Do you want to make money selling eBooks? Why shouldn’t you?
These days, professional authors are not the only ones who can earn while publishing and selling eBooks online. Believe it or not, first-time writers can do that, too!
It doesn’t matter if you want to sell eBooks as a side hustle or a full-time work-at-home job – the market can accommodate all authors with different goals.
According to Statista, the revenue in the eBooks market will reach nearly $15 billion by the end of the year. So, there is more than enough potential revenue if you’re ready to publish and sell your first eBook.
Today, I’ll walk you through creating, selling, and marketing your eBook. That process won’t happen overnight, so let’s get to it!
This post contains affiliate links – see my affiliate disclosure.
Table of Contents
Why Should You Sell eBooks?
There are many reasons to sell eBooks online. Let’s look at the essential ones:
Content creation is one of the most effective ways to earn money online. Likewise, your eBook content can serve many purposes that will benefit you.
For instance, offering a free eBook that serves as a valuable lead magnet can attract thousands of subscribers who can become customers. Converting leads into clients by providing value through free eBooks has never been easier.
But considering this article is about how to make money selling eBooks, let’s focus on the benefits of offering eBooks for sale:
Firstly, selling eBooks is another revenue source you can add to your existing ones. Diversifying your income sources is more important than ever nowadays – you should never put all your eggs into one basket!
Secondly, having an eBook to sell will increase your brand awareness and showcase your expertise on the specific topic. Can you imagine what a best-selling eBook will do to establish you as an authority in your online business field?
Lastly, selling your own eBook is an excellent way to build passive income. After all, an eBook is a digital product you will create once and sell multiple times to hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.
Is Selling eBooks Profitable?
Selling eBooks online can become a profitable business. According to statistics, the number of eBooks sold in the last decade has tripled:
The total publishing revenue from eBooks in 2022 alone was over $28 billion. How is that number working for you?
Long story short, you don’t have to worry about establishing a lucrative revenue if you decide to make money selling eBooks. However, your new venture won’t be without its challenges.
Above all, your success as an eBook seller depends on various factors like content quality, marketing strategies, and pricing approach. Since creating and distributing eBooks comes with lower costs, offering eBooks for sale has the potential to generate more than a decent income.
How Much Money Can You Make From Selling eBooks?
Will you believe me when I tell you that creating eBooks is not only cheap but can be completely free? We’ll talk about that a bit later.
Before we go there, let’s discuss potential earnings when you start to make money selling eBooks:
An eBook can bring you anywhere between $1.99 and $9.99. Of course, you can price your eBook higher than that.
Feel free to experiment with different prices to see which strategy brings the best results. Also, if you’re selling eBooks on third-party platforms, they’ll keep a portion of your earnings as commission, so you’ll have to factor in that.
A typical price tag for an eBook is $2.99 or $3.99 (the latter seems to be the most popular among eBook sellers).
Assuming you have a budget, investing money to market your eBook further will enhance your chances for success. But relying on free promotional channels like Social Media is enough to get you started.
How To Create eBooks To Sell
1) Choose A Topic For Your eBook
First and foremost, your eBook can’t speak to the audience in general terms or contain your overall thoughts about something:
Let’s say that you have a specific idea about an eBook. The first thing to ask yourself is a simple question – what does an eBook about that topic bring to the table?
Remember, you’re not making a final decision about your eBook’s topic yet. Instead, you’re going through the options and trying to narrow them down.
There are a few ways to do that:
Find Out Who Your Target Audience Is
If you want to make money selling eBooks, your products must serve a specific audience. In other words, you can’t start creating your eBook before you know your target audience.
What do your future readers need from your eBook? After all, your goal is to create personalized content that provides valuable information and attracts the right people.
I suggest devoting time to creating a buyer’s persona. Write down everything you can think about your future customers (age, interests, preferences, etc.).
It’s crucial to have a deep understanding of who your buyers are. Your eBook cover, font size, and writing style will matter when reaching these people.
Do In-Depth Market Research
Why do you need to research once you know who your readers are? Quite frankly, the answer to that question is simple:
We can all agree that you should write an eBook around a topic you’re passionate about. That’s the only way to bring your A-game while creating the content.
However, your eBook idea must also be something that will sell well. And how do you know which eBook topics are great for marketing books online?
Here is the moment for trending topics to emerge. I did my research for this article, and I can tell you that the best-selling eBook categories are:
- Health, fitness, and dieting
- Cooking/food
- Business and money-making guides
- Self-help and personal development
- Mystery, suspense, thriller, horror novels, and romance books
- Fiction books and personal stories
Pro Tip:
Spare the afternoon and double-check best-selling eBooks in the category you want to write. Tools like Google Trends and SEMrush can help you with keyword research for new niches worth exploring.
