Seth’s Thoughts on eBook Sales
Seth Godin wrote a short post on eBook sales today. One of his trademark, almost simplistic observations from the post:
Apparently, many ebook authors believe you need to write pages that are 56 inches long, filled with claims, promises and fake book covers… …I’m not sure that this, by itself, is the future of the medium, though. I think it belongs to people who find a following, curate information for them, build a permission asset and then write a tremendous ebook at a fair price.
As a guy who runs a digital product delivery service that delivers hundreds of ebooks from every conceivable market I can tell you this, almost without exception, is true.
I’ve seen quite a few sales sites for the products that are delivered with Secure Delivery and I can tell you one thing- it’s not the 30 foot long sales pages that sell ebooks, its seller that treats their buyers like human beings and cultivates trust in their audience that post the biggest numbers.
I’d bet on a good conversational blog post to outsell a over-hyped, over-styled 12 foot long sales page any day.
Comment by April on 18 December 2007:
I just hate to see all these ebooks making claims about things such as getting pregnant. If they sold them as being a complete guide to getting pregnant I wouldn’t mind so much. But when they make claims that they have some sort of secret that doctors don’t want people to know about… that’s just nasty.
Comment by Will on 18 December 2007:
Do you or have you considered publicising some sales stats? I think it would help to sell the service to be able to say something along the lines of,
Perhaps, you could also do some high-level analysis on the pages that sell well. Would make interesting and useful reading.
Comment by Chance on 19 December 2007:
Will-
We have thought about adding some high-level stats to our sales pitch, but there are a couple concerns. First is privacy- I don’t know the legalities of giving the sales figures or inventory of our users, even if it is an aggregate total.
Second is that we are new- our sales figures and product totals would not be that exciting. Sure, we deliver hundreds of products now, but how does that compare to other services? It might just make us look small and inadequate even though our numbers are rapidly growing daily.
Comment by Chance on 26 December 2007:
Will-
http://www.jccommerce.com/2007/12/26/interesting-digital-product-statistics-from-secure-delivery/
Comment by Jim Lee on 21 January 2008:
Here’s a pretty interesting take on the short-copy vs. long-copy salesletter debate…
http://www.jamesbrausch.com/short-copy-a-capitalist-perspective/
Cheers,
Jim
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You have to revise your opinion. Repeating this nuttery misses your point. Give us proofs. Not just with words, but with deeds.
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