Credit cards are a great convenience. They let us buy what we need even when we don’t have enough cash. They make it easy for us to shop online, buy meals, and rent cars when we travel. But credit cards also tempt us to spend more than we can afford.

Studies of consumer behavior show that people spend two to three times as much money when shopping with a credit card as they do when paying with cash.

The difference is in the level of impulse shopping. The act of paying with cash reminds us that we have a limited amount of money. We forget that limit—or ignore it—when we pay with a credit card.

When relying on cash, most people are disciplined in their buying and do a good job of ignoring the many impulse temptations they face. Because the cash is hard to part with, they take extra time to find the best bargains. When paying with a credit card, shoppers are much freer with their spending. They pick up those tempting extra items and add them to their carts. They also spend less time comparing prices and looking for bargains.

It goes even further. Credit cards free us to be more generous when shopping for gifts. They make us looser with our money when choosing food and drinks in a restaurant, and when leaving tips. And when we know we’ll be paying with plastic, we rarely buy just the one inexpensive item we were looking for. We add a couple of other things to the cart so we don’t look silly charging a small amount when we get to the front of the checkout line.

Until the early 1970s, credit was available to most people only for significant purchases—a home, car, or big piece of furniture—where the lender had something valuable to recover if the borrower fell behind in the payments. Lenders were cautious about loans and made sure they had an easy way to recover the money if anything went wrong. For most purchases, people saved until they had enough to pay cash.

That changed with the introduction of credit cards in the 1970s. Lenders discovered a huge and profitable new market of borrowers. And we, the credit card spenders and borrowers, discovered the convenience of cash-free spending and the pleasure of getting what we wanted without waiting until we had the cash to pay for it. Sure, some people got into debt trouble and ended up unable to pay their credit card bills. But the money the credit card companies made on the majority of customers who kept up with their payments more than balanced out those losses.

Which leads us to where we are today. We live in an age of easy credit. And that requires a new kind of financial discipline and self-control. Credit makes it easy for us to get what we want. But it also makes it easy to get into serious financial trouble.

When you, and millions of others like you, buy with credit, you’re fueling our economy by increasing the demand for goods and services. Your spending creates work, jobs, and wealth for the people who provide those goods and services—and it brings money in interest payments to banks and other lenders. The money from your spending encourages innovation and invention as people look for ways to design better products and new, more efficient ways to deliver services to sell to you. And that growth and innovation is what moves all of us, over time, to a better life.

That’s the big-picture benefit of debt and credit. At the individual level—yours— credit has immediate benefits, too. Used carefully, it allows you to buy what you need now and pay for it out of your future earnings. Credit in the form of home mortgages is the lever that allows ordinary people to own their own homes and gradually build a valuable investment for their future. Student loans allow people who couldn’t otherwise afford it to attend school and learn skills that increase their earning power.

Credit card debt and other consumer debt are such a common part of modern life that many of us live with pressure on our budgets without realizing we may be entering a financial danger zone.

Are you one of the millions who are digging themselves into money trouble through the use of consumer credit? Are you trying to recover from a financial setback—a loss of income or an unexpected expense—that leaves you looking at a scary financial future? Are you getting by from month to month by building your debt instead of your savings?

Take this quick debt quiz to find out if you can use some help dealing with debt.

I carry credit card balances for a long time and often pay only the minimum amount due.
[YES] [NO]

My credit card balances are growing each month.
[YES] [NO]

I am at or near my borrowing limit on one or more of my credit cards.
[YES] [NO]

I no longer have a savings account, or I am using savings to pay bills I used to pay from my checking account.
[YES] [NO]

I try to manage my money to a budget, but I often come up short when I sit down to pay bills.
[YES] [NO]

I use cash advances from credit cards or the overdraft feature on my checking account to pay bills and basic living expenses.
[YES] [NO]

I borrowed from friends or family when money was tight, and haven’t yet paid it all back.
[YES] [NO]

I juggle payments, paying one creditor one month and another the next so that they are both getting something.
[YES] [NO]

