A few years ago when businesses realised that a good eBook could be sold online there was a lot of excitement.

Tales of 5 figure launches, bazoodles of copies sold and overnight internet fame created quite a buzz.

During that time I heard excited chatter in the hallways and corridors of the internet (hallways exist in the internet… you have to smash through a wall somewhere to find them – a bit like getting to Hogwarts)

Just gather up a few blog posts, bundle them together and sell it as a $47 eBook. Shift 100 of them and you’ve made over $4,500 for a few hours work!

Obviously you know it’s not as simple as that, but if you were online at this time you saw a lot of eBooks being released and launched. Some businesses had a new eBook every few weeks. And there’s nothing wrong with releasing frequent products if the quality is good and it solves a problem for your customer.

But the problem was that this made a lot of businesses feel they had to be churning out eBooks left right and centre. A lot of crap eBooks were produced at a rapid rate at the expense of the business owner’s credibility and perhaps even sanity.

There is another, less stressful and more dignified way

I want you to think about your favourite band or artist.

How many albums have they recorded?

Now, there are some artists who are incredibly prolific. Elvis, Paul McCartney, Prince… Total rockstars, dream lifestyles and insanely rich.

But there are a great number of successful bands who have created much fewer albums and they still have pretty enviable lifestyles.  Let’s be honest, between Paul’s love life, Prince’s peculiarity and Elvis’s… well you know, would you really want to be any of them?

Last night I went to see the unbelievably cool rockstar that is Lucinda Williams at Brighton Dome. She filled the venue, and she filled the hall with her gravelly voice and gritty dirt-road country blues.

Lucinda’s breakthrough album came in 1998.

Her first album was in 1979.

5 albums in 19 years. Not a huge amount you might think.

But in that time she toured, she promoted, she sang, she built up local audiences around Los Angeles and when her 98 album was released things got bigger from there. Her songs have been covered by Willie Nelson, Tom Petty and Mary Chapin Carpenter and now she’s touring, playing music to fans around the world doing what she loves. As a songwriter, she has a huge amount of credibility as an expert. 

The real rockstars we see (and love) on stage today aren’t scrabbling together old songs to repackage them as new albums. Instead they’re taking their time, putting their passion and talents into the product, and then taking them on tour to build their fan base.

So why not do that with your eBook? 

eBooks are a fantastic way to build your business. When you do it right. 

• They bring in direct revenue from sales
• They can work in your sales funnel to lead to higher-priced sales that might not have happened if your reader hadn’t bought your book
• They get people talking about your business
• They can increase your subscribers and online “fans”
• They give you credibility
• They can make you stand out to the media

What’s more, if you take the effort to do it right first time round, you can develop a solid, high-quality product that you can promote for years rather than something you might be embarrassed by in a few months.

I’m not saying you only have to do an eBook every 4 years, but taking the slow and steady approach to this piece of your content marketing can pay dividends.

Create a rockstar eBook and then take it on tour

If you’ve been thinking about creating a whole heap of eBooks to promote your business, why not think about creating just one instead? For now that is.

Wondering where to start?

Look at your customer profile, then think about the problem your customers have, or the questions they ask and try to create a ‘signature’ book. One that will be useful to previous, present and future customers.

Spend time creating it, make it easy-to-read and use beautiful design to show how professional you are.

From there you can host a launch to a big fanfare and build your following by selling it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Apple’s iBookstore.  You could also use it as a promotional teaching resource. For example holding a guest webinar for someone’s website, and making an offer of your eBook at the end.

The point is that if you take time to craft something you’re really proud of, you won’t get tired of promoting it, you’ll be excited and proud to spread the word.

And you can watch your business grow as your creative ‘baby’ goes out into the world.

Interested in creating a polished and professional eBook? Read this:  

One of my friends has created a very successful business by focusing on quality products that last.

Rather than spit out a flurry of ‘okay’ content, Pamela Wilson from the Big Brand System spends time developing products, updating them and relaunching periodically.

Recently she re-released her eBook Evolution product that she created with Kelly Kingman.

What is it? Well it is a bumper pack of digital guides that teach you how to plan, write and launch an eBook. AND it gives you specific design tools and templates to make sure your eBook doesn’t look like a Microsoft Word document that had clipart thrown up on it.

Oh… and you don’t need to know any design or tech skills. If you can read and follow instructions you can do this.

Because of the high-quality, and urgent need most business owners have for professional-looking, affordable marketing materials this is a popular product  with a lot of loyal fans.

And even though I know Pamela and Kelly personally, and might have been able to annoy them into getting a review copy, I bought my own eBook Evolution, so I’m only recommending what I am currently using.

I’m not going to overstate the benefits here because to be honest the product is killer, the ladies have integrity and the sales page does a great job of explaining whether or not it’s for you.

What I will do is ask you a few quick questions to see if you should find out more:

• Are you thinking about using eBooks as marketing tools / revenue sources in your business?
• Do you want to create an eBook that you’d be proud to promote?
• Do you have no / some / lots of knowledge about writing eBooks?
• Would you like some help and ideas on marketing and launching your eBook?
• Do you want to sell it in an eReader format – NEW (this has just been added to this version)

Sound like you? Then click here to read the sales page (quick aside – this sales page is great, so I’d take a peek anyway and stick it in your copywriting swipe file)

What do you think? Create a handful of products and take them on tour or be prolific and crazy like McCartney and Prince? Let me know in the comments!