What Kind of an Ebook Would You Like to Buy?

You may not think of it that way, but believe it or not, it matters.

I'll grant that ebook creation isn't rocket science, but one thing remains true regardless. Your ebook and the quality of its production will reflect on you. While I'm not talking about sinking thousands of dollars of artwork into it, if you don't take the time to do some very basic things, then what?

What kind of opinion would you have of someone if you bought their ebook, and it had no formatting? What if it was written as though they had simply thrown text onto a page in whatever font happened to be set at the time? What if there were misspelling everywhere? What if the information it contained was too generic to be of any use? You did just pay money for it, and you're probably going to be irritated and disappointed.

You might or might not return it, but if you're like me, you'll stick it in the same directory where all of the other mediocre ebooks go and never look at it again. Then you'll sigh and forget its seller existed, because they were just one more drop in the large ocean of mediocrity swishing around on the Internet. You almost certainly wouldn't buy anything else from them again, and wouldn't think much of their upsells or being on their list.

Now, what if the person selling that ebook was you? You may well be making the very first impression a given customer has of you with it. You might be selling or giving away a small one as a loss leader or trust building tool so you could put someone on your list and sell to them later. Your back-end product might be expensive, so a lot of resistance softening work would be in order. In any case, you need to make a good impression with your ebook while you have the only chance you'll get at it.

Seriously, given all of this, isn't it worth taking the extra time to:

- Add an ebook cover?

- Write an extra draft or two, or at the very least, give it a thorough editing?

- Spell check?

- Make sure there was enough real, specific information to make buying it worthwhile?

It's more important than you may think. The next customer who buys your ebook could be the next responsive member of your list with plenty of disposable income. They could be the one who tells everyone who reads their blog how exceptional your information product is. Or, they could be the person that finds your work so lackluster they tell everyone they know to avoid it.

So the next time you're making an ebook, answer this question first: What kind of an ebook would you like to buy? Your customers are people too, and they don't want junk either.