I often transfer balances from one credit card to another because I can’t afford to pay all of my monthly credit card bills.
[YES] [NO]

I have “consolidated” my debts into a home equity loan or a single credit card at least once.
[YES] [NO]

I rely on overtime pay or money from a second job to pay my regular bills.
[YES] [NO]

I don’t have the money to pay irregular bills, like real estate taxes and insurance.
[YES] [NO]

When I come home from shopping, I sometimes hide my purchases or lie about how much they cost.
[YES] [NO]

I no longer pay attention to how much I owe.
[YES] [NO]

I sometimes get notices in the mail or phone calls telling me I’m late with a payment.
[YES] [NO]

My heart rate increases when my credit card is run through the machine because I never know if it will be accepted.
[YES] [NO]

If you answered “Yes” to one or more of these questions, this section of freeinfoz.com is important for you.

What do you mean by “selling your thoughts?”

Everyone has valid thoughts and ideas. I have learned something from everyone I have ever met.

Why can’t I sell an idea as a small e-book?

You can sell your idea as a small e-book.

In addition to creating e-books and posting them on Mightywords.com and creating CD-ROM e-books for Amazon.com, you can begin selling any file you choose off of your computer hard drive.

In other words, anything that you can dream up and save to your computer hard drive, you can sell over the Internet. You can “sell your thoughts.”

You may sell those documents as e-mail attachments in Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, or as ASCII text files.

(ASCII text files are the same formatting that you use in the body of your e-mail messages. ASCII text can be read on all commercial computers)

Think of what this means in the big picture of life.

College students can create ideas, type them up on computers and offer to sell them to friends, associates and strangers. They can take those dreaded “term papers” that are assigned to them by college professors and sell them through Mightywords, Amazon.com or by just selling them via e-mail.

If you have to spend time creating it for someone, why not get paid for it?

Currently Amazon.com has a program through their Z-shops that allow you to sell products over the Internet and Amazon.com will do the credit card processing for you.

The cost of this program is only $39.95 per month and it allows you to list up to 5000 products. They also take a small amount out for credit card processing fees. You will keep over 90% however, of your selling price!

Amazon.com will deposit the funds directly into your bank account within two weeks of you delivering the product to your customer.

If you are delivering a $10.00 e-book via e-mail attachment, around $9.50 will be deposited to your account within two weeks of your delivery to your customer.

If each of your products represents an idea, you have a great deal of ideas to come up with to make fill up your Zshop.

You could spend time all day just coming up with great ideas and marketing them on the Amazon.com Z-shops.

You could still offer the products as CD-ROM ebooks or printed books, but you will have much more profit margin built in if you sell electronic files as e-mail attachments.

If your files represent 15 pages or less of printed matter, you may consider loading one of your free auto responders will the document and giving the customer the e-mail address once payment from the customer is collected.

If you can’t afford the $39.95 per month billed to a credit card to get on the Amazon.com Z-shop system, perhaps you can team up with fraternity brothers or sorority sisters.

If you are underage to posses a credit card, perhaps you can get your parents involved.

Many parents are afraid of the Internet. This would be a great way to educate them on how easy it is to create and market your e-books and e-thoughts on-line.

Almost everyone in the United States has free access to e-mail accounts and computers. Regardless of race or financial position, people can be selling their thoughts.

Everyone has something of value to say.

I would love to see people of limited means earning more money than Stephen King does just by working the ebook and e-thought system.

You do not need an established publisher to earn a living selling your e-books and your e-thoughts. Established publishers have no clue how to market your e-books.

Now you do!

Get excited and create something today! Remember that you can also overwrite or delete a file at any time. The information you are sharing today with someone may entertain, enlighten or inspire that person in ways that will bring you a lifetime of great joy and happiness.

Remember that the most effective marketing tools are absolutely free. By publishing and delivering product off of your own computer by e-mail, everyone has the opportunity of earning a great living by using these techniques.

We wish you success!

Back in late April of 2000, my wife and I were shopping for a back-up hard drive or tape drive to back up information for our computer.

We went to a large Fry’s Electronic superstore in Phoenix, Arizona.

