E‐book Publishing Success: How Anyone can Write, Compile and Sell E‐books on the Internet

Citation

Barker, P. (2005), "E‐book Publishing Success: How Anyone can Write, Compile and Sell E‐books on the Internet", The Electronic Library, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 711-712. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470510635818

Electronic books, or “e‐books” as they are now popularly known, have become an important mechanism for disseminating data, information and knowledge in electronic form. E‐books can be published in a variety of ways – on the internet, on floppy disks or as small libraries on CD‐ROM or portable flash memory. Obviously, in terms of the richness and reach that can be achieved, the internet has many attractions as a global publication medium. In principle, anyone who has a computer and “upload” access to the internet can publish an e‐book for others to access. So, bearing this in mind, how does a potential author set about compiling and publishing an e‐book? This paperback publication by Kingsley Oghojafor provides much of the information a “budding” e‐book author is likely to need.

The book contains a total of 18 chapters. These are organised into two logical sections: the first deals with writing and compiling an e‐book while the second covers marketing and publishing issues. In the opening chapter, the author defines what he means by the term “e‐book” and then goes on to consider their importance from various perspectives such as education, finance and the supply of information. He goes on to explain why “the world” is gradually turning to the use of e‐books instead of and/or in addition to conventionally produced books. In Chapter 2, the author advocates that “everyone can write a profitable e‐book” (p. 12). Chapters 3‐8 then describe how this can be done. The topics covered in these chapters include: conducting market research, exteriorising ideas (from mind to computer), graphic design (for the front cover), publishing on the internet, book formats (HTML, PDF and EXE), e‐book compilers and copyright protection.

As was mentioned above, the second part of the book covers the important topics of publishing and marketing an e‐book. There are ten chapters in this section. However, many of these are quite short – indeed, several are only three or four pages long. This second section of the book starts off with a description of the steps involved in uploading an e‐book to the internet (Chapter 9). Subsequent chapters then deal with designing a web site to promote the book, the financial aspects of selling it on the web, advertising and promoting the e‐book and marketing issues. Various promotional strategies are outlined. These include such methods as the effective deployment of search engines, writing articles for “viral distribution” in article directories, producing “give‐away” demonstration copies of the e‐book and creating an e‐zine. Forums and discussion groups are also considered as mechanisms for letting people know about the e‐book. Some of the other promotional activities that are described include using affiliate programmes, pay‐per‐click approaches and using autoresponders.

The book concludes with a short bibliography. As one might expect, this contains a list of web sites and other e‐books that the author has consulted during the research he has undertaken for his own publication. There is a web site associated with the book. This can be found at www.EbookPublishingSuccess.com. The site gives further details of the various products, facilities and services mentioned by the author in various parts of the book – for example, it provides lists of e‐book compilers and related software. It also gives further information on payment‐processing systems, article and affiliate directories and up‐to‐date listings of e‐book publishers and vendors.

The book is written in a “casual”, easy‐to‐read style. However, there are quite a number of simple, minor grammatical and stylistic errors (see, for example, pp. 98, 135). However, these do not detract significantly from what the author has to say. In many ways, this book is more about promoting and marketing e‐books than about writing them. After all, if anyone can write an e‐book (as the author claims), aggressive marketing may be the only way to distinguish one product from another – no matter what its quality!