How to Sell eBooks the Easy Way

Selling eBooks, like selling anything else, can be difficult or can be easy. Most of us would prefer to sell eBooks the easiest way possible while still taking in good profits. This article does not explain all of the many ways by which to do that, but it does describe several of them.

Allow me to personalize those several ways. I can tell you that these are ways by which I personally sell eBooks. I can also tell you that there are some constraints, and there are also some advantages to selling eBooks as I do.

Understand first – you had best not sell anything that you are not authorized to sell. You must either own the item yourself or have the right to offer it for sale to someone. Those two conditions are of some interest.

Simply owning an eBook does not necessarily give you selling rights. Most of the time it can be within your right to resell an eBook you, yourself, purchased in the form of a CD, DVD, or in some other tangible form, but not as a downloaded eBook file. You should be aware of any agreement you made that prohibits your own reselling of it. It is quite certain that you may not be allowed to sell copies or to allow computer downloading by others of an eBook you may have purchased or which you have written yourself unless you also have sales rights to it.

Just because you actually wrote an eBook yourself, you may not have retained selling rights after selling your manuscript to a "publisher" or to a reseller. Often, if you do sell eBooks whose selling rights you have relinquished in that manner, you probably will have to do so through those to whom you have sold those rights. "Yes, but I wrote the thing!" That doesn’t matter if you agreed that someone else is now in charge of it and owns the selling rights. You can help the rights holder, but you cannot take their place.

So how do I go about peddling eBooks the "easy way?"

There are a great many already scanned books on the Internet available to you for reproduction and sale. One place from which you can obtain tens of thousands of copyright-free and downloadable eBooks is the Operation Gutenberg library. Most of the books available there are in the form of ordinary ASCII text files that volunteers have generated by scanning out-of-copyright "ordinary" paper and ink books. In order for those scanner files to become reasonably acceptable eBooks, you will have to edit them and convert them into decent-looking eBooks, possibly, providing your new versions with illustrations, artful covers and the like. At least you will not have to obtain original paper book copies and do the scanning (or transcribing) yourself. I offer my own customers eBooks of this type and, for the most part, at no charge. Call that an enticement to look further.

If you wanted to, you could create your own eBook manuscripts by revising Operation Gutenberg downloads into your own revised "editions." You can feel free to use Gutenberg books as starting points, or frameworks, so as to make them into your own copyright protected editions. Whatever you change or add onto the original text or images, you can copyright. Whatever was there in the original work, you cannot copyright. You can sell those in the form of eBooks or however you like.

There are other sources of copyright-free books, manuals, articles, and reports. Publications by the U.S. government are not copyrighted for the most part, but some may be. If Uncle Sam paid for the writing and publication, it is not likely to be copyright protected, and you, I, and the Pope in Rome may duplicate whatever it is and sell it if we can. However, there are many government publications that are copyrighted, but not by the government. For example, one of my journal articles is under copyright protection by the American Society of Radiologic Technologists. Sure enough, I wrote the thing, but they hold the copyright to it. I cannot reproduce it and sell it. There it sits on government websites such as on the library of the National Institutes of Health, for one. If I want to refer someone to that article I can provide him or her the link to NIH, but I cannot copy the article and publish it myself unless I get permission to do so from the actual copyright holder and not from the U.S. government.

On the other hand, one of my eBook products is a direct copy of a two-volume X-ray manual produced by the U.S. Army. It is a real beauty. It is also copyright-free, meaning that you or I may duplicate and sell it at will (if we can). I sell the manual set on a single CD eBook on eBay for $20. In paper book form the set would cost about $200 – maybe more – and the purchaser may freely make as many copies as are wanted, let’s say for training use or for ready reference on all of the computers within an X-ray department. My costs are only about a dime for a blank CD or DVD, a little packaging, postage, and the cost of advertising on eBay. The rest is profit. You can do much the same thing.

A great source of eBooks for you to sell is a company with a large presence on the Internet, "Clickbank.com." Their listing of available eBooks numbers in the thousands. All are categorized in Clickbank’s listing, and that makes it very easy for you to find the kinds of eBooks you would enjoy selling to your own customers. Clickbank provides several good ways by which you can work with them to sell eBooks and make money.

One way is by becoming an affiliate; that is, you can open an account with Clickbank for a very few dollars and, thereafter, provide your own customers with the ability to go to the Clickbank website and order "your" eBooks directly from Clickbank, but to your own selling credit. Books ordered by your customers are sent to their eMail address for their downloading. No one has shipping or handling costs at all. Your sales commissions vary in size, but are typically 50% of the eBook price. The usual cost to your customer for an eBook download is probably $20 to $40, depending on what it is and who the eBook source may be. The range of subject matter is enormous. Thus, if all you want to sell are cookbooks, or woodworking books, or pet care books, and so on, you can list them on your own blog or website only that way. You can also mix up the categories to please broader audiences. That is what I do on one of my sites .

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Before I forget to tell you, each of the eBooks available to your customers from the Clickbank library of eBooks has its listing accompanied by an advertising page – sometimes referred to as a "Pitch Page." That multi-page advertisement (and its eBook order form) explain what the eBook is all about and does a reasonably professional job of explaining plus selling it to your own customers. You do not have to do any of the advertising yourself. It is done for you, and usually it is done quite nicely. If you can get your customer to the eBook entry, he or she will get the "sales pitch" about the book.

"Well, Gus, what do I do if I do not have a website?" A reasonable question, that one! You can obviously get a website, but if you want a free website you must understand that the free websites may not work with affiliate-sales sites such as Clickbank or with script software that provides blog scripts, either free or low in cost, such as the free "Wordpress." Some do and some don’t. You can obtain your own domain name and a website (URL) for only several dollars a month. One domain name registrar charges as little as $16 a year to register your domain name and can provide you with your own website bearing your selected domain name for a just a few dollars a year. If you name your domain well and publicize it adequately (like on Hubpages), you can sell many eBooks this year and for as many years as you keep your website open.

For ideas, check out one of my own eBook selling sites and, see how it has some interesting items on the site in addition to its section where eBook downloads are both given away absolutely free and are also sold through my affiliation with Clickbank and otherwise. Enjoy your visit to the site. Notice that the eBooks for sale there are mostly those that would appeal to the site’s usual visitor, retired ex-military people. For that reason the eBook offerings are mostly about hobbies, crafts, small home businesses and things that would appeal to such people. That is something to keep in mind. You should tailor your site to some expected customer type or maybe to a general audience. That will be your decision for each of your websites.

If you find an eBook on my example website that you like and it is available to you for a little bit of change, remember that anything for sale via Clickbank has a satisfaction guarantee attached to it. (Meaningful guarantees are very important - as is your reputation as a seller of eBooks.) Customers who do not like Clickbank eBooks can ask for their money back, all of it. Guarantees like that certainly do help you and me sell the eBooks we choose to offer.

And, if you become an affiliate seller like I did, you will not have to mess around with refunding to the customer or listen to any complaints. How easy is that?

Let me motivate you even more. On my listing of Clickbank eBooks are books that will help you sell all sort of things, most particularly, lots of eBooks. Take a look. You will find many eBooks there to help you sell lots of your own eBook offerings and even plenty of other things as well. 　

There was once a time when I declared, "There is nothing more difficult to sell than a book." I was mistaken. I found eBooks. They are not only easy to sell; they are fun to sell. So, have fun and make some money at the same time.