E-Book Publisher

In the last 10 years the e-book industry has mushroomed. This inexpensive form of publishing makes it possible for work from home authors and publishers to enter a market usually the domain of giant publishing houses and best selling authors. An e-book publisher offers all related services from marketing and sales to packaging, preparation and proof reading.

Before The Start-Up – Let’s Not Get Ahead Of Ourselves

Just as regular paper books reside in book stores, the internet is the home of e-books. Experience in e-commerce as well as marketing and design for the web is recommended. As you’ll be screening and preparing e-books for final release experience in writing and editing is very useful.

That said everyone who is involved with online publishing or e-commerce had to start somewhere. If you’re well read, have a good grasp of languages and are a savvy internet user there is no reason why e-book publishing can’t be your first online business endeavour.

The Start-Up

To begin your publishing business you’ll need a work space and computer with a connection to the internet, if possible get a DSL connection, you’ll likely be doing all your work online. PDF is the standard format for e-books, to export e-books to PDF and format them in an appealing manner you’ll need to decide between using software such as Adobe Acrobat or Macromedia’s Flash Paper and specialized e-book software. If you’re not a seasoned desktop publisher we recommend purchasing specialized e-book software that takes care of everything from covers and layout to security and copyrighting. A search on Google for e-book publishing software brings up dozens of relevant results. Do your research carefully and buy the package most suited to your needs and budget, don’t get conned into upgrade packages with features you don’t really need.

To complete the final sale of your e-books you’ll need a website. If your budget allows for it, a fully developed site with an easy to use content management system is recommended. If you’ll need to rob the local bank to afford this don’t worry, get simple one page websites developed for each one of your books. If you have a basic understanding of programs like MS Publisher or Front Page you can even do this yourself.

Making It Work

Small e-book publishers can be successful by focusing their efforts on highly specialized niches. Don’t try publishing books on every subject possible, your tiny marketing budget will never be able to compete with those of large e-book publishing companies.

Marketing

Marketing the books available on your site needn’t be a very expensive exercise. Affiliate marketing companies such as Click Bank or Commission Junction allow you to sell your books through affiliate’s websites in exchange for a percentage sales. This form of marketing requires no input on your side besides registration and can be very profitable.

Alternatively a pay per click advertising service like Google’s AdWords can bring targeted traffic right to your website.

Don’t Forget

Be careful when structuring your charges. Some authors might be very careful writers and have no errors for you to correct whatsoever while others might be very messy and have errors in every paragraph. Specify a maximum number of error corrections your standard fee covers, then charge per error beyond that number. This will ensure you’re not losing money and authors double check their work.