All that will assist you in adding the finishing touches to your buyer’s persona. Plus, you never know what will inspire you more than you already are to write your first eBook.
2) Write Your eBook
Alright, the moment has arrived – it’s time to take the first step to writing your eBook.
Creating the type of book that provides quality content, solves a specific problem, and guarantees easy money from eBook sales – these are the most difficult parts of the process for any first-time author.
Moreover, most fellow writers will tell you that this process takes time. Feel free to follow this blueprint when writing an eBook for the first time:
Outline Your eBook
Outlining your content is not mandatory, but I think you should do it anyway:
An outline will give you a good idea of how much writing is necessary for each section. More importantly, it will help you stay on track during the writing process, which is why it should be your next step.
I recommend separating your eBook’s content into chunks – create your main headlines the same way you would if you have to give titles to different chapters.
There is no need to worry if your outline isn’t perfect. Above all, it must serve as a guide, not a final content.
Write The Content
Now that you have your outline, it’s time to start writing your eBook’s content.
Tips and ideas about writing the content of your first eBook:
- Include credible sources: Even if you’re an expert on the topic you write about, readers respond better to content with more credibility and of high quality. And how do you make your content more credible? That’s easy – add quotes and references to experts on the same topic.
- Prove that your expert advice works: A great way to prove to readers that you know what you’re talking about is by using real-life examples that confirm your expertise (you can include case studies and recent surveys).
- Add call-to-action: Let’s not forget that your goal as an eBook author is to make money selling eBooks. Adding a call-to-action is one of the best ways to guide your readers to the next steps you want them to take.
Edit, Format, And Proofread Your eBook
First and foremost, professional eBook authors can’t afford to publish content without proofreading it first. No one enjoys reading the type of eBook where grammar and punctuation are non-existent!
Secondly, you want your eBook to be visually appealing. You can achieve that by adding multimedia, such as images, interactive infographics, and even a video.
Lastly, you have to take care of the design. Do you know how your eBook cover design, content pages, and Author’s Info are going to look?
Many first-time writers rely on the assistance eBook-creating tools like Sqribble provide. That’s not a bad idea – using such a design tool will polish your product, make it visually appealing, and take its appeal to the next level.
What should future self-published authors know about eBook file types and formatting? All aspiring content creators must become familiar with digital formats such as PDF Files, Interactive PDFs, and Multimedia.
And what about the formatting? Print books should be in a vertical orientation – that will make them easy to read on different electronic devices (a laptop, tablet, or a mobile device).
Pricing New Books
As you can probably guess, the final stage of your eBook creation process is deciding on a price. But how do you pick the best price tag for your product?
See what the other authors of similar eBooks are charging their clients. That information will give you a rough idea of a suitable price.
With that said, don’t hesitate to charge more if you know that your eBook provides more value than others in your field.
3) Sell Your eBook
At this stage, your eBook is ready to reach its potential. How should you go about the selling process?
Nowadays, there are many places where you can list your eBook for sale. See the options below:
Where To Sell eBooks
- Your own website: If you have a website that already attracts a large audience, you can start selling your eBook there. Your most dedicated readers are most likely to become your first customers. Of course, you must publish blog posts to enable readers to find your site through any search engine.
- An online store: Some of you might prefer to sell your eBook in an online shop. That option works best if you plan to publish and sell multiple eBooks. Shopify will allow you to build and launch an online store in minutes and offers a free trial.
- Digital publishing platforms: Amazon and Apple Books are excellent platforms for introducing your product to the eBook market.
4) Promote Your eBook
Have a look at the easiest ways to promote your eBook after publishing it:
- Social media platforms (don’t waste a long time before you start building a social media presence)
- Newsletters and email marketing (create a landing page on your own site and use it to promote any digital or physical product once you start an email list)
- Reader reviews and testimonials
- Enter your eBook in competitions
- Start a YouTube channel (YouTube is probably the best place to reach a lot of people when selling digital products like eBooks or online courses)
5) Track Your eBook Sales
If you want to make money selling eBooks, tracking your sales is a must.
Most digital publishing platforms have built-in analytics that you should use to see how your eBook performs on the market. Social media channels will provide you with more stats.
Clicks, shares, and engagement are metrics to pay attention to. Tracking your sales will help you identify when to adjust your marketing strategy to boost sales.
How To Sell eBooks Without Writing Them
Believe it or not, you can sell eBooks without creating them – Sqribble exists to help you do that.
Sqribble is one of the most popular eBook builders for creating a professional eBook in minutes. It’s a drag-and-drop eBook creator perfect for beginners and first-time authors.