We walked down each isle and all we could find to back-up our hard drive were little zip drives that plug into the computer.

We asked one of the salespeople, where are all the big tape back-up systems?

He said, “people don’t use those anymore.” They now use CD-rewritable drives.

The salesperson brought me over to a pile of neatly stacked CD-writers.

These are systems that allow you to “burn” or create your own CD-ROMS. An idea popped into my mind.

Why couldn’t I create CD-ROM versions of e-books? If I did, could I sell them on Internet bookstores like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com?

I investigate Amazon.com’s Advantage program and found that yes, I could offer CD-ROM e-books.

All I would need is an ISBN for each title I offer with that number printed on the back of the CD-ROM case.

ISBN numbers can be ordered through RR Bowker at:

www.bowker.com

I was in business.

Now, CD-ROM titles on Amazon.com are my largest profit center in E-books. That fact may change at some point, but that’s the way it is on October 1, 2000.

The following is a cheap and easy guide to self-publishing e-books on CD-ROM.

Question: What do I need to create my own CD-ROM E-books?
Answer: The following is a cheap and easy list of all the materials needed:

1. A CD Rewriter Drive:

This is a piece of hardware you can purchase that can fit inside of your computer (internal cd-writer) or it can an external drive that plugs into your equipment. This drive was designed also to back up your hard disk so you have an inexpensive way of protecting yourself from data loss. Tape drives and zip drives are also used to back up data but the cd-writer serves the additional purpose of becoming your new printing press!

Many CD-Rewriter drives are standard equipment on the new computers being purchases.

Most CD Rewriter drives cost between $199-300. I personally use a Hewlett Packard CD-Writer Plus. It costs $199.00 at Fry’s Electronics. It is not the fasted around, however with speed you give up accuracy. I choose accuracy.

Once you get the drive installed you want to read the directions. When you place your first blank CD-R into the drive slot, it will ask you if you wish to create an audio CD or data CD.

Choose “data” cd. It will also ask if it is to be used on just your computer or to be used on “various computers.” Choose “various computers.”

2. CD-R discs:

These are the actual discs that you are “burning in.” I purchase 50 individual discs at a time. They come on a spindle at Fry’s Electronics, Best Buy and other computer stores. Don’t buy the cheapest! I learned that the hard way. 50 in a package usually sells for $26-60. I bought some for $19.95 once and had to replace everyone because of customer complaints. I haven’t had a problem since I went back to the $26-60 price range. The same discs can be used for audio CDs as well as Data CDs.

3. CD-Stomper:

The CD-Stomper is a device that allows you to press on custom labels for each one of your CD-ROMS. You need access to a color printer in order to use the labels. You can use either a laser color printer or a color inkjet printer.

CD-Stomper can be used for audio and data CD-ROMs. You can purchase the CD-Stomper at any computer store.

You must first purchase the CD-Stomper Kit that includes:

1. A stomper device used for pressing on labels.
2. Labels. They come with 2 circular labels on a sheet.
3. J-Cards. J-Cards includes the art and text that you are going to display on your E-book package. There is one front and back J-card on each sheet.
4. Computer software that allows you to create designs and print these out in full color for your labels and your jcards.

You use this software to print your ISBN numbers on all of the back cover (J-cards).

If you own Microsoft Word or Microsoft Publisher, you may be able to use templates that allow you to create your own CD labels and J-cards.

The kit retails for around $24.99. When you deplete your supply of J-cards and labels, you can purchase a package of just labels and a package of just J-cards. It take 2 packages of J-cards for every package of labels.

Note: There are many other products that do this job and they are cheaper as well. I have no idea if they are good or not. If you do try them and like them, give me the feedback at:

wayne[at]wayneperkins.net

4. Empty CD Cases called Jewell Cases:

You need to Jewell cases for packaging. In order for any bookstore to pick them up this is a requirement. The cases make a very tight package. They house the J-card. The ISBN number and the price must be printed on the lower back of the J-card on the back of the CD. Look at CD-ROMs in stores and examine how they look.

