Write e-books for profit
Before I explain how you can make money writing e-books I think we should first take a look at what they are.
An e-book is essentially an electronic book, a book written and published online. This means there is no printed or published copy of the book in the conventional sense on paper or some other printing material.
E-book authors make their money from the sale of the online publication that has to be downloaded to another computer or electronic device capable of displaying it for reading. Most authors charge a fee for the download of their e-book and that is how they earn their income.
Writing e-books can be a perfect regular source of extra income that can continue to generate a stream of revenue for years and by adding more and more e-books to your catalog, you can find yourself with a great part-time wage even in your retirement.
Publishing contracts are hard to come by in conventional book publishing which has pushed many new writers into the self-publishing alternative. For decades writers have used what are commonly called ‘vanity presses’ to print their books, which are expensive for the author and due to the expense, may limit the press run of a title.
With e-books the majority of the cost is eliminated and with online marketing it is actually easier to make money. For example, Amazon sells more e-books than hard copy books annually and last year alone Kindle sales were greater than one-million e-books a week.
Publishing giant Random House has also seen the shift to digital books with more than twenty-percent of their revenue last year coming from e-books. Because of this more and more independent writers are able to get published and reach an audience that would never have been possible without the digital revolution and popularity of e-books.
While all of this may make you think you can quickly tap out an e-book on the first thing that comes to mind and flip it into a best seller, think again. But there are ways to research and discover what kinds of e-books sell and how to work your way into the electronic publishing world and earn a decent income as the latest digital author.
The first thing to do is to explore the Amazon Kindle section and note what e-books are selling and in order to find out why look at customer reviews and book descriptions to learn about what readers want and are looking for in a good e-book.
Once you have this information the next thing to do is try to identify an interesting niche to focus your titles on. For example, if sports e-books are selling, figure out what sports they are about. If it happens to be football, figure out what it is about football that is attracting readers. If it’s about Canadian football, then try to find a niche in Canadian football to write your first e-book about.
Keep in mind that the most profitable e-books are “how-to,” and sold typically sold on the author’s own web site, not at Amazon. The reason is simple – an author keeps 100% of the profits!
Mike Geary is a good example. He sells a simple ebook about how to get “six pack abs,” and grosses over one million dollars a year! Mike is not an isolated example either … there are hundreds of “niche” e-book authors who have found a profitable topic and written an e-book to help others master the topic.
While I’m not as fortunate as Mike Geary, my e-books (over ten so far!) are steady sellers, and bring in a good retirement income. One in particular, Keys To Alzheimer’s Prevention, has helped thousands of people around the world learn the simple steps to preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
If you’d like to take a closer look at my best-selling e-book, click here to see a free preview. To help as many folks as possible avoid this terrible disease, I’ve priced the Kindle e-book at just 99 cents on Amazon.com
Once you start writing your niche e-books, and in this example the overall niche would be football, stick to that general topic for the majority of your e-books. Just try to find things about football that haven’t been written about and that not only makes your e-books interesting and fresh, it makes them a great compliment to other football e-books written by other authors.
This can benefit you when readers are purchasing ‘bundles’ of e-books on a particular subject. When this happens, your e-book could easily end up in these bundles which bring you more revenue from indirect marketing. If you concentrate on writing within your selected niche you will eventually be viewed as an expert of sorts on that particular topic.
Once this happens you’ll find your e-books download sales continue to build and as long as you keep adding new titles to your catalogue on a regular basis you’ll find that those figures will continue to be steady.
Another trick to increase sales is to use one of your lesser selling e-books as a free bonus download when someone downloads your newest title. There are a lot of different ways to increase you e-book sales by using a bit of creativity.
Here are a couple of tips on niches that seem to sell well all the time. E-books on weight loss and dieting are always popular. Just remember to find a unique angle if you choose that niche. Business and investing e-books do well also. How-to topics have been popular long before e-books existed, and will continue to be a profitable area for knowledgeable authors who can help readers solve a problem. To find your perfect niche, simply do an internet search for “how to find a niche ebook idea.”