Inbound Marketing is the new online revolution which draws consumers to your business by providing useful information. E-books used to be consumed only through desktop computers, but now their portability (made possible by the e-readers) has made E-books an even bigger player in the overall picture.
Though paperback sales still outnumber both E-Book and hardcover sales, Amazon recently reported that sales of E-books now outnumber sales of hardcover books. Which means that E-book technology is gaining a hefty following and is here to stay.
Publishing Ease
The laws of Inbound Marketing decree that information be free if possible, but there are some instances where selling your information makes more sense. If you have whitepapers or other downloadable PDFs, you know how much time and effort it takes to create those documents – which is exactly why many businesses are looking to sell their information online and recoup some of their expense. If the rise of online E-book publishers is any indication, many business-to-business authors are taking advantage of this new stream of income and you can too.
Here are a few E-book publishers that make it easy:
Why Publish When You Can Download?
PDF downloads still dominate the web, and in a lot of cases shorter documents are still well suited to the PDF format. Most E-book readers can read PDF documents, but the functionality that makes E-book readers so easy to read on is often lacking – like the ability to increase the size of the text, make notes and highlights, and dictionary look-up. PDF documents are still very much tied to the PC screen, whereas developing content that is easily portable could mean a higher increase of readership for your materials.
If you don’t want to charge for downloads, but you still want the perks of E-book reader publishing, you’re in luck. Most of the publishers don’t require you to sell your books. Instead of a revenue share, you simply pay a small monthly fee.
Marketing With E-books
Simply browsing through any of the above publisher sites will open your eyes to marketing opportunities that you may not have thought of before. Many publisher’s sites are regularly scanned by search engines, and have high traffic. Both of these characteristics are huge benefits when trying to market your business through content.
Don’t forget calls to action! While your content maybe be indexed and read through these publishing sites, it’s critical to drive your interested prospects back to your website where you can nurture the lead.
How are you marketing with content? We’d love to hear all the ways you’re using content to drive new business and sales for your company.
About the author: Jeune Ortiz is VP of Marketing and Creative Director at future-ink. With more than 20 years of experience in graphic design and marketing, Jeune brings extensive knowledge and creativity to each website and internet marketing solution to grow your business.
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1 Comment
Laura Ryan | July 30, 2010
This is great information, thanks for the tips! I’ve been toying with the idea of doing an ebook for ages, but I never really had a grasp on the whole process. This article has inspired me, and when I finish writing, I’ll be calling you guys to help me get my new ebook onto my site!