Why eBooks are Ideal Products for Novice Self-Publishers
I’ve been messing around with ebooks for who knows how long. Most certainly since before the Web. From massive plain text files disseminated on BBSs (bulletin board systems) to DOS executables to even Windows Help files, I just had fun futzing around with all that “new media” stuff back then. Fun, yeah, but if a writer friend asked me whether ebooks were worth publishing in a business sense, it was plainly obvious they were no go’s.
That was then. Things are obviously majorly different now. So much so, in fact, that I think they’ve become the perfect “first product” for newbie self-publishers today. Off the top of my head, here are a few quick points why.
Product Development
- Relatively easy
- Cheap
- Quick
- Do-it-yourself or hire someone to do it for you (cheap too!)
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Business Issues
- No inventory
- Minimal (even laughable) capital requirement to start up and maintain
- Automated order processing and fulfillment
- Payment processing no longer an issue or a concern (PayPal)
- Again, DIY or pay someone else to build and handle operations for you (still fairly cheap)
You likely already know all the above. It’s the next group of points, though, that I think clinches it.
Flexibility and Growth
- Easy to convert to different electronic formats (e.g., Kindle) or even traditional book form (bulk print or POD) with minimal effort. Or sometimes even no effort at all if, say, you’ve already set up your PDF ebook in a way that printing presses can work off of immediately.
- With your “source” content already in digital form, you’re ready for any new e-publishing “thing” that pops up (e.g., Kindle again).
Even if what you really want is to see your work published as a traditional book (and, really — sorry trees — I think there’s very little cooler!), who said you can’t get there starting out publishing ebooks? You can probably even reason that you could get there because of them.
So, what’s stopping you? Of course I think I have a pretty good what is, but I’ll let all this simmer for now. Comment or question below. — EES
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