How to Write, Sell and Profit from Writing an E-book

The publishing world has always been a hard one to break into and lately, it seems to have grown even more difficult as it has become more glutted with would-be authors and writers.  For those frustrated with the lack of break through, finding alternative means in the form of e-books is a God-send.  For others, writing e-books is a fairly quick and simple way to make some cash, especially if you have a knack for writing them or know someone else who does.  E-books are popular to produce nowadays; they are generally made up of pre-written articles or they are simply fun to write and because they cost nothing to produce, they start making profits from the get-go.

If you want to sell e-books for money, there are a few ways to go about it.  The most profitable way is to sell them through your own website.   Write e-books on things that people are always searching for knowledge on (health, wealth, and sex are the three most popular topics; though if you write them well enough and market them properly, you can write on just about anything you feel passionate about) and make sure that they are easy to follow, enjoyable to read, and effective.  Then, you simply sell them on your website and work on ranking your website high so that people will purchase your books.

If you don’t want to own a website, but you do want to sell your own writing, you can use sites such as lulu.com, amazon.com or other self publishing sites.  The main benefit is that you don’t have to worry as much about marketing yourself (though it’s still a good idea to do some legwork) and you can paired off with designers (if applicable) or design your own art for it.  Many of these sites also allow you to sell hard copies which is a good idea if you want to target both the e-book and the hard book markets.  However, these sites do charge a fee for use; either off your profits or a monthly/yearly subscription fee for services.

So which one should you use?  This is not an easy question to answer and largely depends on what you’re writing and how much time or money you have to market it.  If you want to write more fiction, starting with a third party site is a good way to get everything you need done for you so you can concentrate on your writing.  If on the other hand you’re writing more info-e-books, then selling them yourself is a good idea because you can attach them to your existing website.  Plus, info e-books tend to be a lot cheaper than fiction e-books since there is more competition.

E-books are a popular way to make money online; they are fairly easy to put together, many people who normally hate writing may enjoy doing them and you can outsource at the very least the editing, so you end up with a nicely polished finished product that can be sold without having to pay for production costs.  They make an excellent addition to any information based site or you can base an entire home business on producing e-books on a given subject.  Whatever you decide to do with them, remember to enjoy making them and choose the right platform to sell them on.  With proper marketing to follow, you’ll soon be making a decent amount of money to put back into your online business or into your home.