Would you like to achieve ebook success and stand out from the crowd? In this interview with Jim Kukral, you’ll find tips on how to market eBooks successfully. Some tips will surprise you!
Jim Kukral is a best-selling author and top Internet entrepreneur. He teaches the Internet Marketing Certificate program at the University of San Francisco and is one of the top experts on Ebook marketing.
The following interview is with Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of WritetoDone.
Mary: What is the biggest barrier that stops people from writing books?
Jim: There’s a lot of fear involved. Writers often think they can’t do it.
For hundreds of years it’s been only the publishers who decide what can be published. That has kept people with very good information or stories in their heads from moving forward and creating a book.
Over the last couple of years, a gigantic shift has happened: now anyone can take the information in their head, and not only put it on blogs and websites, but also publish it as a book.
Now you don’t need a publisher to tell you that your book is good enough.
You can publish your eBook on Amazon overnight for free. There are no gatekeepers any more.
Mary: Writing an eBook is a lot of work. Is it worth the effort?
Jim: Absolutely! I’ve been at meetings where a customer or potential customer asked me a question, and I’ve reached into my bag, pulled out my book, and said: ‘You know, I actually answer that question in my book.’ I then flip it open to the page and hand him or her a copy of it. That has helped me get a lot of clients.
You can also leverage an eBook for your career. Imagine walking into an interview, and handing your potential employer not only your resume, but you also a copy of your book, or sending them a link of your book on Amazon.
If you can say, ‘I’m so interested in this field of work, I actually wrote short book about the topic,’ you can be sure this will wow your potential employer!
Mary: Can you really make an income from writing books?
Jim: You can. You have to imagine what it’s going to be like in a few years when there are as many e-readers as are MP3 players.
Think about the potential of owning the rights to a digital book. You can sell copies of it for the rest of your life. Because everyone will be able to find you and download your book.
Right now you can make a 70 % commission on Amazon. Of course, you need to promote your book and do enough marketing to get the word about your book.
If you’re a fiction writer, it’s much easier to make a lot of money. People love fiction books because they are pure entertainment. The non-fiction market is a lot smaller. But, as I said before, you can leverage non-fiction books in many ways to make money.
Mary: How can you promote a book if you’re not a marketer?
Jim: You’ve got to learn about marketing. Here are some simple steps:
Step 1: The very day when you have the idea of the book in your head, sit down, give the book a title, and write down who the book is for.
Step 2: The next step is to create a book cover. You can get that done on Fiverr.com for only $5.
Step 3: Place the image of your book-cover on your blog, on Facebook, or wherever you tend to hang out. You can say, ‘Hey, I’m writing this book,’ and build anticipation. It’s like the way big movies do it. You can see the trailer long before the film is ready for viewing.
Step 4: Create a short video or blog post about your book idea with an email signup form. Six months down the track when you’ve actually written the eBook, you’ll already have a group of customers waiting for it.
Here’s the take-home tip:
Start marketing a book before you write it. Make your eBook stand out.
The reason most authors fail, is that they write a book and then start to tell people about it.
Mary: What are your three main tips for writers who are considering writing an e-book?
Jim: Three tips? Here they are:
Tip #1: Write to entertain or to solve a problem
Tip #2: Start marketing as soon as you have the idea for a book.
Tip #3: Get it done.
There is a goldrush on the Internet right now, where people can take their books and put them out there to build entire careers.
Jim Kukral is a top Internet entrepreneur, best-selling author and marketer. He teaches at the University of San Francisco for the Internet Marketing Certificate Programme.
