.

I don't say this to dismiss the potential of downloaded content. On the
contrary, I love getting an e-mail notifying me that someone has bought one
of my digital products without any intervention on my part. Just realize:
This is not a trouble-free medium, and be prepared for technical problems
and complaints.

In this light, perhaps the best option is to offer both print and digital
versions, so that people can select the medium that fits their needs and
capabilities. When one of my colleagues offered print, PDF and both print
and PDF versions, about 15 percent chose "both"!