Friday, October 20th, 2006...2:28 pm by Leroy Brown
Would you buy an E-Book from me?
Would you? If I wrote an e-book on how to become a successful and profitable blogger, would you buy it? Imagine I put together all my tips and tricks into one feature-packed ebook, and outlined the way for you to make money online, quickly. Now imagine that book was $99 – would you be interested? No? How about at $49? $29? What’s an e-book worth to you, anyway?
Some of you may be saying, but Leroy, we don’t really know you – you’re not an expert. And you’d be correct – I’m not. But I’d wager that most of the people who buy ebooks buy them because they get sold – not because the e-book writer is necessarily an expert in his field. It’s all about sales, and whether or not the writer is persuasive enough to convince you that you simply cannot leave without buying what he has to sell. Do a good job selling, and not only will people buy what you are selling, but they’ll pay more.
10 Comments
October 20th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
To be honest I wouldn’t buy the ebook from you. If you published a free ebook, I would download it and take a look. If it would interest me I would read it and could even buy a print copy of the book after reading the ebook. Maybe after that first good free ebook I would pay to read your second.
There are not many bloggers who would make me buy their books. Seth Godin is an exception. His writing style and his disruptive simple ideas make me love the guy. From him I would buy anything. Not from you, I’m sorry.
Don’t take this as an offense. I already “blought” your blog from you. I payed with some of my daily time and a slot in my feed reader. It’s not everyone who can sell it to me. You did
October 20th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Sergio,
At this point, I’m not sure I’m even interested in writing an e-book, whether for free or for sale. I’m more interested to see why people would or would not buy one from me. Natural curiousity, you might say.
I’ve been in sales most of my life – nothing offends me
Thanks for reading, btw. Glad to see I’ve made it to your RSS reader- that’s the first step, after all
October 20th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Yes it is the first step.
The reason why I wouldn’t buy an ebook from you, besides the above mentioned that I am hard to satusfy, is that with so many information I have daily, many of it interesting, only a small part of it makes me think and persist more than the 2 minutes I spend reading the post. Some posts make me think, some others make me search and follow links and digg it a little deeper. Only the people that make me do this several times get noticed on top of all the others. You are still on top of all the others I didn’t subscribe or already unsbscribed, but still not on the top, but let me say you for instance that I was thinking on changing a template on one of my blogs, and then I read http://www.bloggingblog.net/your-blogs-theme-doesnt-matter/ and the template is still there. I think I will still change it but later when I have time (I guess this is never). The last post of yours about the importance of time made me think also. Keep writing posts like these two and MAYBE I will buy your ebook
but YOU CAN BE SURE I will keep subscribing your feed.
October 22nd, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Hey Leroy and hello to all the regular commenters on the site. My name is Garry and this is my first comment here on the site.
This article is very interesting, for the fact that traditionally I am pretty cheap when it comes to actually “buying” things on the Internet, especially e-books. But what pulled me to this article was the fact that I reciently purchased my first e-book last week. It was $5.61 and I feel an excellent purchase that I am totally happy with.
For many years I shopped around here and there, but never actually pulled out my wallet and filled out the online form to make a purchase. I don’t know what made me finally do it… but it was a great e-book about designing your own wordpress themes.
Leroy, if you are picking peoples brains, here is my input on e-books. There is something about reading content on the screen compared to reading it on paper… I can’t concentrate and focus on what I read on the screen… Usually if I am reading something that is important or highly interests me, I print it and read it.
With the e-book it was great to only spend five dollars and have the book on .pdf. But I kept wanting to print pages… because I don’t like being stuck on the computer reading…. I like to sit on the sofa, the can, etc…. but I am forced to read on my screen.
I am willing to buy e-books, but what disappointed me was learning that even though I paid for the e-book, if I wanted the printed version, I would have to pay full price for that as well… which to me, doesn’t seem fair. The printed book was $15, and it would have been nice to have a special promo offering the printed version for $10 after downloading the e-book for $5.
So that is my input… if you offer an e-book besure to provide a discount to the already “Buying Customer” to encourage him to purchase the printed copy as well.
If that option was available to me, I would have purchased both, giving the publisher an extra $10.00. Instead he only got $5.00.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:43 am
Very good point about the printed version. If ever I did make the leap and create an ebook of any kind, I think I would make sure that both the pdf and printed version were included. I also have the habit of printing out the really good stuff and kicking back on the couch. Hah.. seems like we have a bit in common.
October 23rd, 2006 at 2:54 pm
I might buy the ebook if you provided enough proof that you were actually an expert in this field or if the book was an interview(s) of an expert(s) in this field.
Otherwise, no.
You can make a decent amount of money from ebooks, but you need to have expertise in that area to really sell it or you need to interview people who have expertise in that area.
All the best,
George
October 23rd, 2006 at 3:14 pm
George,
Interesting point. So you would want proof that I was an expert in the field before making a purchase. Since I’m the curious type ( the reason for this post’s existance ) , what sort of proof would convince you that I was, indeed, an expert?
October 24th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Good question. It depends on the focus of the book. If the books focus was purely on making money from blogging, then the proof might be showing a check you recieved from Google and/or other places you make money from. Showing traffic statistics from a traffic program to back up any claims of the traffic you get. Having testimonials from people that you have helped do the same thing that you are trying to sell me on.
You could try vague proofs, like “Everyone has told me…” or “I am a well known expert in the field…”, but those won’t work on me with testimonials from others. You could take a look around the net at other people selling ebooks and see what proof they offer.
I promote quite a few ebooks and all the authors provide pretty good proof that they are an expert in their area.
October 27th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
This post has sparked quite an interesting conversation. Though I’ve never bought an ebook, I agree in general with what everyone seems to be saying: I would need to see some evidence that this person is an authority on the topic and that I would be getting my money’s worth.
I would definitely do plenty of research before spending the money. Also, I’m with George on the types of proof offered by the seller. I would absolutely have to combine that with outside research, too, in an attempt to get unbiased opinions.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
testing…
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