If you’re in business then you’re undoubtedly an expert at something. Why not a course in miracles your profits by selling your knowledge in the form of an e-book?
What are you really good at? Marketing Bookkeeping? Customer Services? Design? Do you know lots about building up a successful business? Maybe you’ve gone wrong once and had to start again and could give others advice that would help them avoid the mistakes you made?
Everybody in business has valuable knowledge that could be passed on to others – knowledge that others are willing to pay for.
While it’s true that a lot of e-books have fallen flat on their face, those that are successful are often very successful.
The ones that don’t sell well are those where the author has tried to emulate the kind of book that does well in print. The two media simply aren’t competitive. They compliment one another and to be successful, it’s important that your e-book is the kind that suitable for Internet marketing.
An e-book should contain far less information that would be the case if the book were being written for print media. Just cut straight to the point without any dilly-dallying around with information that isn’t strictly necessary.
If you’re writing a book about book-keeping, while a chapter covering the history of book-keeping would possibly go down well in a printed book, keep it out of an e-book. While it’s possible to touch on the subject, in a paragraph perhaps, remember that your readers will want practical information – nothing else.
Always bear in mind that e-books are promoted through the Internet and 90 percent of those who log on are looking for information.
You’re far more likely to be successful if you carefully target your audience.
If you’re writing about bookkeeping, don’t write about bookkeeping in general but decide which group you’re going to write for. Small business? Start-ups? Limited companies? There’s nothing stopping you writing for each group but write a separate e-book for each. You’ll sell far more that way.
Decide on your target audience and give them in-depth, useful information and you’ll soon be enjoying a nice, regular income from something that took surprisingly little time to write.
Except where strictly necessary, always use plain English when writing. Although you may understand common industry words and phrases, don’t assume that your reader does.
