Online Advertising – Ebooks Could Be The Next Step
As an article in The Atlantic says, the Internet’s original sin is still with us.
Unless hell freezes over and 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.
I can almost hear people grimacing at this prospect. However, when one thinks for a little longer, this book marketing concept actually makes very good sense for self-published authors.
Look, let’s face it, selling self-published ebooks is hard work and 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 simply 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, packaged up for consumption in an app other than, but 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 exactly the same file as a web page or blog post – 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 our dear friend 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.
And then, all of those who still 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.
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…