the goose

There isn’t much that impresses as much as someone casually dropping references into their conversation such as ‘in my first book … blah blah blah’. The thought of countless hours alone in front of a PC – banging away on the keyboard is daunting and anyone who manages to do it gets instant kudos in my book. Becoming an author is not quiet what it used to be however. The great unwashed have been blogging for years now. The recently held Irish Blog Awards was populated by a wide range of people from all walks of life. All of whome could confidently consider themselves to be authors.

Similarly – writing a book – or ebook – doesn’t need to be the chore it once was. While I was preparing for the first automated income mastermind session I realised it at first hand. I had trecked off to google and typed in ‘how to run an automated income’. First up in the list came Passion 4 Business – and an ebook on exactly the material I was looking for. The initial landing page contained some outline information and tips which were useful enough. Crucially however – there were one or two tips which were held back – including such fascinating topics such as ‘how to price your mastermind’ and ‘how to resolve conflicts’. “Conflicts” – I hadn’t even thought there might be any. I shelled out the $19 dollars or so for the book and bought the book.

Now is where things get interesting. The resultant ebook was 22, fairly sparse, pages long – six of which were contents tables, bios and other superflous bits of information. Did I feel hard done by? Not at all. The advice offered wasn’t anything that I would have not copped on to myself but it was comforting to realise that I had at least not forgotten anything major. It made me realise that I was happy to pay 20 dollars for a little peace of mind. Compare that to the relative value of a book in a traditional book store: I would expect a hard copy book to contain at least 200 pages. Not so online. A hard copy book would see about 5% of the cover price go to the author. Not so online. Instead 100% goes to the author. I would expect the hardcopy book to have professional artwork etc. Not so online. In a way – for whatever reason – our expectations are just different when it comes to buying ebooks . This is great news for anyone who feels like they have something to publish – but don’t want to spend years of they life typing it all up.