Someone recommended me to Lulu a while ago for self-publishing and I noticed that they only sell them in print (?) I was wondering what websites you would recommend to sell an e-book, if I didn't have my own website? Thanks
Lulu also does e-books, but most e-book authors I know sell it themselves or through something like e-junkie or clickbank.
With ClickBank, you'll need to set up a site, which you should be doing anyway. CB will be good if you're book is how-to in nature.
With Lulu, you can do it all. Sell your book there (at whatever price you choose.) Have a print and/or ebook. And take the ebook that you format on Lulu and sell it on your website and or through clickbank. zezweb also provides a place where you can set up a sales page and upload and sell your ebook using paypal. There's tons of great options out there.
I don't think you read Lulu correctly. People definitely sell ebooks there, too. I should know: I struggled forever trying to properly format my own to upload there last year. You really should set up your own website for the ebook, though. Lots of people won't take you or your work seriously until you do. Some will make assumptions about the quality of what you have... Like, if you don't think your work is important enough to spotlight with its own website, why should they risk their money on it? Anyway, here's what more you can do once you set it up on Lulu. Create lots of minisites for it in various online communities, all linking back to Lulu (and/or your own PayPal) for sales. In other words, create for your ebook a strong array of minisites via: -- Squidoo.com lenses -- WetPaint.com wikis -- Join various Ning.com self-publisher groups -- EditRed.com is sort of like Lulu -- e-junkie.com is a popular ebook download site -- Payloadz is popular as well for ebook download sales Good luck to you!
Wow, thanks for all the valuable advice! The thing about setting up my own website is that I don't know how to do it. I mean, I could get past the "add-some-text-to-your-page" stage, but there is a lot more to selling than I don't know - creating an affiliate program, adding my link to other pages, advertising, investing in AdSense (or was it AdWords?) and so on. What time&money investment am I looking at, in order to get a decent amount of visitors? I was also told that it can take months until your website appears on Google search results. With the information I have now (which might not be accurate) creating a website for an e-book seems like Mission Impossible, lol.
Whenever I launch a new website, it's in Google's search results in less than a week. So whoever told you it takes months is clueless. Build a few quality links, and "you're in." It doesn't have to be difficult. There are loads of free templates you can play with to learn a bit. You can even use something like Wordpress that let's you do it all online. To go that route, 1. Choose and register a domain name. 2. Get a hosting account that offers one-click Wordpress installations. (Change the DNS settings on your domain to the ones given to you by your new host.) 3. Go through the WP installation. 4. Search for a basic theme (you don't need something fancy for a basic sales page on your first try). 5. Install it (pretty easy, and instructions are usually in the theme zip file). 6. Add your content.
Yep. My last group of sites got into G in less than 48 hours. What takes a few months is getting the site to 100% juice in Google. But that's beyond the scope of this discussion (see SEO for more). After your new site is online, go grab some links. You really just need 1-2 good links for Google to come by and index you.
Thanks a lot, that's really good news for me! Seriously, you only need 1-2 links for Google? I heard that there are directories where you can register your link for this purpose - is that right? So basically it's not as hard as I thought - not by far! I also have a Dreamweaver tutorial on how to put content on your website, but from what I know Dreamweaver requires quite a bit of knowledge. Do you think it's worth trying it? JH, thanks for the detailed explanation. I didn't understand what this means: "Change the DNS settings on your domain to the ones given to you by your new host." Thanks again for your helpful posts.
When you purchase hosting, your host will give you the address to your nameserver. It will be something like xxx.yourhost.com. Then, after you purchase your domain, you will be asked to set nameserver or DNS settings (same thing different terminology). That's where you'll put the address given to you by your host.
I have not stopped by CafePress since a while back, but I think you can sell e-books there too. PayLoadz is another option to monetize from digital goods and get paid via Paypal. You need to compile your own e-books or hire someone to do it though.