What do ebook sales have to do with my book writing? Quite a lot, actually: in the second half of this year I expect to be releasing no less than three books in ebook format – two for sale, and one for free.

Part of what I’ve been doing over the last year and a half or so has been becoming much smarter about the ebook market place, the changing shape of publishing, and internet marketing, and how all this comes down to something I can leverage to improve the reach and sales of my own works.

Along the way, I’ve learned some marketing strategies. I was recently talking to a friend who has a non-fiction book she is eager to get on the market. But publishing how-to is still rather arcane to her, and the book itself is not the length one would want to see in a print book.

Today I gave her some advice about the quickest way to get her excellent content out to her readership (she has people clamoring for the niche information she has in her book), and to create virtually instant sales, all while leaving herself free to continue to hone the book and decide later if it needs to be in print, or if ebook-land is its happy home.

After looking over what I shared with her, I thought I would share this here as well. Many of you who are readers are also writers, or have a book project in mind. I hope this information may be of assistance to you, or at least enlightening to non-writers who are curious how one form of the ebook sales machine works, practically speaking.

This is a strategy for selling non-fiction ebooks. It is just one of many. I’m not an expert in this field and I didn’t make this up – this approach is based on the work of others with proven publishing and sales experience in the field. There is a lot it doesn’t say, but hey, this is just intended to be a bare-bones, focused blog post, not a lengthy ebook publishing how-to. You can find those all over the place on the web these days. If you want more info in this vein, Google is your friend.

Nevertheless, if you like the short and quick version, here’s the strategy.

Preliminaries

The Up- and Down-Sides of Non-Fiction Ebooks in this strategy: They are not hard copy, can’t be ordered print-on-demand, and don’t even include an ISBN, so you can’t sell them in stores. They do not come in ebook formats other than pdf. On the other hand, they’re a great way to get your info out fast without a big production process. They facilitate instant sales, leave you free to improve and upgrade the book later when and as you have time. And because this strategy targets pdfs, you don’t need to mess around with arcane formatting for various ebook readers at this step in your sales plan.

Extra Benefits to this Approach: Ebooks sold according to this strategy also do these two killer things that can lead to long-term sales success for you:

1) It makes your book available to other people to sell. You get a cut of whatever they sell. The percentage is up to you, although around 50% to the affiliate seller is par for the course.  If you offer more (up to 70% is not unusual) you’ll get more takers. Yes, the affiliates are getting a lot of the book revenue, but on the plus side, they extend your reach to markets and buyers you could never find on your own, and a few capable resellers can create huge financial success for you.

and

2) This approach builds a mailing list for you that is golden and essential to have. It lets you stay in touch with your readership (send out one monthly how-to tip on it, relating to your book subject – people will love it, and buy your books when they want more). It is also an instant marketing channel when you want to let people know you have a new edition – or for that matter, other books for sale.

So, here, then, is,

The Three-Step Method for Commercial Non-Fiction Ebook Success

1. Open an account with Clickbank (www.clickbank.com). This enables you to upload and sell ebook products through their online system. Clickbank becomes your dispersing system for the books, and your banker: receiving payment from customers, sending them a secure download link for the ebook, and dispersing receipts to you. Their system has tutorials and walkthroughs and how-tos on how to do this, and a helpful support forum.

Opening a CB account is free. They keep a small % of sales revenue for their fee, so it’s ‘pay as you go’, relatively invisibly to you. Regarding pricing, see what competitors in comparable niches are charging on Clickbank (and how long their books are, for comparison’s sake. 60 to 100 pages is typical for an information product in ebook form these days). Price accordingly. If in doubt, price higher rather than lower – it’s always easier to lower the price, than raise it later.

One note: they require a 60-day money-back guarantee on information products (.pdfs), and you can expect some percentage of return (refunds). How much varies wildly depending on product and market. Some products in the adult marketplace have 30% or more returns; others, in niche information specialties, run 15% or lower. If you have a known community of buyers/readers (through professional associations, hobbyist groups, etc), you would not initially see many refunds because you’re selling where you and your product are known. But as your sales circles widen across the net, the refund percentage will increase. That’s not unusual. Count it as a cost of doing business.

2. Open an account with Aweber autoresponder service (www.aweber.com). An autoresponder manages mailing lists and lets you send out messages to the list. It can also automatically respond to subscribers with one or more pre-written emails (hence the “autoresponse” part of its description). For example, after people buy your book, this system could follow up with a “thanks for buying the book” note, and a freebie additional how-to tip or two. This creates good will and trust, encourages repeat business and word of mouth sales.

There is a fee for this service (about $20/month at the low end), but I believe the first month is either free or costs $1, so you can try it out for little or no expense. The first booksale or two will pay for Aweber for the month.

How Aweber Serves You in the Book Sale Process

People come to your site. Wherever you have a blurb about your book, also put an aweber widget right there and turn this into your gateway to the actual book sales page. (A more sophisticated approach is to have a direct landing page that is dedicated solely to your book, and the opt-in form. This results in even more sales, or “conversions” as the internet marketers call it.) Point being: to buy the book, people have to give you their name/contact info before they can actually place the order. I can’t stress how important this is to building long-term sales success. This info is collected in a mailing list managed by Aweber.

The result will look like one of those typical opt-in/signup forms: “Name” “Email.” You can define the text around the form, but it should say something like:

“Yes! I want a copy of Al Einstein’s ‘Warp Drives for Beginners: Build your own FTL Space Craft in 30 Days or Less!’

Name:
Email:
TO ORDER AL’S BOOK, [CLICK HERE] <(submit button)”

When buyers click, this form will both capture their name/email in Aweber, and send them off to the ClickBank order form. This happens because you will have entered the necessary url in the widget code. This can be auto-generated at Aweber, plugging in info you give it, and then you copy/paste it in your webpage html or Aweber form widget.

3. A “thank you for your order” Web Page

After the Clickbank transaction is done, CB can redirect visitors back to your website. You want this to happen (it’s better for creating returning customers). In this case, then, you will need to have a place for them to actually go after the sale is completed. Here’s where you create a “thanks for the order” page (which, later – if you want to get that fancy – you can also use to sell related products on.) Say whatever you like here, if it’s not an up-sell page.

Remember, too, this is a chance (possibly your last, in that moment) to build a relationship with your customers and readers. It’s a great place to offer a bonus product as a thank-you for buying the book, or share other information of value to the reader. Leave them going away with a pleasant experience and a sense of value received.

Done Deal

Your books are now flying magically out of the Clickbank store, your mailing list is growing for future sales use, and you are selling whatever you have right now as a book in pdf form.

Want to get your non-fiction ebook content out to the world quickly, with the minimum of fuss? That’s what I’d recommend.

The Caveat

The one big caveat here, of course, is that this whole approach assumes you have a quality ebook with valuable information to begin with. That means good info, well written, edited, proofread, and composed in a good, readable format in pdf.   If your product is not up to professional standards, make it so, or you will lose credibility with the buying public and have a higher rate of returns as well.

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I like this three-step strategy because it does not preclude you from creating a printed book, or other ebook formats: it just turns your present work-in-progress into an instantly marketable, purchasable item while you continue to expand the core book for other formats and markets. And best of all, the only real expense to you is the cost of Aweber. If you realize sales in the first month, then that has paid for itself by month #2.

And that concludes our whirlwind tour of the “Get It In Print Fast in a Way That Sells” strategy.

What are your experiences as a publisher or consumer of non-fiction ebooks? Likes/dislikes? Problems? Share your thoughts in the Comments below.

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