How to Market an E-book

People want to publish e-books (of the .pdf variety) for many reasons — to promote their business, share information or tutorials too long for traditional Web publishing, or just to share a story for example. But no matter what reason they have for wanting to write an e-book, many come to the same question in the end: “How can I market my e-book?” And in response they get the same old solutions:

• Launch an affiliate program.
• Write a long sales letter.
• Get testimonials.
• Submit to article directories.
• Start a newsletter.
• Use pay-per-click ads or other online advertising.

These tactics are all fine and dandy. They won’t all work for all e-books. But many do work well, and have for years. The problem, though, is largely in the question. People treat e-books as some completely unique product that needs to be marketed in some super-special way that’s different that everything else out there. But the reality is this:

So if you’re trying to market an e-book you’ve written, begin by getting out of that mindframe and accepting two things:

1. An e-book can be marketed very much like a book in print.
2. An e-book’s website  (or sales page) can be marketed just like any other website or blog.

There’s no magic formula for e-book marketing. Just take traditional marketing methods and tailor the tactics to your needs, abilities, and target audience. For example, here are a few book publicity tactics you can use to market your e-book, whether it’s a novel or a more traditional nonfiction “information product.”

• Book Tours – Instead of a traditional book tour, launch a virtual book tour hitting the blog circuit.
• Book Reviews – While top book reviewers may not want to make time to review an e-book, plenty of bloggers and influential people in your niche would probably love to. Send out advance review copies just as you would with a print book.
• Press Releases – Send out an e-book “launch” news release and a release for any events you may hold to promote the e-book.
• Seminars – You can still hold seminars (or better yet, webinars and e-courses) to promote an e-book, just as an author of a print book might do.

If you treat your e-book as professionally as you would a print title, there’s no reason why you can’t follow tried and true book publicity and marketing strategies to attract more sales and recognition. The same goes for your e-book’s website. Look at what authors and publishers are doing to promote their print books online, and tailor the tactics to meet your needs (set up a social networking profile, blog on the subject of your e-book, etc.). Better yet, learn from industries that tend to adapt even better to Web-based promotions, such as software companies. Authors of e-books and print books alike can still learn a lot about successfully promoting digital products (or promoting physical products to an online audience).

3 Responses to “How to Market an E-book”

1. Anne Wayman says:

   May 3, 2011 at 2:17 pm

   Ah Jenn, love the way you cut to the quick. And you keep it simple. Have just discovered calibre – a free conversion software for ebooks so they can go on kindle etc. and look good. I’ll do a review, but so far so good.

   Reply
   • Jennifer Mattern says:

     May 4, 2011 at 6:21 am

     I’d love to see a review of that and how it compares to manual conversions, so do let us know when you’ve had a chance to do that!

     Reply
2. Neeraj Sachdeva says:

   September 28, 2011 at 11:00 pm

   Great ideas! Love the simplicity of your post. I think connecting with other ebook sellers is also a good option. We can learn a lot from our competitors, and how they market their product. Thanks Jennifer

   Reply