From conversations with several advertising and marketing experts I respect, I believe there is a way for authors to obtain income even on our pirated books, as long as we own the digital rights to our books. Here’s why.
Your book could well be in the hands of tens of thousands of readers already who might not go into a bookstore any more frequently than they visit a museum. But from this point on, you can have access to the minds of everyone who downloads your book from a file sharing site. You can upload your own eBooks onto the file sharing sites and take advantage of the opportunity to sell and embed tasteful and useful commercial messages in them.
Your eBook should be preferred by users of these sites because you can provide the most recent versions with a more recent copyright and you can add access to bonus material from you – the author – that pirated versions cannot.
One choice you have is to sell display advertising directly relevant to your book’s content. Of course, too many display ads can make your book look like a magazine and could turn off some readers, but there are less intrusive ways to embed commercial messages that have minimal risk of offending readers and even may be welcomed by some.
Think of the product placements you see in movies, video games and on TV. Correspondingly, wherever a product or service is relevant to the content of your book, you can insert images and hyperlinks to video and audio information. Selling placements like these to a third party who pays you could become a regular source of income for you, perhaps even more than you would have earned in royalties from the sale of your book.
Another way to generate product income is add content to the end of each chapter in which you direct readers to your own product or service at a moment when readers most apt to be motivated to click a hyperlink or place a phone call.
Crafted and designed well, these types of commercial messages need not look like magazine ads. We at 9Lives4YourBook would be happy to help you explore the potential placements in your eBook as well as guide you in the task of marketing placement opportunities to third parties.
For example, perhaps because of your familiarity with the content, you may already have untapped access to companies related to the content of your book. Since many authors don’t have ready contacts, we project a need for author representatives who will solicit and manage in-book advertising.
Next Week: Are the Publishing Giants Committing Hari Kari?
And How You Can Win From It
Don’t know how to proceed with a book you have already written or one you plan to write? I can help. You can contact me directly for a free consultation at paul@9lives4yourbook.com.
I discovered your homepage by coincidence.
February 6th, 2010 at 5:25 pmVery interesting posts and well written.
I will put your site on my blogroll.
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Nice writing style. I look forward to reading more in the future.
February 6th, 2010 at 5:58 pmQuote
You are wrestling with a very intense issue here; one that I’ve been researching a lot for the newspaper industry. Basically, you are running up against the choices facing much of the nonfiction content-creation industry: do we attempt to support ourselves via ads (when much of the advertising industry is already in deep trouble, and unable to support the level of content on the internet), or do we embrace the “Freemium” model where we give away our intellectual property in the hope of making money by charging for something that can’t be digitized and traded via the web?
To those who think that the answer lies with ever-stricter Digital Rights Management (DRM) and enforcement, I have an example. U2 made the production process of their latest album a model of secrecy. The Manhattan Project had less stringent security & monitoring requirements. And yet, before the official release of the album, the piracy sites were awash in bootlegged versions of the new songs. Why?
Bono, the lead singer, went on vacation in the south of France. While in his villa by the beach, he brought along the album, and cranked it up on the stereo to take one last listen to the mix and see if he wanted to re-order the songs. A passing Belgian tourist heard the music and whipped out his cellphone, held it over his head, and recorded the songs. Hours later, that recording was being downloaded around the world.
When there is a strong enough demand for a product, there will be a supply. If your book is deemed valuable by someone, then there will be someone else willing to scan it in and distribute it.
February 16th, 2010 at 7:52 pmQuote
David, thank you for the thoughtful reply. While I think some, if not many writers will turn to the “freemium” model, many others will cease writing. This is already the case.
We have the model of musicians who do or have done this successfully – Lady Gaga who sells clothing, jewelry from her website is perhaps today’s best know example.
This most recent Superbowl provided an example of the advertising revenue situation you mention. Pepsi reportedly withdrew its commercial so it could spend the half millioni or so on web advertising. So we’re seeing that advertisers are placing a prioritity on what they spend on the web.
No matter which route we pursue, we who are creators of non-fiction content are needing to adapt.
February 17th, 2010 at 2:07 amQuote