Ebook Trends for the Year 2001

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Page 2

Jan 1, 2001

While this may work in the short-term, a number of potential dangers arise:

What if the customer forgets the password?
What if the customer wants to print the book but can't?
What if the customer upgrades her computer and suddenly, can't open the "secure" ebook?

As customer frustration increases, authors will try going back to the free access, advertising-supported model. They'll find that this won't work (financially) and will just have to wait for the day when true and convenient copy-protection is released to the public.

Just watch out for consumer rights protection issues, though.

4.0 Market favorites will continue to be Romance, Sci-Fi, and Investment or Trading related.

In the previous year, people bought ebooks on those above topics. This trend will continue this year, with some shifting to Health ebooks are more baby boomers become used to the idea of ebooks.

It, therefore, helps greatly if your ebook allows customers to make the font size bigger.

5.0 Prices of "how to make money" ebooks will nosedive this year.

Reprint, reselling and bundling rights will boost the growth of smorgasbord, "all ebooks you can read at a super low price" web sites. Instead of the usual $47 to US$97 per Internet business ebook, you will see more sites offering ten or even twenty ebooks for a low $39.

If you're thinking of writing such ebooks this year, you might wish to consider giving them away for free, especially if they talk about how to make money online.

The benefit you will get is that more people will hear about you and your site by word of mouth rather than by search engine placement.

6.0 Self-Updating and customizable ebooks will be very popular this year.

Do you gift others with a book and write a dedication on the title page? Ebooks will now allow you to do that. Aside from the personalizing effect, it will also motivate others to pass along your ebooks because they can also promote their own web sites right on a popular page of your ebook.

Another plus for readers is the self-updating ability of ebooks. No longer must you wait for a "second edition" to download. Certain sections of your ebooks will automatically grab fresh data from a web site. This way, you don't need to fill your hard disk with too many ebook versions.

7.0 Ebook authors will acquire more Sales and Promotion skills.

It used to be that all you had to do is write and that's it. In the online world, ebook authors will become more active in the sales process of their ebooks. No, I'm not talking about using electronic sales letters (the way they look today) or automated follow-ups via email autoresponders (Do those still work?).

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