• By Paula Brett
• Published 05/18/2008
• Non-Fiction

For many people, the world that they grew up in is long gone. The entire universe has changed since people first started considering ideas that did not include cookies and milk. Since then, in many ways, technology has changed into something controlling instead of something useful. Ideas have changed faster than we can get used to them; mindsets of entire nations have changed. This is the perfect time to write an eBook that taps into the world as it is today and explains how some of those world changes will impact our everyday lives. Old problems need new solutions. If you can find the problems and fill the need for solutions with your ideas and experience, you’ll have a winner of an eBook. Browsers like to download eBooks on topics that interest them. They are usually free or inexpensive, don’t require production or shipping costs and are full of information they were looking for when they fell over your eBook. Publishing an eBook is an entirely different ball game to publishing a physical book. Books in print (hard copies) are very expensive to publish, costing several thousand dollars and it could be months or years before your mother will ever see your sweated-over tome in a bookstore window. Your universe might even have changed twice while you were writing your epic. After spending the lengthy months required to write a book, submitting a print book to conventional publishing houses or to agents is similar to a vacation on Devil’s Island. You might be told “you’ve got what it takes” 30 times but it’s meaningless when your manuscript keeps coming back to you as fast as you mail it out to agents and publishers. It really doesn’t matter how good your book is if it doesn’t get past the multitude of editors looking for a reason to send it back to you.

A check of self-publishing options, “vanity presses”, can be just as grim and expensive. Most vanity publishers require minimal press runs while relieving you of your rainy-day savings. A press run between 500 and 2000 copies, including only printing and binding, might cost you

several thousand dollars. Additional costs will include distribution, shipping and promotion. Do you have that much spare money to spend? Before you do anything in this arena, do a Google search for “vanity press” (with quotes) and select among the 125,000 hits you will get for the information you need. While all the steps required to get your book published as a traditional hard-copy book might make you change your mind entirely about doing this, let me assure you that there’s a much simpler, cheaper and faster way to get your book published and making sales. OK, so you’re probably wondering why you should go to all the trouble of writing your book. How will you ever be able to afford either the time or the cash involved? Quit sitting at your computer and staring at a blank screen. Help has arrived. eBooks have emerged out of the rapid change and evolution of the World Wide Web, and have become one of the most powerful ways to promote your business and educate people on any subject you can conjure up. Your eBook can be sold from your own website. Once written and put in PDF format, it can be silently making sales for you all day and night without the intervention of a publisher. You are the publisher. Yes, YOU! Say you have a passion for a special niche, stamp collecting, for example. Maybe you started your collection with your grandfather or dad when you were very young. What started with a few stamps and a tattered album has grown into a full-time hobby for you. You know all the prices, the best way to present your stamps to other collectors, where to buy reasonably-priced stamps, how to preserve them and, maybe, a few secret techniques you’ve developed yourself. You have the perfect makings of an eBook to share your information with other collectors and make your reputation as an expert source in your niche. Your eBook will promote your business silently while bringing much needed information to hungry stamp collectors. And if you find that you have more than enough information for one eBook (this is usually the case, more often than not), write another.

The wonderful thing about writing eBooks is that you can write them rapidly and have them online and making you money in a heartbeat.