Gimme All Your Ebooks!
One of the most common concerns our ebook creation students have over at InfoMarketer’sZone is that their hard work will be compromised by massive piracy – that people will simply share your ebook, perhaps even pirating it and reselling it under your nose.
This concern becomes such an issue for some ebook writers that they are paralyzed by fear and do not make progress on their project.
Too bad…because there is nothing more incredible than having your own hot selling ebook bringing money into your bank account each week.
But the question does need to be addressed…how big a problem is ebook piracy and is it worth doing anything about it?
Here are a few points from our experience creating and marketing information products such as ebooks, reports and higher-end courses online:
1. 99% of the customers WANT to have their own paid copy of your products – so that alone tells you this is not as big a problem as many people think.
Recent research on ebook piracy discussed here back up the point that even the most highly rated books such as Twilight or ebooks having to do with sex or pornography only see (at the very most) a couple hundred pirated editions.
Certainly you can’t see more than a few books being “stolen” for most ebook information product publishers.
2. There are ways to enhance your ebook packages so that it is in your customers best interest to buy rather than pirate your ebooks. We share these approaches inside the Zone, but they include offering an update or two, an extra bonus or other support that means some (sometimes a very significant) portion of the value is delivered in a staged approach – that way customers will want to buy to get the ongoing value.
3. Piracy is not only a factor with an ebook selling business – retail stores regularly account for 5% loss (this includes physical bookstores) from shoplifting. The fact is that a certain level of loss (2-5%) will occur in any business, so long as you have done a decent job picking your market, targeting your topic and marketing your ebook – then your sales will more than make up for that loss.
Yes, you can plan to limit piracy by making it clear that your product is copyright (not free, not for resale, etc…), designed to be delivered in stages and downloads protected – but in the end, get on with your ebook publishing and ebook marketing, that is what will put money in your pocket.
