3 Things Independent Writers Need to Successfully Launch an E-Book

Every author, writer or content creator has the opportunity to directly interact with the target audience today. In the past, it’s been necessary to write something and submit it to publishing companies and hopefully catch a break at some point on the way to becoming a famous or at least a somewhat successful writer.

Doing the actual writing is a process in itself, but the end of the writing and editing process is only the middle of the journey. Today, the writer has a few more duties to take on in order to become successful.

Here are three things writers need to successfully launch an e-book.

1. An Interested Audience

You might think this is a bit backward in concept. After all, aren’t you supposed to do the writing and then the audience will form around the book?

That’s true, but only to a point.

In the past, the publisher did quite a bit of work to build audiences for writers. In fact, there were audiences that followed particular publishers because they trusted the publisher to bring in writers that would be appealing to audience members.

As an independent, though, you are responsible for building an interested audience.

The time to start building your audience is now. Even if you don’t have a product to release at this point it’s time to start building your audience.

Look to connect with people in social media. This can involve social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but even more important is an email list. Put up a free blog or a basic website and find ways to get people sign up for an email program.

Perhaps you can provide serials or short stories each week as your write your main novels. Or if you’re writing a how-to e-book you could create blog posts each week. This content can be used to build an audience before you release your full-length material.

A popular DPD feature is to create a free product, like a sample chapter or serial story, and collect customer info through the DPD free purchase process. Buyers give you their name and email and we send them a download link to your free content. You can then either email these prospective future customers through the DPD newsletter feature or export them to 3rd party mailing list managers like MailChimp, Aweber, and more.

2. Invested Partners

There are established audiences out there and by tapping into these audiences you can grow your audience faster.

Other writers have audiences. Publishers have audiences including online publishers such as blogs, review websites and more. Your goal is to find the people out there that have similar audiences to your target audience.

Most people think this is limited to starting an affiliate program and paying a commission. While money is a very good motivator for some people, that’s not the option to generate invested partners.

Another way to use partnerships to your benefit is to get others invested in the success of your e-book.

This could include quoting people in your book. Maybe you review something someone else created in your e-book. There are many ways to get people involved in the work. Building partners is a great way to build your audience faster and when more people are invested in your work the more people you’ll have (besides just yourself) to promote the e-book.

3. Automated Processes for Fulfillment

Any time you have the opportunity to automate a process you should take it. You’ll save time, which will be precious because you’ll want to continue writing and creating while building your audience, which takes lots of work especially early on.

The fulfillment process is important. You want to make sure that when someone is ready to make a purchase of your e-book that it’s a smooth process. You’ve already put the work in to get them to the point of purchase that any issue at this point will be extremely frustrating to you. At best it will be a mild inconvenience for your customer and at worst you’ll lose the sale.

An automated checkout and digital delivery process like DPD will handle everything from collecting customer information, calculating the taxes, and processing the payment to sending the customer a unique, secure download link for your e-book.

If you’re ready to sell your eBook then go get your DPD 30-Day free trial and see how easy it is to get started.