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Right now is the perfect time to write more ebooks. The industry is booming—with more readers, more ereader devices, and younger readers discovering it’s cheaper to read on their smart phones than go to the local bookstore. Hard copy will probably always be around because many readers love holding a real book, but the majority of your would-be readers have probably adapted to the times and shifted their reading tendencies to ebooks. Even a lot of the holdouts are giving electronic books a try.
Here are 7 great reasons why you should consider writing more ebooks.
Product, Image, and Brand
Writing ebooks gives you more power over how frequently your audience hears from you, the material they read, and the rate at which they read it. If you’re working on an ebook series, you can release all three books at once or at intervals, and your audience will always be there to let you know when the majority of them are ready for the next installment. Additionally, your target audience will begin to associate your ebook presence with the kind of brand you’re trying to tailor.
More of the Pie
With an ebook, you’ll receive more of the money from sales than you would in print. Hard copy books have the overhead cost of printing, which cuts into your profit. This is true even for print-on-demand books.
For example, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, or KDP (which is replacing CreateSpace publishing), estimates that if you sell a 184-page, black and white book for $8.99, your royalty after printing fees and your distributor’s cut will be $2.34. That’s only about 26% of your books sales price. On the other hand, if you sell an ebook through Amazon, you get 35% royalties if your book is less than $2.99, or 70% royalties, minus delivery charges, if your book is $2.99 to $9.99. So on a $8.99 ebook (which, by the way, is really too high for an ebook, unless you’re an extremely well-known author), you’d subtract the delivery fee (we’ll estimate $0.06), then take 70% to get $6.25 in royalties. In fact, you could sell this theoretical ebook at $3.99 and still make more royalties off of it than you would with your hard copy through CreateSpace ($2.73).
Publish Faster and More Frequently
Writers who write more ebooks tend to earn more and write more, as long as they’re focused. There aren’t as many costs that go into preparing an ebook as there are with preparing a print book, and many authors learn how to create their own ebooks. Additionally, if you ever find a typo in your ebook (and you will, or one of your readers will—it’s a fact of life!), you can easily fix the typo and republish.
This speedy publication process can be especially necessary for writers who are trying to publish while their information is still relevant. Books on current topics really need to be published quickly, before the subject of their material goes out of season. Traditional processes can sometimes take up to two years in publication time.
Accessibility
Your ebook can reach millions of readers worldwide who otherwise would never have known your title existed. And marketing an ebook to these readers is easy—you can simply discount your ebook for a limited time to encourage new readers to buy, something you can’t do for a print book. New readers are more likely to take a chance on the ebook version of a new book and save their money for hard copies of books written by authors they already know they love.
Market and Sell on Your Own Website
Bookstores take a commission from every title they sell, and that’s money that isn’t coming back to you. If you’re with a traditional publisher, your publisher gets a piece and your agent gets a piece. In the end, that’s a lot of pieces and very little pie left for you. An ebook, on the other hand, is something you can market and even sell directly on your own website. You could also offer a free ebook to readers who sign up for your newsletter (a subscriber or reader magnet), which is something that you can’t do with print books.
Position Yourself as the Authority
There are many authors who are experienced at something, or knowledgeable in a way that no other writer may be, but because of their narrow target audience, not many traditional publishers are going to want to publish these authors’ books. However, with an ebook, you can easily self-publish your book (but still hire an editor!) and establish yourself as the authority on the subject.
When people are curious, they’ll turn to their ebook retailers and only find you, and often they’ll want more on the topic(s) in which you’re versed. In this way, you expand your target audience and promote your name and your book, as well as create demand for more material. If you’re great at something and want to write about it, this is a project you can do quickly and profitably.
Write More Ebooks, Earn More
Not only will writing ebooks add another revenue stream to your other writing/day jobs, or to your hard copy sales, but it will also give you access to a growing audience who’s reading your material and wanting more. This means that the more you write, the more your audience will buy and then continue to expand. Authors who do well in the ebook niche often have multiple titles and other projects in the works—and all of these books and projects they can add to their websites for marketing and for sale. Some authors even receive income from speaking engagements and consulting work, all because people have read an ebook and been interested in the brain behind it.
These are just a few reasons out of many that writing ebooks is a smart decision. Hard copy books haven’t gone the way of the dinosaur, and we doubt they ever will completely, but having an ebook copy of your book available for sale is a smart decision and doesn’t cost much to prepare.
Do you have any questions or insights about why it’s a good idea to write more ebooks? We’d love to hear in the comments below!
Great advice! I agree. 🙂