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.
