Guest Post by Evelyn Bourne, ProductivePen.com
Ebooks, or electronic books have been popular in the world of Internet marketing for years, but recently, with the exponential growth of electronic ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook, ebook sales have surpassed sales for hard cover books as the price for these ebook readers drops making them more affordable to a wider audience. The Kindle app, which is available on PCs, smartphones and tablets makes it possible to read Kindle titles without even needing to purchase the Kindle ebook reader device.
This represents an amazing opportunity for content publishers to gain a wider audience for their ebooks. It also represents a great opportunity for writers who are looking to get their books published and into the hands of readers.
If you have already created ebooks and you are selling them from your website, you can easily convert that content to the Kindle ebook format and offer them for sale in the Kindle marketplace. Amazon will take a percentage of the sale, but it works out great because you do not have to worry about generating traffic, dealing with customer service issues, or shipping books.
Another avenue for writers and content publishers is the Kindle Single, which is for shorter works from 10,000 to 30,000 words. Amazon describes a Kindle Single as, “a compelling idea – well researched, well argued, and well illustrated – expressed at its natural length.” Kindle Singles offer writers the chance to get their not-quite-booklength works out there so that they can find their audience. This is a new format and it will bear watching to see how popular these Singles turn out to be.
In addition to creating and selling your ebooks on Amazon, you can also sell subscriptions to your blog. Amazon will sell the subscription at either $.99 or $1.99. Subscribers can then access your blog directly on their Kindle as they are automatically delivered wirelessly with offline access to your blog posts.
Because of the rising popularity of the ebook format, there will be steeper competition for readers. Writers and publishers will need to create compelling titles and market them effectively in order to gain visibility in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
The first step for getting your content published and available on the Kindle platform is to open a free account at, kindlepublishing.amazon.com. After you set up your account there are tutorials and support forums inside that will help you to get your book properly formatted, uploaded and available for purchase.
Do you have ebooks that have been languishing on your site that could benefit from the additional exposure of the Kindle marketplace? Do you have an idea for an ebook that you’d like to publish, but don’t have the time or the desire to write it yourself? I have ghostwritten and published several titles for my clients on the Amazon Kindle, and I’d be glad to help you convert your existing ebooks to Kindle and get them uploaded and available for sale, or I’d be happy to discuss writing an ebook for you that you can publish on Kindle.
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Agree that proper format for e-books is important as e-book formatting is different than it is for most print books. Marketing, marketing, marketing . . . is also key to e-book success (but that applies to print books as well).
Kudos Sista Sense on receiving a mention in Essence!
Denise
writemoneyinc.com