Creating eBooks with Sqribble is as easy as it can get:
- Get Sqribble
- Choose a template
- Add content – Sqribble will create an eBook from your existing article or use any of the private-label articles available to members for free
- Customize and publish your eBook
You can complete the process of creating a professional and visually appealing eBook with Sqribble in a matter of hours without hiring a graphic designer.
Top Platforms To Sell Your eBooks Online
You may have a great book as a fiction writer (or any other type of writer, for that matter). What’s the point of creating a good book if no one gets the chance to read it and place it among the current best sellers?
As you already know, the process of selling eBooks online is different than offering physical books to potential buyers. Today, we’re not talking about the best place to sell a paper book:
Instead, I’ll show you various platforms and online marketplaces you can utilize to sell your digital products and make money writing eBooks.
Have a look at all the different platforms you can join to earn an extra income as an eBook seller:
1) Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing should be your first choice for a self-publishing platform if you’re determined to make money selling eBooks. Why is that?
Its reach is enormous, and the interface is beginner-friendly and easy to use. But that’s not all:
Amazon KDP offers different royalty options you can benefit from after listing your eBook for sale.
Enrolling in KDP Select ensures your eBooks will appear in Kindle Unlimited!
2) Draft2Digital
Another excellent platform for selling eBooks online is Draft2Digital. What makes this site a great place for eBook sellers?
Draft2Digital makes the self-publishing process child’s play. Furthermore, the website provides valuable tools for selling and marketing your products to a worldwide audience.
There is no need to pay any upfront fees – Draft2Digital takes 10% commission of your book’s price once your product starts selling.
3) Smashwords
Can you guess what the best part of joining Smashwords is? Don’t waste much time on guessing:
Smashwords will make your product available for sale on multiple platforms like Apple Books and Barnes & Noble. All it takes is one upload.
On the downside, Smashwords won’t let you receive more than 60% of your book’s selling price. You’re the one to decide if losing 40% is worth it.
4) Rakuten Kobo
Rakuten Kobo is a lesser-known platform writers can join to make money selling eBooks. Visiting this website is a decision you won’t regret:
Even first-time writers can manage the publishing process on the platform since its interface is easy and intuitive. Besides, Rakuten Kobo will not charge you money for any subscription.
5) Payhip
Generally, selling eBooks through Payhip will not disappoint you:
Writers have customization options and can adjust their prices without much effort.
Payhip charges 5% commission on each transaction that happens through the platform.
6) Gumroad
By all means, you can sell different digital products on Gumroad, including eBooks, online courses, and memberships. But that’s not the only reason to use the platform:
eBook sellers don’t have to pay much when marketing products through Gumroad – the site charges only a 10% fee per sale.
Ways To Make Money Selling eBooks FAQs
Can You Make Money Selling eBooks On Amazon?
These days, Amazon is one of the largest and most popular platforms for selling digital eBooks. Publishing an eBook is one of the most profitable ways to make money on Amazon.
Authors can publish their eBooks on Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing.
How Much Can I Make Selling eBooks On Amazon?
According to Amazon, the platform offers a 35% royalty rate for books that sell at $0.01-$2.98. But if your eBook has a price between $2.99-$9.99, you can earn up to 70% royalties for all sales.
How Much Do eBook Sellers Make?
Currently, over 200,000 authors sell their eBooks through Kindle Direct Publishing. More than 5,000 of these authors earn over $10,000 monthly selling their eBooks on Amazon.
My Closing
I have to wrap up this article about ways to make money selling eBooks.
I’ll add more content each time I update this blog post.
Until that happens, I would like to hear your opinion on this topic:
Will you publish an eBook and do your best to earn money selling it online? More importantly, how do you plan to go about the process?
Let me know in the comments section below!
An insightful and empowering read on ‘How To Make Money Selling eBooks Online (5 Simple Steps).’ This comprehensive guide not only unveils the key steps but also navigates through the nuances, providing valuable insights for anyone venturing into the world of eBook sales. The simplicity of the steps, coupled with the wealth of information, makes this a must-read for aspiring authors and entrepreneurs a like.
I really appreciate your comment, thank you so much!
An insightful and empowering read on ‘How To Make Money Selling eBooks Online (5 Simple Steps).’ This comprehensive guide not only unveils the key steps but also navigates through the nuances, providing valuable insights for anyone venturing into the world of eBook sales. The simplicity of the steps, coupled with the wealth of information, makes this a must-read for aspiring authors and entrepreneurs alike. Kudos to the author for demystifying the process and paving the way for success in the digital realm!
That’s one of the nicest comments I’ve ever gotten!
Thank you so much!