Since one of our main businesses helps you create your own signature digital information product, most of the questions we field involve finding ideas, choosing topics, producing and then launching digital information products like ebooks, reports, digital manuals, etc…
However, everyone who is serious about marketing their own ebook or digital product needs to HAVE and OFFER their own physical (printed) version of their product.
Why?
- Many customers will ask you if they can get your ebook in printed format — as great as digital ebooks are, some of your top customers will still badly want to get your ebook in a physical format
- Customers will want to gift your book to someone else and they feel better about sending them a printed copy than a digital copy. Why not…that means more sales for you.
- Publicity – if you follow the marketing plan over at InfoMarketer’sZone you will get more traffic, more attention and you will be asked to be interviewed or even to speak at small or large gatherings, classes or seminars…here you want printed versions of your books to showcase your product in front of the camera and to make back-of-the-room sales
- Personalized Versions – when we made our first ebook available in a printed format many years ago we never had planned to send out signed versions to our clients, but it became a really cool promotional tool when we did
- Thud Factor – once we had a few books written in our space we would run bundled specials where they could get 3 of our titles for the price of two, we still made huge margin and they received a nice box that had some THUD factor to it…the value of your products goes way up in that situation
- More Credibility. When you create your marketing graphics, videos and product shots it makes you look that much more professional when you can take a picture of your printed books sitting on your desk or in your hands
- Attract Partners/Affiliates – Nothing beats being able to mail out a copy of your printed book to a potential partner or affiliate, when they have the option of selling hundreds of other ebooks and yours is the only book they get physically in their hands, you have jumped to the front of the line in their promotions
So How Do You Print Small Runs Of Your Ebook?
At one time, your only option was a small-run publisher where you still had to print 500 books at a time and buy them up front, fortunately today you may many other great options at your disposal allowing you to order 1, 10 or 500 printed copies of your books and getting listed on major book retailer sites alongside some of the big-name published works.
Two of our favorite are CreateSpace and Lulu
- CreateSpace: A subsidiary of Amazon (you can imagine that provides an advantage right there), CreateSpace has become a very simple way to take your MS Word or PDF ebook version, select your book size, design a cover, edit your work and produce printed titles. The great part of publishing with CreateSpace is that you get access to the Amazon.com store and Amazon Europe included in the standard royalty calculation with no setup fees. An example of the royalty structure: Black & White Interior, 6X9 Trade Paperback, 100 pages you set the price at $27, for each sale you keep $14.05 in royalties (just more than 50%) and about half that if you activate expanded distribution which makes your book available to a far more broad group of retailers including bookstores, libraries, educational institutions, etc… CreateSpace is by far our favorite place to do short-run, self-publish ebook to print copies of our books
- Lulu.com: Around even before CreateSpace came out, Lulu has a loyal self-publishing customer and user base. Lulu acts as both a fulfillment and distribution function through their GlobalReach Distribution agreement at the same cost as you determine on their website. For example, to publish the same 6X9 Trade Paperback at 100 pages it will cost you just over $6 (slightly less at higher volumes than 1) which allows you to keep a little more in your pocket than CreateSpace, however there are some distribution advantages on Amazon with CreateSpace as your title will be listed faster (6-8 week lag with Lulu) and it will show In-Stock rather than “Ships within X Days” Lulu also provides more stringent distribution guidelines here, due to the fact that they leave that up to you, the self-publisher rather than doing it themselves.
The instructions to turn your report or ebook into a printed book are so straightforward and so simple these days, there is no excuse for any one of us not to have our own paperback or hardcover books to help brand and kick-off a new profit center in our lives.
