How to create channels for your information products
INFORMATON PUBLISHING OPTIONS OR CHANNELS
Publication strategies
You have developed your digital product – eBook, home study course, newsletter, software, and seminar, CD –ROMS, DVD or other forms of information product as the case may be. Now, you need to decide which channels of E-publishing option you have to use to distribute your product.
The simple idea here is as a finished product how wills other people have access to your product.
You have the following three options at your disposal:
- You can publish and distribute your work on your own website on the World Wide Web, either free or for some payment.
- You can license your work to an e-publisher, who will pay for the right to create the book in various formats, market it and give you a fee for each book sold. This is similar to the traditional publishing but transferred to a digital sense.
- You may pay an e-publisher to present and market your book to the public. This is called ‘vanity publishing’
Highlights for the different publishing options
Have your own Website
This is option of choice if you want to be in complete control of your creation. Here you upload your finished work to a website the can be accessed by anyone who surfs the web. The following are the basic requirements:
- You need to get your work into digital format.
- You need to have a connection to the Internet.
- You need to have a Web site.
- You need to ‘post’ your work onto your Web site.
Even if you are not familiar on how to do this you can learn how to design and build a website or you can choose to host of free Web site building sites in the Internet. Or you can contract out the services that design and build web sites.
Go the way of traditional publishing in a digital sense
This method is very simple because you complete the writing and the publishing house does the distribution and marketing for you. There are many e-publishing companies that use the Internet as their primary distribution channel and the e-books as their primary format. There is also the possibility for them to offer services like print on demand books, which are paper books printed one by one each time a customer orders them. This is in a every sense like the traditional printing but in a digital perspective.
The important thing to consider in choosing this option is that you are sure that your work will strike an accord will your prospects and therefore generate the revenue for the money, effort and time you and the e-publisher has invested. Remember, that the e-publisher has the right to market, distribute and sell your work.
Vanity Publishing
This is rather absurd; you pay the publisher for you publish you work. The choice is yours but you have to carefully consider this route if your interest is to be in control and make money from your work. Here the risk is share between you and the publisher. And more so since you are not in control of the marketing, distribution and sell of the book; how will you know that the published invest a lot of effort and energy to make sure this happens?