Jewell cases will run between $3.00-5.00 for a package of 10. Keep them all the same color! Amazon.com and other booksellers want a consistent package. It usually costs less than $2.00 to ship them anywhere in the US.

Also you can purchase the bubble wrapped enveloped at any office supply store, grocery store, and Post Office.

For sending multiple CDs you can go to the corner shipping stores and places and private mailbox companies.

Remember to take into consideration your shipping costs when creating product. If you are selling CDs off of your website you will usually sell more if you do not charge shipping.

People will pay $10.00 or more in the price of the product to avoid a $4.25 shipping charge! Silly, but it is true. I have had people pay more than $50.00 for an item in order to avoid a shipping charge.

Many corporate buyers are instructed to never pay a shipping charge regardless of how badly they need the product. Follow this tip and you will make money!

5. Shrink Wrapping:

You must have your E-book on CD-ROM professionally shrink-wrapped in order to sell these products with on-line bookstores like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. It is nice to have them shrink wrapped when giving presentations to live audiences. You can hand each attendee a shrink-wrapped package. If a student hurls his Big Mac on it after lunch, the CD will be protected. You can easily wash off hurl and lung butter.

When you are fulfilling your E-book on CD-ROM order, you can take your E-book to a Kinkos, Office Max or other chain printing store. Usually for fifty cents each, you can have those professionally shrink-wrapped. You can even order just one at a time.

Most of the orders I receive from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble are for only 6-12 at a time.

In the beginning you will get orders for only 1 or 2 at a time from the large Internet book retailers.

What does it cost for me to produce and ship each E-book in a CD-ROM version?

Once you have your computer, color printer CD-Stomper kit and CD-Writer. The costs brake down as follows.

1. Blank CD-ROMS $ .60
2. CD Label .20
3. J-Card .30
4. Plastic Jewell Cases .40
5. Bubble Wrap envelope .60
6. Shipping postage. (US) 1.75 each (You can ship up to 6 at a time for $4.25 US Priority Mail)

Total Costs to produce and ship one CD-ROM E-book product is $ 4.35 US

Question: How do I get my CD-ROM on Amazon.com?
Answer: Once you have your CD-ROM E-book completed you can obtain an ISBN number from RR. Bowker and follow the directions Amazon.com gives you in submitting E-book CD-ROMs to them.

RR. Bowker’s address is:

www.bowker.com

Amazon.com’s Advantage Program for Publishers is:

www.amazon.com/advantage

Now you get a real challenge!

Hold your hand out and make a fist. Think of your fist as the size of Barnes & Noble.com.

Now hold both of your arms out as wide as you can. Think of your arms outstretched as Amazon.com.

Its going to be a bigger job to become a best-selling author in any category on Amazon.com but you have a huge marketing tool that will absolutely guarantee that you get there.

That tool is called the Amazon.com Associates Program. This program is similar to Barnes & Noble.com’s Affiliate Program except Amazon.com’s is much larger in scope.

Search the Internet in any category and when you find websites that include libraries of information you will generally find a bookstore. That bookstore will be an Associate of Amazon.com.

You can get these Amazon.com Associate websites to feature your e-book by simply using the linking strategy
below.

Amazon.com Linking Strategy

In order to generate traffic to your e-book you will need to contact top Internet websites and use their association with Amazon.com to sell your books. Follow the four-step process.

A: Identify the Website

When you find a website that has an association with Amazon.com you will find that they are promoting books off of their site and then linking to Amazon.com for order fulfillment.

Click on any book cover you see on the popular website and you will see a new URL in the “address ” section of your browser.

You will be on the Amazon.com book-description page for that specific book.

For example my book “A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books” in CD-ROM format will return an URL in the address section that looks like this:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1929695217/waynefperkinscer/01585464

B: Analyze the URL

You have garbage…. 01585464 or whatever number string appears at the end.

You want to chop that number string off the URL.

The string of letters “waynefperkinscer” is the Amazon.com associate ID number.

You need this!

The ASIN number is the ISBN of the book featured on Amazon.com’s page.

