Today’s guest post is from Dina Eisenberg, AKA the Info Product Doctor. Dina is all about turning your expertise into a passive income stream that will help you scale and promote your brand far and wide – how much do we love that?! Follow her @DinaEisenberg.
There’s a problem that no solo business owner or coach ever mentions: Excess ebooks. These are the ebooks that you began but didn’t finish. The ebooks that represent your last digital product or your work before your business pivot. Right now, they are sitting on your hard drive waiting to be used.
Kinda like that amazingly beautiful dress you bought because, well, it was gorgeous and you’ll need it someday (natch). I still have an adorable fuschia silk waiting in the back of my closet for my next cruise. Never mind that I’ll look like a pink round tennis ball. It’s there to inspire me to get in better shape and dream of new travel adventures.
This post will, hopefully, be your inspiration to repurpose your under-utilized ebook content. After all, you already spent the time creating it. Why not put that energy to good use and make some cash from the content?
Recycle your ebook into a new online offering & gain a new income stream (Tweet this!)
What can you do with an aging ebook? Here are three ideas How about you share your ideas in the Comments, ok?
3 Ways to Repurpose Your Old Ebook
1.Turn your ebook into social media content
Finding more valuable content to share on social media can seem like a job, can’t it? Even using all the great curation tools like Scoop.it or Google Alerts which bring news to you, it still takes a lot of time to sort, compose, create an image and share. Gosh, I’m tired just writing that.
Upcycle your ebook by using excerpts as social media posts. Boost engagement on Google Plus. Dab a little on your Facebook status. Pick out a provocative question to ask in your G+ community. Quote an excerpt on Twitter with a link back to your blog. Share a graph or chart as an infographic.
Hello. I can almost hear your eyes rolling back in your head. No, this isn’t more work. Quite the opposite. Recycling saves you time, provides content and gives you a second shot at brushing up your writing. By the way, you can find help to get all of this done for you.
2. Give your ebook a makeover
I love to get a few new clothes for spring to refresh my wardrobe and get ready for summer (yeah summer!!!) Your ebook might do well with a makeover, too. How about changing your ebook cover? Their styles go in and out of fashion, too.
Upcycle your ebooks’ looks, inside and out. Most ebooks are created simply without a lot of book design, which is fine. But sometimes the wrong title or cover can impact sales. An older book with less than stellar sales could be a blockbuster with a new look. One place I see well-intentioned authors go wrong is with book interiors that are poorly formatted and look amateurish.
Interiors are tough, for sure, if you’re not an inDesign expert. I’m not. I found two solutions for this. Joel Friendlander is the book designer who created Book Design Templates and he’s a genius! He took what I consider the hardest part of being an independent publisher- book design- and made it dead simple.
You simply select a template. I’m partial to Focus for non-fiction business books. Nice and clean. Purchase it. Templates are very reasonably priced for one print-on-demand or one ebook template. Check the Tool Time here. Try a single license and if you like it you can get a multi-license to use more templates. You’re not limited to business. I have my eye on a children’s book template to capture the stories my kids and I made up at bedtime when they were kids.
As for the cover, no worries. I’ve gotten very good ebook covers on Fiverr.com, the online work marketplace. It’s all about understanding how Fiverr works, setting your expectations correctly and being precise. I talk more about that in my course Outsource Easier (new release soon)
3. Transform your ebook into an online course
Online learning is very hot right now and it will be for a while. Smashwords reports that indie publishers will represent 50% of the ebook market by 2020. As an authority, you can be part of that. You can teach your online course on a variety of online platforms like Udemy, Lynda.com and Ruzuku. Don’t have a course? No worries.
Upcycle your ebook into a new online course offering and gain a new income stream. Your ebook was written to solve a problem or help your tribe achieve a goal. Well, that book can be turned into a self-paced learning experience. Each chapter could become a module that you further develop to include exercises and tools. By the way, you don’t have to be a geek. I made my first course last year with simple tools like Powerpoint, Screenflow and Vimeo. And whatever technical piece I couldn’t do myself, I outsourced affordably.
To be sure your course is effective and students actually learn I recommend using the ebook, Bottle your Wisdom by Dr. Kelly Edmonds. Her book solves the problem of crafting your course. She helps you determine what to include, how to avoid content-crammin, and ways to really engage your students for learning.
