Fly on the E-Commerce Cyberwall

Internet Marketing in the 2010s -- Authors, Authors Everywhere
Ever thought about becoming a published author? I'm not talking about just writing an ebook. I'm talking about writing a physical, softcover-bound book like you would buy in a bookstore.

If you've ever dreamed of being an author, you've probably slapped yourself back to reality with the many horror stories of writers spending months and years to write their book, only to be turned down again and again by the big New York publishing houses. The vast majority of books that people write never get published because they die in the hands of those traditional middlemen.

Or you may have heard horror stories about people who spent vast amounts of money self-publishing their books. Instead of counting on the big publishing houses to promote their books, they tried to sell them to bookstores themselves. More often than not, though, without the clout of a big publishing house to get their books into bookstores, those authors have ended up with cases and cases of unsold books in their basement.

Neither one of those horror stories is necessarily the case anymore, though. You can write a book and set it up to print on demand. In other words, instead of printing vast quantities and HOPING you can sell them, you can have them printed one at a time, only when someone orders one.

Print-on-demand sites like Lulu.com give you this option with bound-books. So does Amazon's Create Space publishing unit. And Amazon's Create Space also brings you an immediate visibility as they add it to the listings on their massively popular website.

Don't get me wrong. You still need to promote your books. It's not like all you do is submit a manuscript and wait for the money to roll in.

Amazon will list your books, but they won't conduct a marketing campaign to find and attract your audience to it.

If you have material to write a book and decent knowledge of how to find and market to your target audience on the Internet, though, you should have no trouble selling your books online. What this opportunity gives you is a way around the traditional gatekeepers that have made it hard for new writers to get published.

What can you do to take advantage of this trend? The best training I've found for getting yourself ready for the print-on-demand future is Jim Edwards' "The Net Reporter" training site.

Jim's specialty is teaching people how to develop and promote profitable information products. You'll find lots of training in his training vault about breaking into print-on-demand and multimedia product development. Not only that, but he'll show you how to get some of the most heavily visited sites on the Internet to sell them for you.

The next decade holds unprecedented opportunity to become a published author and an authority in whatever field you have a passion for. Position yourself to take advantage of these opportunities and the next decade can bring you unprecedented success.
Jeff

Labels: infoproducts, marketing, predictions, print-on-demand