As print book sales continue to slump, electronic publishing, ePublishing, gains ground. The question for us business people is, does ePublishing offer us any advantages, and if it does, how do we take advantage of them?
If you're blogging now, you're very likely creating enough content for an ebook. Certainly enough for whitepapers that you distribute online. More on this below.
Blogging Versus Ebook Publishing
At the end of a year you've written the equivalent of an ebook. You're doing the work. That's a given. All you need to do is take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using ebooks in your social networking campaign. Don't forget, you may well decide to use blogging and ebooks. No reason to lose a blog that's an asset.
Blogging
- Excellent way to stay in touch with your clientele, of that there is no doubt.
- Great way to show your expertise, especially when combined with Twitter.
- You need to post at least once per week, more is better.
- You can respond to clients questions, comments, and establish an interactive conversation.
- Takes time to develop a following.
- May, or may not, never pay off financially.
Ebook
- Requires an effort to write, create the cover, and convert to ebook format.
- You sell this for money from day one.
- You need to promote it online and offline. This promotion may include Twitter, a blog, a media release, personal networking, YouTube videos, and definitely your Web site.
- Establishes you as an author, an expert, and a publisher of professionally relevant content. This will significantly set you apart from the competition whether the book makes money or not.
A PDF Whitepaper
Let's not get tunnel vision and only see ePublishing on an ebook reader. You can write whitepapers as PDF files. This is a powerful technique. We do this with documents on social networking and writing for the Web.
Whitepapers can be anywhere from two three or four pages to twenty pages or more. so, the length, if short, is not a disadvantage.
Portable Document Format (PDF), files are easy to make. Likely your wordprocessor will do just fine. Also there are converters you can download. and placing them on your Web site is not at all difficult. If you don't do this your Web master can easily do this for you.
Whitepapers do not have the cachet of a book, but so what? They can still establish your expertise. Cast you as an expert. And that, my friend, is the whole point.
Up To You
Only you can decide if this is right for you and then find the platform best for you. Here is a list of eBook publishers at eBook Crossroads.com. Be advised that this is a list of publishers.
There are other venues to consider like: Amazon and publishing on their Kindle, and Barns and Noble and their Nook. If these products do not work out for you, search Google for ebook publishing.
Let us hear from you. what do you think? Just click on the title of this post and lets us know.
