It’s been three months
since I attended the PSA conference in the U.K. and the CAPS
conference in Canada. And the NSAA conference in Australia
is just a few weeks away!
One of the neat things about attending conferences
is the chance to share ideas with other experts. And Gihan’s
Third Law of The Internet says, “For every expert, there
is an equal and opposite expert.”
At the CAPS conference, I had the chance
to talk at length with Dan Poynter – an expert on book
publishing, who also spoke at PSA – about e-book publishing.
Dan and I both presented sessions at a special workshop for
advanced speakers, and he then came to my breakout session
about e-books.
Dan and I have very different attitudes towards
e-books, which we had the chance to discuss in depth and resolve
in the Australian way (that is, over a couple of beers at
the end of the conference).
His basic concept is to make his printed
material available in as many formats as possible, so that
readers can choose the format that suits them best. So he
has published a number of e-books that are electronic versions
of his printed books, and he sells them at a lower price than
the printed version.
My e-book model is different. I would rather
create e-books that are different from any printed book, and
sell them at a much higher price than they would fetch in
printed form. For example, one of my e-books sells for about
£50, whereas a printed version of it would probably
only get about £8! Essentially, it involves selling
people on the value in the e-book rather than its size or
format.
You see, people do judge books by their cover,
so there’s a limit to what they will pay for a printed
book. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a trashy
novel, a John Harvey-Jones business book, or the Bible –
people will pay roughly the same price for it because it “looks
like a £8.99 book”!
On the other hand, they judge e-books by
their value. So you can charge what you like, as long as you
deliver value.
For example, would you pay £1,000 for
a one-page e-book? No? What if that one page had next Saturday’s
National Lottery numbers on it? When Robyn Henderson and I
created our CD product Write Profitable E-Books, we talked
about different ways of adding value to e-books – including:
Bonus e-books included in the package
A money-back guarantee
A certificate for a phone or e-mail consultation
An on-line course of supplementary material
A free ticket to a teleseminar on the subject
The possibilities are endless. It’s just a matter of
getting into the mind-set of value rather than cost.
I prefer my e-book model to Dan’s because
I think it’s easier to sell a few high-price products
than many low-price products. But Dan’s model can work
as well – it certainly does for him! So choose the one
that suits you best.
If you’d like to know more about
my model, I recommend that you get Write Profitable E-Books.
Even though I do say so myself, it’s an excellent way
of learning how to create high-value e-books from your existing
books or other information products.
About the Author:
:Gihan Perera is the author of "The Seven Fatal Mistakes That
Most Web Site Owners Make - And How To Avoid Them" and "Spin:
Turn One Idea Into Hundreds of Information Products". Visit
www.gihanperera.com
and get your complimentary copies now
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