The eBook Revolution is Here! Is it Passing You By?

We're half way through the month of November. That means we are also half way through the Write Nonfiction in November challenge. (You should be half way finished with your nonfiction project!) If for some reason you haven’t already chosen a nonfiction project to work on this month, or if you’re working on a book manuscript and want to consider a different format, think about producing an ebook. Ebooks are all the rage these days, and they represent a fast, affordable and profitable product for nonfiction writers in particular to write. You still have time to start and finish one before the WNFiN challenge ends.

While many traditional books can be read in on an ebook reader like the Kindle, ebooks are a special breed. They are shorter and often tend to highlight the author’s expertise—making them great for platform building, by the way! Additionally, they provide a great way to test market your longer books. You also can write a short “booklet,” which you can print and take with you when you speak (building platform each time you appear before an audience) and then turn it into an ebook, which you sell online and each time you lead a teleseminar (another great platform-building element). I’ve done this with several of the books I’m marketing to traditional publishing houses. (You can find the booklets and ebooks at www.purespiritcreations.com/store, if you’d like to see examples.)

I’ve asked Ellen Violette, The eBook Coach, and the creator of the Quick-Start 3-Day eBook Authoring Workshop, to participate in WNFiN again this year. She’s knows more than anyone else I know about writing and producing ebooks and successfully marketing them and using them to create a successful business.  Whether you only want to write ebooks, to use an ebook for platform building or test marketing or to use an ebook to garner the attention of an agent or publisher, she’s got the information you need to get started—and succeed in this niche.

The eBook Revolution is Here! Is it Passing You By?
By Ellen Violette

The ebook industry is exploding! Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble have all gotten into the act. And with the advent of the Kindle, Amazon’s e-reader, the whole landscape has changed. eBooks have arrived. They are no longer the poor cousin of traditional books.

But a lot of the conventional wisdom about ebooks hasn’t changed. You still hear people say books are more prestigious. And if you want to be an expert, they say write a traditional book; you need a book, because ebooks just aren’t the same.

Well, they are right about that. They are not the same, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t just as important in the digital age.  In fact, they are more important than books, because with publishing houses in trouble and book sales going down, ebooks have become THE growth industry in publishing. That’s where the action is, and that’s where the sales are.

Not only that, but the model has changed. Whereas before it was: Try to get a book deal, and, if that fails, get on the Internet and try to do it yourself with self publishing; then, if you can’t afford self publishing or as an afterthought, write an ebook. Now it’s: Write an ebook first, make a lot of money then decide if you even want to bother with a book—unless, of course, you are so successful that a publisher finds you and offers you an irresistible deal. Sound good?  I thought so!

In the past, authors were out of luck if they couldn’t get a traditional book deal, but now they have the ability to take control of their creativity and their finances with ebooks.  And, in fact, for people who really do want to be in the spotlight and get on the best-seller list ebooks are becoming a viable way of securing a book deal, as you can see from the example below.

Example: A few months ago I met body language expert, Janine Driver, and she told me that she got offered a $500,000 book deal because of her ebook.

By writing an ebook, Janine proved she could