by: Richard Grady
There are many, many advantages to selling eBooks online, not least the fact that once the eBook is written, the sales and delivery process can be automated so that as the seller, there is literally nothing for you to do when you make a sale. To illustrate this point, I have sold over 15,000 copies of my most popular eBooks since I first wrote them but other than carrying out an update every few months, these products now don't involve me in any work whatsoever.
Of course, one of the main disadvantages of selling your own eBook is the fact that you have to write it in the first place! The vast majority of people are probably not natural writers and even those that do have the ability often find it very difficult to sit down and bash out an entire eBook that is of a good enough quality to sell. I have written several eBooks myself but I do find it hard work. In fact, I have probably started and abandoned far more eBooks than I have actually completed - I get bored very easily :-)
It isn't just eBooks that people struggle to write - the same goes for 'normal' paper books. I have some experience of the process that a new book goes through before it reaches the bookshops and regardless of the quality of the author's draft, it will usually be reviewed by an editor who will often re-write large parts of the book. In fact, sometimes the entire book will be written by a third party rather than the person that actually has their name on the cover as the author. This is regularly the case with biographies - after all, just because someone is famous or has a story to tell, it doesn't mean they can write a book.
You may already see where I am going with this and many of you will have already worked out that these third parties that write books for the author are often referred to as ghostwriters. But did you know that ghostwriting is becoming more and more popular in the eBook industry?
Many info-product creators are now opening their eyes to the opportunities offered by ghostwriters and are realising that it is perfectly possible to get someone else to research and write an eBook for them for just a few hundred dollars. Not only does this save an incredible amount of time but it also means that you don't have to write a single word if you don't want to.
Look at it like this, let's say you hire someone to research and write your eBook at a cost of $500. In addition, you get someone to write the sales copy for your web page at a cost of $200. You now have a complete new product for just $700. A new product that you can sell over and over again and retain all of the profits for yourself. Using ghostwriters it is perfectly possible to build up a large portfolio of products in a relatively short time period - certainly much faster than if you were to write the eBooks yourself. You can even have eBooks written about subjects that you know very little about since you can pay the ghostwriter to do the research for you.
Because of the incredibly high profit margins available with eBooks, it doesn't surprise me one bit that big-name Internet marketing gurus are starting to use ghostwriters to help build up their product portfolios. And given the ease at which you can hire a ghostwriter, there is no reason why you shouldn't consider this option too.
One of the most popular ways of hiring a ghostwriter is via the eLance website ( http://www.elance.com ). At the time of writing, a search for 'ghostwriter' brought up 198 different individuals/businesses that would be happy to consider quoting to write your next eBook. If you are interested in learning more about having a ghostwriter turn your idea into an eBook, why not have a browse through the eLance site.....
Copyright 2004 Richard Grady