C: Change the URL

1. Copy/paste the URL to the body of the e-mail message you are going to send to the webmaster of the popular website.
2. Chop of the number string at the end of the URL
3. Replace the ISBN in the URL with your book ISBN
4. Look at your new creation

For example let’s say your ISBN is 1929695268.

The name of your e-book is: Write Your Best Selling E-book

Your new URL will look like this:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1929695268/waynefperkinscer/

Pretty easy huh? This technique will generate book sales immediately for you!

If you use the above example, you will generate immediate book sales for me!

D: E-mail the Webmaster

Now you need to e-mail the webmaster. Your e-mail will look something like this.

To: webmaster[at]yoursite.com
Subject: New Content
Body:

Dear Webmaster:
I would like to submit my e-book, “Write Your Best Selling E-book” for inclusion in your on-line bookstore.
My e-book ID with your Amazon.com Associate number is:

www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1929695217/waynefperkinscer/

Conduct Internet searches every day looking for high-ranking websites that have Amazon.com Associations. Once you see the Amazon.com logo you will know that you have hit pay dirt.

Go to Ivillage.com and look over all of their offerings. Click on all the different channels and subscribe to e-zines that fit your topic. You will find many links to books and e-books selling on Amazon.com.

www.ivillage.com

Spend time writing e-mail to Webmasters or submitting the above information on-line when you see “feedback” forms.

Good luck. This is a great tool. Within 90 days you may have 100 or more websites silently endorsing your e-book.

Within 120 days if you follow the Amazon.com linking plan and send articles and sample chapters to high-ranking websites, you will find that you have a best selling e-book on Amazon.com!

You may ask, “how to I sell an e-book on Amazon.com? I just thought they take printed and bound books.”

My answer is, create e-books on your New Gutenberg Press!

Are you ready for the big time? Now that you have at least one e-book published on Mightywords.com, why not publish it on Barnes & Noble.com as well?

You already learned how to create hyperlinks from articles that you write for other websites and e-zines and then send the readers to your website or to Mightywords.com.

Now you will direct traffic from articles to Barnes & Noble.com.

From now on, anytime you see a Barnes & Noble.com logo on a website that your are surfing, make sure you send that site a sample chapter of your e-book.

Currently Barnes & Noble.com inventory three different types of e-books. They inventory the Rocketeditions by NuvoMedia and Gemstar, the Glassbook Reader and the Microsoft Reader with Cleartype. They will also list your e-books on CD-ROM. I will discuss the CD-ROM versions later.

The cheapest and easiest way of getting an e-book listed with Barnes & Noble.com is to have it sold as a Rocketedition.

Rocketeditions

If you do not have a publisher arrangement with NuvoMedia/Gemstar then you need to contact the 1stbooks Library. The phone number is: 1-800-839-8640. You can also send e-mail to 1stbooks@1stbooks.com.

Their website is at: www.1stbooks.com

Check on Chapter 10 in E-book 1 for more information.

Tell 1stbooks Library you want to offer Rocketeditions of your e-books.

Glassbook

Glassbook is software that encrypts a PDF file and allows you to sell it on Barnes & Noble.com.

If you already have your document formatted in Adobe Acrobat, go to the following link and read their contract. Ask them if they can still offer you distribution through Barnes & Noble.

cyberread.com

Microsoft Reader with Cleartype

The Microsoft Reader is another type of software that allows one to read e-books on desktops, laptops, and palm tops, but currently only big publishers are allowed to publish with Barnes & Noble.com using this software.

Check out Microsoft for their rules and regulations regarding publishing with Barnes & Noble.com

www.microsoft.com/reader

Getting traffic over to your e-book description page on Barnes & Noble.com

Use the techniques included in the Marketing Plan in E-book 1, A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing Ebooks.

Focus on writing articles for top ranking websites and writing articles for e-zines and newsletters. These marketing tools will bring you instant results on Barnes & Noble and will drive your rankings hire on the BN scorecard.

Whenever you find websites that promote the Barnes & Noble products, make sure you contact the websites via email and promote your sample chapters and articles.

