How to sell ebooks, simple and free methods for any writer

If you read enough articles on selling eBooks, you’ve probably heard of affiliate programs like ClickBank or E-junkie along with promises of quick money for little work. As a freelance author who also makes and sells eBooks, let me tell you, this is a gross exaggeration and you should not be fooled by any program that makes such claims.

Here’s the good news; You can create, market, and sell eBooks for free. It doesn’t have to cost a penny, but your time, and if you write a good e-book and market it wiselyyou can also make money by selling it.

While more than a dozen places are potential eBook sales locations, there are three main places where you should be selling eBooks. These are the same places where the vast majority of my sales occur, and other authors have reported similar results.

You must sell with Amazon. They are the world’s largest seller of books and e-books. The Kindle is loved by more readers than any other electronic device, and Kindle readers have a voracious appetite for books. Uploading a properly formatted eBook to Amazon is as simple as visiting DTP Amazon and following their prompts. It’s also free.

You must sell with Smashwords. They are a neat team that actually converts your document into all formats e-readers can handle like pdf, epub, mobi, lrf to name a few. Smashwords has an eBookstore and also ships your eBook to other major retailers like Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Diesel, and Amazon. Smashwords (also free) has great tutorials and a Style Guide for properly formatting your document so it’s nice to read on those little screens. Just visit Smashwords and follow us.

You must also sell eBooks from your own website and/or blog. That can be set to run on autopilot. Plus, you’ll keep 100% of the profits and grow an email list. Setting up your website with a PayPal button that automatically sends shoppers to a URL to download after purchase is a doddle. You can then sell and fill orders while you sleep. Keep simple download visitor stats with a free company like StatCounter, and you’ll know if there’s piracy, which can be fixed with a simple URL change on your download page. I prefer free sites and blogs, but that choice is up to you.

Also, you can sell on places like eBay, Scribd, YouPublish, MyEbook, Bookmato, etc., but if your experience is similar to mine, you won’t sell as many eBooks as the three above.