ebook book or printed?

[brettdurden]

I also am a newbie and just finished the book. I was thinking about creating a book of about 50 pages with some color photos and not sure which option to chose, ebook or creating a physical book. I realize that a physical book would bring up other factors such as shipping and inventory to say the least, but also think that from my prior ebook purchases that having something tangible you can refer back to is a better option.

Any help from someone who has researched this or had the experience would greatly help.

Thank you,
Brett

[Marcie]

I was planning to offer both to my customers, but what confuses me is pricing - would you expect to pay for the e-book and have the option to buy the hardcopy (+shipping), or buy the hardcopy and have the option to download the ebook for a small fee?

[Harold]

I've seen hardcopy plus a free download of the ebook, or each seperately for a fee. Have you considered that?

[Marcie]

Yeah, I just hate wasting trees :mad: I would prefer to offer the pdf for the "regular price" and make the hardcopy an additional, for that reason... but it seems to go against the status quo - I guess. Plus, as Brett said, hardcopies require less automation (more work). Hmmmm...

[neuromancer]

Ebook all the way. First reason is overhead. You make the book put it on the interwebs and all you have to do is host and sell it real books are nice and compact but a pain in the a$$ to produce. If you want someone to have ubiquitous access to the information create a phone ap version or phone ready web version of it.

Reason number 2 is immediate gratification. They buy it and it is in their hot little hands 30 seconds later.

More importantly than worrying about what format to produce, have you thought about market research? How easy is the market to get into? What does the competition look like? What is the need for the product? How can it be marketed?

I spent a lot of time putting the cart before the horse. I would come up with an idea and start production only to find out that the market is a pain to get into.

what you want to do is think about your market and what describes it then take those words and phrases and go to this site:
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends/

Type in the key words and phrases and see what it comes up with traffic wise.

I wouldn't think about generating a product until I was sure it was a market I could get into and make money from easily.

[brettdurden]

Thank you for you help. I've done some market research and there definitely looks to be a market. It's a sports team orientated training guide. From reading prior posts I know this shouldn't be my main concern but I'm a little worried about someone downloading the ebook and then sending it out to the entire team. I would like to get the information out there but not this way. Should I be worried about that or do ebook formats prevent this?

Going over The Muse chapters again it seems that the next step would be creating a website and actually seeing if the market materializes like I thought. Thanks again for the input.

Brett

[pecadillo]

I have done a bit of research on the "share the ebook with my friends" problem. There is a maker of ebook software that locks the files to your computer. "ebook gold" is the name. I own it and am just getting started with it. I will report as events unfold.

[brett]

I have been a user of eBook Pro. The plus is it is based on html and is easy to have someone else put the information together. Now the down to this is you can only have the compiler registered on one machine, so I still have to compile once the parts are ready, but this step is les than 3 minutes.

I have compiled a Video eBook as an example. The three videos cover traffic generation.

1. Making Money From Google Adsense
2. Getting Ranked Well In Search Engines
3. Driving Traffic to Your Site With Backlinks

Hope this helps in the evaluation.

The link is http://www.cubicleindependence.com/4hww

I am testing a new delivery method of the access codes, so you would be helping me by letting me know if you encounter any issues.

Thanks,

Brett

[James Grey]

Color pages will cost you big time – also places like clickbank will only except electronic products, so that means you have just lost out on a HUGE audience of buyers and thousands of potential affiliates that will sell your product for you

If you really want to use physical books then use a print on demand service – lulu.com is the best, they will print, process the order, and ship books one at a time.

With lulu you can also sell an ebook version of your book on the same page as your physical book so your customers can have a choice of a mailed printed copy or an instant ebook.

They will also sell and list your book in amazon.com and the other major online book stores

Here is an example of a book on lulu available in both formats (it’s not mine – I just grabbed it randomly):

http://books.lulu.com/content/85596

Be advised: if you are going to sell a printed copy of your book it will add around 500 bucks on to your budget for formatting, cover, listing, ect..

Good luck!


~James Grey