Make A Living By Selling E-Books

What Are E-Books

E-books are books that are not in traditional printed form. Instead, they are non-printed electronic books that can be downloaded to read on your tablet, laptop, smartphone, or computer.

The Money You Can Make By Selling E-Books

E-books are cheap to produce and can be sold for less price than physical books. They are available to read anywhere anytime on handheld devices. These are some of the reasons the e-book industry is growing rapidly.

According to Statista, there was an increase of 1.3 billion dollars in worldwide revenue of the ebook market making it a 16.1 billion dollar industry. The Statista digital market outlook estimates that it will continue to grow and reach 18.7 billion dollars by 2026. You can also get a slice of it.

E-books typically sell between $0.99 to $9.99, you can alter the price to test its performance but the best price for your work depends on its quality, length, competition, and reviews. You can price your first ebook at a low rate and when you have made some authority you can charge more for your future work.

You can easily make $1000+ a month if you work consistently and keep creating amazing ebooks.

How To Create High Quality E-Book

Choose A Popular Topic For Your E-Book

Choosing an ebook topic is a crucial factor in deciding whether people will buy it or not. Ideally, you should write on a topic that interests you or you are an expert in that field. Your audience will be able to tell if you are passionate about your topic or not and it will be much easier for you to write. If your ebook solves someone’s problem people will buy it.

Also, consider the market trends and what are bestselling topics. Check out the bestselling ebooks on Amazon KDP or use tools like Semrush, and Google Trends to find trending topics. You can also ask people on forums like Quora or Reddit.

Write High Quality Content

Your ebook must provide value to the buyers. The content should be of high quality, making you an authority in that field and it will help you sell future ebooks. It will allow you to sell your ebook at a higher price and your readers will recommend it to others also.

You can write the ebook yourself or you can hire someone to write the ebook for you. These writers are called ghostwriters and it is a common practice in the book publishing industry. You can find some nice writers on platforms like Fiverr or Upwork.

If you run a blog, then those blog posts can be turned into a nice ebook. You just need to do some editing and repurpose those blog posts into a valuable ebook.

You can also republish a public domain book. These are books whose copyrights have expired. Anyone can use the content of those books. You can take some old evergreen work of Shakespeare and modify it to give a modern look or you can twist that content.

Proofread Your E-Book

Either you write your ebook or you hire a ghostwriter to write it. Don’t forget to proofread it. Check for any grammatical mistakes, misspellings, and text flow before publishing. Hire a professional proofreader if required. An ebook full of errors will portray you as an unprofessional writer among your readers.

Write A Catchy Title For Your E-Book

Choose a title that clearly shows the reader what’s inside the ebook. Brainstorm title ideas and come up with a title that grabs the buyer’s attention. Prefer a title that is short, catchy, and to the point. If you find some nice titles and are confused about choosing one, you can split-test them and choose the one that performs better.

Create A Professional Cover And Layout

The appearance of your ebook matters. Give your ebook a professional layout and create a good-looking outer cover. Hire a graphic designer to design your ebook cover and a professional for setting layout. You can find good designers on sites like Fiverr. Investing a little amount in an ebook cover can give you better results.

If you are tight on budget and want to design it yourself, you can use Canva. It is a free platform with amazing pre-built templates.

Selling Your E-Book

At this point, you have created a valuable digital asset in form of an ebook. Now it is time to sell it. There are a couple of ways to sell your masterpiece.

E-Book Publishing Platforms

Many publishing platforms allow you to publish your ebook. They provide you with space to showcase your ebook among potential buyers searching for new titles. They handle everything from displaying your book to managing the cash. However, they take a small percentage from each sale.

Some of the best publishing platforms include Draft2Digital, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Smashwords, Lulu, etc.

Alternatives Of Publishing Platforms

Publishing platforms are an easy way to sell your ebook to a prebuilt customer base but you will have to give commissions. If you decide to sell your ebook outside publishing platforms, you can keep the whole profit without paying commissions to these platforms.

You can sell ebooks from your website or blog. Amazon KDP or other publishing platforms doesn’t allow you to capture a buyer’s email address. By selling your ebook on your website, you will get their email address. You can promote and sell your future ebooks by emailing them.

Another tip to capture email addresses is to offer something on the starting pages of your ebook that you publish on Amazon KDP and mention your website link that will direct them to your website. Amazon allows buyers to see the first few pages before purchasing. Either they peek into your book or purchase it, and they will be redirected to your website. In this way, you will get their email address.

Market Your E-Book

It takes time and effort to create a valuable ebook. But it is worth investing some more time marketing your ebook to get the most out of it.

You can market your ebook for free on social media. Create professional social media accounts on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and start marketing your ebook. You can also go for paid options like Facebook and Youtube ads or Amazon PPC if you want. Investing in paid advertisement can give you an amazing return.

Closing Words

Creating a nice ebook requires a lot of effort and hard work. However, that hard work pays off when you start getting sales. You can drive more sales by publishing a series of ebooks making you an authority in that field.

You can easily make a living by selling ebooks if you work hard and remain consistent.

Originally published on Medium