In his “Book Marketing Tip of the Week,” John Kremer writes that Amazon.com sold more digital books than printed books for the first time in its history, on Christmas Day 2009.
It’s a sign of the times, folks. E-books are now considered mainstream, and most royalty publishing houses are offering electronic, as well as print versions of the books they publish.
The thing I like best about e-books is their ease of delivery. At the Florida Christian Writers Conference last week, I brought three books I’ve written:
- The Adoption Decision
(royalty published)
- The Adoption Network
(custom published with WinePress Publishing)
- Blogophobia Conquered (self-published e-book)
Guess which book sold like hotcakes?
My e-book.
Granted, I was teaching workshops on branding and social media marketing, so conferees gravitated toward the how-to blog book. But I also made it easy for them to purchase Blogophobia Conquered.
- I saved a dozen copies of my e-book onto CDs (I discovered it helps make your e-book feel more “real” when people can purchase something tangible), and those sold out in the conference bookstore.
- I handed out fliers with a “conference special” price on my e-book, and some people paid me directly cash or checks. In return, I immediately e-mailed them their e-book.
- Others preferred to wait until after the conference and pay via PayPal.
Hauling CDs coast-to-coast definitely lightened the load of my checked-in suitcase (it was still 49.7 pounds!). And people can read e-books from their computer monitor, their electronic book reader, or they can print a hard copy.
Whether you’re a budding author or a multi-published author, you should seriously consider publishing in e-book form. E-books aren’t the wave of the future anymore; they’ve the wave of the present.
Let’s discuss this in more depth. Have you published an e-book? What has been your experience, both pro and con?