If you have a website join the Barnes & Noble.com affiliates program. The main reason you wish to do that is to be able to create links from your articles to your e-book description on Barnes & Noble.com. You will also receive great Internet marketing information if you read all of the marketing resources located on the Barnes & Noble Affiliates Program Website.

The affiliates program is located at:

www.barnesandnoble.com/affiliate/

Other resources used to drive business over to Barnes & Noble.com are Northern Light, which is a search engine, and the online book reviews link located at the bottom of any Barnes & Noble page.

Write articles for websites listed in Northern Light and submit your e-book to Fore Word Magazine and others that review e-books online.

www.northernlight.com
www.bn.com

How many articles do I need to write?

That is a good question. Write one article between 200-800 words in length and make a goal of submitting the article to 3 websites, e-zines or newsletters each day.

Within two months you will have over 100 websites and newsletters promoting your article and your links back over to Barnes & Noble.com.

Keep track of your placements by setting up a folder in your Internet browser and then filing each submission page in that folder.

If you get just one e-book sale per article per month you will be well on your way to a best selling e-book. If you are driving two or three per website per month you will begin to earn some big money.

The 100 websites promoting your content should equate to having a traditional book in placed in a traditional bookstore.

The major differences are, your book will always be “facing outward” and it will be available to anyone in the world, 24 hours per day.

Being placed on 100 top ranking websites is much better than spending the time to drive business over to your website and then creating desire on the part of the reader to actually purchase products on your website.

Now its time to start a second and perhaps a third article and submit to the articles submission pages found in your article folder.

Keep up the process and you will find your Barnes & Noble scorecard showing you a “best selling” author. You can then publish news releases that talk about the local author that became a best selling author.

You will be selling e-books and competing with all of the traditional print books in stores. You will be selling more books on-line and spending no money on marketing expenses.

Congratulations.

Yes higher prices mean higher profits for you. Pricing can be fun as well as profitable.

What is really great about marketing e-books and handling the business end myself is that I can experiment and change prices as often as I wish.

Let’s go back to the first e-book you created at Mightywords.com. Are you still offering the e-book at the same price?

You may want to sell it for more.

When I first published A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books on Mightywords.com I priced it at $9.95.

After recording only 4 sales in 3 months I decided to raise the price to $19.95 per book.

In the month after I raised the price I received 12 sales and a great review from a reader.

It has been a featured book on Mightywords since that great review was included.

People expect to pay more for something of value.

Traditional books are priced by page counts and how other books are priced in the same genre.

Remember going to college? Introduction to Psychology textbooks are priced at $65-$75 a copy.

If an Introduction to Psychology or Introduction to English Literature will bring $65-$75.00 a copy from students with limited budgets, then why can’t your carefully prepared e-book bring more than the $12-15 trade paperbacks being purchased by working professionals and two income families?

Since you learned that you have accomplish all of the book marketing yourself, why not pay yourself for it with the increased price of the book?

E-books by nature should be updated and improved frequently. They should draw a higher price than trade outdated trade paperbacks and hardbound books.

Since your e-book is no longer evaluated on page count and by how much the industry charges for that “kind” of book, you hold all the cards in your pricing strategy.

Question: What price should I charge for my e-books?
Answer: The answer lies in what you wish to earn off of the royalties from your e-books.

“What if I want to earn $1,000,000 in royalties over the next two years? I want to earn $500,000 per year for the next two years and then retire.”

Wow, you have some lofty goals but that is good. You want to earn more money than most authors do and I am excited for you. Here is what you have to do to achieve your $1,000,000 goal.

Example A:

Goal $1,000,000 in two years.

Set the retail price of your e-book at $20.00

You have no website. You use Mightywords.com to store your documents and fulfill your orders 24 hours a day. Mightywords pays you a 50% royalty on your e-book.

You are writing articles for e-zines and websites with links over to the book description for your book titled My
Mystery Book.

For example: If your goal is to earn $1,000,000 in royalties over the next two calendar years, then your financial model might look like this:

Price $20.00
Royalty: $10.00
Total quantity of e-books to sell in order to make that goal = 100,000 e-books
Divide 100,000 e-books by 2 years and you only have to sell a total of 50,000

Example B

Goal $1,000,000 in two years.

