You have an idea for an eBook or you've already written one. Now you are wondering how to get it distributed and get some recognition for yourself as an author. These two processes, getting distribution and getting noticed through publicity, go hand in hand toward making your book profitable. This article explores how to go about getting both.
There are several venues that allow you to get your eBook widely distributed. But for the most part, unless you generate some publicity and recognition that drives readers to your distribution outlets, it's highly likely your eBook will not sell. First let's go through the four channels that can get you widespread distribution.
Distribute Your Ebook
Smashwords is an eBook publishing and distribution venue. It provides multiple formats for authors and their audiences to view content. As an author, you submit your edited manuscript as a Word document and their publishing program converts it into the major digital formats which can be read on the iPad, Kindle, Palm, Sony Reader and more.
You can set your own prices and allow readers to sample portions of your ebook. You are given a page for each eBook that you publish through Smashwords and then refer your readers to that page to complete the sale.
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform lets you upload and publish your eBook for sale through the Amazon Kindle store for free. Royalties can be as high as 70 percent. Kindle apps let readers purchase and read Kindle ebooks on Kindle readers, your PC, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. As with Smashwords, you determine the price of your ebook.
Amazon has one of the largest networks of affiliates anywhere. This means that it is potentially possible to have thousands of sites promoting your ebook.
ClickBank, like Amazon, has thousands of affiliates. Upload your eBook and name your price. Create a sales page for affiliates to link to. The more ebooks you sell on ClickBank, the better your ranking so that as your popularity grows, your eBook moves up to the top positions in it's category when affiliates search for products to promote.
Lightning Source is mostly known as a print-on-demand publisher. However, they also provide eBook distribution. If your eBook could be a print book, consider Lightning.
They are a sister company of Ingram Books, the largest wholesaler in the book trade. Lightning has outlets in the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Australia.
Except for Lightning Source, these distribution sites either offer promotion tips or there are third party resources on how to make them work for you. In addition, let's look at four ways to drive readers to your eBook distributors to generate sales.
Ways to Gain Recognition
Article writing is a fast and free way to promote your ebook. Your eBook can likely provide several articles to rewrite or publish as is. Article directory sites like EzineArticles, GoArticles, Buzzle and iSnare openly invite original content in the way of articles from authors. Sometimes these articles are picked up by other websites and will contain a link back to your web page where you can sell your ebook.
If you have never written articles before, browsing these sites for articles on your subject matter tell you what others have written about and allow you to learn what's missing on the topic.
Blogging is a bit like article writing, but less formal. Many popular blogs today are well read because the authors include their personal opinions on whatever topics they are writing about. Blog websites with frequently updated content tend to rank higher in the search engines than static websites where the content rarely changes.
You can also post comments to other's blog posts. In many cases, your comment will include a link back to your own page. Be careful when posting blog comments to try to contribute to the content of the blog instead of trying to promote yourself. Blatant self-promoting comments are usually trashed by the blog owner.
Uploading videos is easy and a great marketing tactic. There are plenty of free resources available by searching for "make videos free." For content, take your articles and blog posts and use parts of their text for scripting your videos. You can lay over an audio track with you reading the text. Add some pictures as slides and you have a simple video.
YouTube and other video hosting sites allow you to upload your videos for free. When you upload a video, you are provided a description area where you can include a link to your sales page.
Podcasts let you get even more use from your content by creating audio files and uploading them to iTunes and other podcast distributors. You can even extract the audio track from your video file and use it as a podcast
A podcast could include a brief tip for the day or be an audio form of a newsletter. They don't have to be very long; two minutes is plenty of time.
Making Publicity Pay
The key to making your online recognition pay off is to always include a link in any article, blog post, video or podcast that takes the browser to a sales page where they can purchase your ebook.
James Dillehay is author of seven books and co-author of "Guerrilla Multilevel Marketing." He as been written about in The Wall Street Journal and his books have been recommended in Networking Times, The Chicago Tribune, Family Circle, Bottom Line Personal, and many other magazines and on HGTV. James is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach. He writes about ways to improve your sales at shows and events, including outdoor exhibits requiring canopy tents.
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