Online Advertising In Ebooks Could Be The Next Step To Reward Authors
Will there be advertising in ebooks at some time in the future?
As an article in The Atlantic says, the Internet’s original sin is still with us.
Unless people stop believing that the Internet is only for free stuff, expect the basics of Internet survival to start invading ebooks very soon.
It will only take Google and Amazon to invite each other to dance, and we will have advertising in ebooks.
It would be easy to include ads in ebooks
I can almost hear people grimacing at this prospect.
However, if you think for a little longer, this book marketing concept actually makes perfect sense for self-published authors.
Look, let’s face it, selling self-published ebooks is hard work. For the vast proportion of authors, it’s not a great money-making means.
At a sale price of $2.99 to $3.99, a self-published author makes between $1.80 and $2.40 at most when they sell an ebook.
If and when they do make book sales.
However, as a fellow self-published author, I know full well that I make between $0.80 to $1.25 every time someone clicks on a Google Adsense ad on one of my blogs.
It hardly makes sense that one little click on an ad on a blog is worth nearly as much as selling a Kindle book of 80,000 words.
Realistically, though, isn’t an ebook really just an HTML web page? It’s packaged up for consumption in an app, but it’s still very similar to a web browser.
Is an ebook in reality only one very long 80,000-word web page or blog post?
In essence, yes, because it is the same file as a web page or blog post. It’s all HTML, code, and CSS telling the screen what to show.
I, for one, say, bring it on—online advertising ebook style.
Forget all the tough ebook marketing, ebook promotion grunt hours, and giving away your book for free.
You could start making more income from Google Adsense ads at the bottom of every page rather than from actually selling ebooks.
The only problem with this scenario, of course, is Amazon and its cut on ebook sales.
But if Google shares some of the spoils, I am sure they will find a way to tango.
All of those who believe that the Internet should only be for free stuff will be happy too.
So long as they obey the original sin and click on the ads, it could be a great digital marketing strategy for ebooks.
More reading: Google Adsense Can Help You Make A Little More Money
Until there is a better ebook marketing and sales paradigm, one that carves away authors from Amazon, everything else is just conjecture at this point. One could look to the blockchain, and there are some serious technologies there that hold promise but yet to coalesce. Amazon will not do anything to upset their current ebook sales applecart.
http://bookboon.com/ already has advertising in its ebooks which are in the most part educational
Will the idea motivate Amazon to begin promoting their entire backlist of e-books? The advert idea will be a monumental waste of time, unless they are first of all included in all existing e-books as well as those yet to be written. Anything less is unacceptable…