Set the retail price of your e-books at $20.00 and discount a third e-book, which is a combination of both e-books plus character interviews.

Add a second e-book and create a third that is a series of E-book 1 and E-book 2 that you can bundle together and an interview with your major characters that you can add as a small e-book file to your series.

E-book 1: Price $20.00 for My Mystery Book
E-book 2: Price $20.00 for My Second Mystery Book
E-book 3: Price $35.00 for 2 Mystery Series plus Character Interviews
E-book 1: Royalties $10.00
E-book 2: Royalties $10.00
E-book 3: Royalties $17.50

Look at the example carefully. Since E-book 3 looks very attractive in that you save $5.00 over purchasing two ebooks plus you have the character interviews.

Most people will purchase E-book 1 and the next big seller will be E-books 3.

The royalty on E-book 3 is almost double the royalty of your other e-books!

E-book 3 will rank as your second best selling e-book even if no one has ever read your other books before.

So here is a typical financial model for how your sales will look.

Year One: Sales
E-book 1 20,000 books = $200,000
E-book 2 10,000 books = $100,000
E-book 3 15,000 books = $262,500
Total Sales 45,000 books = $562,500

Year Two: Sales
E-book 1 20,000 books = $200,000
E-book 2 10,000 books = $100,000
E-book 3 15,000 books = $262,500
Total 45,000 books = $562,500
Totals 90,000 books = $1,125,000

Now you can sell less total e-books than in example A. You are selling only 45,000 per year and earn much more money! You now have additional products to sell as well.

The print author will only be able to complete one book during this time and has to sell one million copies over two years to achieve the million dollar royalty as illustrated in A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books.

You also gain some valuable fans that will purchase your next mystery series.

Of course if you sell e-book s off of your own website and keep 90% or more of the selling price, you will reach your goal of $1,000,000 in royalties much quicker!

Remember to charge a strong price for your books. You are worth it and your readers will expect the quality that comes with the higher price.

The very best way to begin a successful e-book marketing campaign is to keep a scorecard. It is easy to know how many books and how many dollars you ring up from you own website but how does it compare with the book industry standards?

If you can somehow compare your e-book sales with e-book and traditional book sates with industry leaders, you will then be able to plan your next e-book offerings more wisely.

Let’s begin keeping a scorecard with one of the industry standards at this writing, Barnes & Noble.com at:

www.bn.com

Since I have e-books in the “self-publishing” category that I want to track, I am going to conduct a search using the word, “self-publishing” as a keyword.

Notice that I entered in the keyword “self-publishing” in the search box next to the quick search box labeled books.

I now click on the search button to search on all books that contain the keywords “self-publishing.

You will notice that there are 164 titles listed in best-selling order from highest to lowest.

My title, A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books in Rocketedition is the 2nd best-selling title. What is unique about that is it is compared with paperback and hardback books!

You want to be able to have your e-book stand up against all of the paperbound books collecting dust on store shelves.

This is the power of keeping a great scorecard.

You may ask, “well how do you stand up with your e-book selling on Amazon.com, the Mother of all Internet Bookstores?”

Yes, you do want to make Amazon.com the ultimate test of how you are doing.

Currently, the best way to sell your e-books is by creating CD-ROM titles and issuing unique ISBN numbers for each of them.

I will give you more information on self-publishing CD-ROMS in a later Step 5.

On Amazon.com, notice that I entered in “self-publishing” as the keyword.

Now let’s search on “self-publishing” and see what results.

The first screen shot shows the top two matches in best-selling order. The results include all books, tapes and CDROMS.

My title, A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books is listed number 12 out of 243 titles in best-selling order. Notice that the price of $22.95 is much higher than the titles located around it.

In the next step we will discuss pricing your e-books. You will be able to price your e-books higher than print and other media if you follow the marketing techniques from E-book 1, A Cheap and Easy Guide to Self-publishing E-books.

Higher prices mean higher profits for you!