What Precisely is an Electronic Book or an E-book?

An e-book or electronic book is a completely electronic version of a book. It is available only on your computer. Generally it is downloaded from a website. This could be on the author’s own website, on an e-book directory, from a sales page, or from a bookstore like Amazon.

I call an e-book and intangible information product or info-product. You have no paper. You haven’t killed any trees. You have no production, printing, or publishing costs. It’s just electronic bits of information. And the cool thing is, while you not only have no production costs, the reader and purchaser of your e-book will be paying you a fee (unless you offer it for free as a promotional tool) and the reader also pays the cost of paper and ink if they print it out.

Most e-books are sold for anywhere between $7 and $77 depending on the length of the book, the content’s perceived value, and the promotional efforts of the author. For example, a 30-page e-book would cost less than a 150-page e-book. E-books come in all sizes, so don’t feel it has to be a certain length. If your topic is very specific and you only want to offer a certain amount of information, keep it short. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to overwhelm the reader, or it’s because you want to offer follow-up products with more detail for future sales.

Additionally e-books can be offered for free in an promotional effort known as viral marketing. This means that if you give the e-book away, you can obtain the person’s e-mail address, and then you can add them to your mailing list so you can stay in touch and offer them more products that will have a cost. Also, free e-books may get passed around to others as people share them with friends and associates. You will wisely have some links in the e-book that link back to your website where you have offers for other products or services that cost money. The reader of your free e-book may then want to purchase something from you if they enjoyed your e-book. So they will then be a customer of yours, you can continue to market to them, and you have made a profit on the product they bought. All by offering your e-book for free.

You can also do joint ventures with your e-book, that is offer it to another Internet marketer who needs a bonus item when they are selling their product. I’m sure you’ve seen the long list of bonuses that a lot of Internet marketing gurus provide when they are selling their product. It’s usually near the end of a long sales letter. When the customer purchases their product, if they want to get your free e-book as a bonus, they have to give you their e-mail address. So now you have more names for your mailing list and that many more people you can continue to market to.

 E-books can be prepared in a variety of file formats, but the most popular one is a PDF file. This is a universal e-book format that is compatible on every type of computer and every type operating system. You can obtain PDF programs for free online, then just download them. You write your e-book in Word, then save it as a PDF. showMedia('eBayPowerSellerStrategies3-31-05.pdf', 'eBay PowerSeller Strategies') To view a PDF e-book, the reader needs to have the Adobe Reader on their computer, but most people do and if they don’t they can get it for free at www.adobe.com. You might want to find a graphic designer to design a flat cover for your e-book and then a 3-D cover to use on your sales page.
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