Carol Bentley

In a previous post ( 4 easy steps to authorship) I explained how a tips booklet can be used as a highly effective marketing tool. A comment on that post asked about PDF (e-books) and how they fared. It is a valid question, especially with so many businesses expanding their web presence.

Creating and gifting a PDF tips booklet, report, ‘how to’ manual or book containing any valuable information is a proven method of attracting subscribers and enquiries via a web site. I have done that myself with free e-business reports and e-articles in the past.

I also know, as I’m sure you do too, many people who have successfully promoted their business purely through e-books.

The only caveat to a PDF is that it is relatively easy to create and is very inexpensive to produce and put out into the market place. Nothing wrong with that… except that in some circumstances the quality of content and presentation may not be as good as in a published document.

And for some reason people’s perception of someone who has actually written and published a book - is an author - is quite different to any other sort of writer (at least that seems to be the case here in the UK).

So although the PDF allows you to get good and useful information out to your prospects, I personally don’t think it gives you quite the same kudos as being a published author.

What I do recommend is that when you print-publish a booklet or book, consider creating a PDF version too and think about how it can be used creatively to improve your market strength.

And of course, once you have got a book (or books) published you can certainly just use PDF e-books to distribute further material or new books, as Steven King has done.

Now - this is my personal view of the reasons for publishing a book. What do you think? Do you have a very different experience you would like to share?

~ Carol Bentley

technorati tags: copywriting business tips marketing

Date: Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 9:45 am | Category: Business Tips, Networking, Copywriting | RSS Feed: RSS 2.0 feed.
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