Looking for the best ways to create, market, and sell eBooks as an online content creator? Here are the best ways to make money online from selling eBooks using eCommerce sites, Newsletters, Kindle Direct Publishing, and social media.
Creating and eBook can be a lot of work, but when done well and marketed throughly it can be a great way to supplement your income as an online content creator! Here are some tips, tricks, and advice on the best ways to create online eBooks, market those eBooks to your target audience, and make sales resulting in profit and passive income:
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Why Sell eBooks online:
eBooks are a great way to share your expertise and make a little bit of extra money (or a lot)!! I sell hiking & travel eBooks via Sellfy,com, Kindle Direct Publishing, and as part of a Substack subscription and it is an excellent way to supplement my income and has bolstered my career as an independent writer.
Selling eBooks has given me a lot of financial flexibility, and made working as a travel writer without a publisher a possibility. I started publishing three years ago, and have experimented a lot with marketing and publishing eBooks to a variety of results. When I started selling and publishing eBooks, I only had 4,000 Instagram followers. Still, I was able to make over 500 book sales in my first month through careful marketing.
Here are the best ways to create and sell eBooks as an online content creator:
How to Create an eBook:
If you’re here, that means you probably have an idea for an eBook or even a draft fully written. That’s awesome, congratulations! The next step is to organize your ideas, and format your eBook. It might be useful to hire a freelance editor in this process to help format and offer copyedits.
Once your file is ready to go, you need to consider what file type you would like to sell your eBook as. I recommend two file types: a simple PDF and an ePUB file.
The Three Best Ways to Sell eBooks for Content Creators:
There are many ways to sell an eBook, but I recommend using an e-commerce site, Kindle Direct Publishing, and a subscription service like Substack. I use all three in combination to sell my eBooks. Here’s why:
By using a combination of methods to sell eBooks I am able to meet a wider variety of reader needs and reach a larger audience.
1) Sell eBooks via eCommerce Sites
The primary way I sell eBooks is via eCommerce site Sellfy.com. I briefly used Shopify, but found it to be not at all user friendly. I strongly recommend against using Wix– even with only beginner level web design experience (I made this site), I can pick out a Wix site from a mile away and they tend to look dated and cheap. I opted to go with Sellfy as a separate site from my main website & blog (where you are right now) because it is extremely user-friendly with sleek design options and a variety of features.
Selling eBooks through Sellfy.com. One thing I recommend for marketing your eBooks is if you have more than one eBook or online resources available, offer them at a discounted rate as a bundle!
Sellfy is an easy-to-use eCommerce platform made to help creators sell anything from physical products to subscriptions, all the way to eBooks. I use Sellfy to sell eBooks, photo editing presets, and handknit items. It’s a super simple setup, and it works really well for me and the variety of sales needs I have.
Via Sellfy, selling eBooks amounts to simply uploading your files, setting a price and writing your product description, and making your product available. I make the bulk of my eBook sales through Sellfy, and have integrated my shop pages into the menu of my main website. Sellfy accounts for 80% of my eBook downloads and sales, and is easily one of the best ways to sell eBooks for content creators.
Click here to learn more about using Sellfy.com to sell your eBooks
2) Sell eBooks through Kindle Direct Publishing
Self-publishing your eBook with Kindle Direct Publishing is a great way to make your eBook available for people who like to use e-readers. In order to self-publish with KDP and make your eBook e-reader compatible, you’ll need to covert your eBook to an ePub file; this is fairly easy.
Format your document in a word processor like Microsoft Word or Pages. Keep your formatting extremely simple and export as a reflowable ePub file if your eBook is mostly text, or fixed layout if your eBook is image heavy. From here, you can upload to Kindle Direct Publishing.
Pros of Kindle Direct Publishing for eBooks as a content creator:
Kindle Direct Publishing allows you to reach a larger audience, and having a kindle listing lends legitimacy to your eBook and can help with Search Engine Optimization for your book title (it will make your eBook pop up more quickly in Google Searches).
Another pro of Kindle Direct Publishing is robust print on demand services. When I first published my eBook in addition to KDP I manually printed, sold and distributed 500 copies. I never did a rerun of my independently printed books because it was simply too much work to distribute them all independently consistently, but I’m still really glad I did this limited indie-printed run! I was able. to sign each book individually, and it did wonders for building relationships with long-term readers. Today, the only way to get a print copy of my first book is through KDP.
Cons of Kindle Direct Publishing for eBooks as a content creator:
Many online content creators choose not to offer their eBooks through Kindle, and there are a lot of good reasons for that. You make less money selling through Kindle than you do selling directly yourself, and there are many, many ethical reasons to stay away from Amazon.
My revenue through Kindle is very small (which is likely also a result of not actively promoting my book through this avenue).
3) Sell eBooks via Substack Subscriptions
Another way to sell eBooks is to use a subscription based platform like Substack and offer free eBook downloads with a paying subscription. This is a great way to build your subscriber base, especially if you are interested in writing and creating newsletter-style content.
I use my Substack more as an online diary and less as a traditional newsletter– because of this offering free eBooks with a paying subscription has worked really well as an incentive for people to join as paying subscribers. In addition to being a great way to sell your eBook, Substack is also an excellent marketing tool. We’ll cover Substack as a tool for marketing your eBooks in the next section on marketing your eBooks.
How to Market eBooks for Online Content Creators:
While writing an eBook is a huge accomplishment, marketing your eBook effectively is the only way to make money from your writing. Here are some of the best ways to market your eBook as an online content creator:
How to Market eBooks on Social Media:
Social media is one of the best ways to market your eBook! Today, social media marketing youe eBook can be done through a number of social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. I recommend picking a maximum of two social media platforms and focusing on creating content for only two platforms.
Here’s why content creators should focus on creating content for only two platforms:
Creating content is time consuming work, and if you’re a one-man show (most small to mid-sized creators are!) finding the time to create content, write your books, market your books, and work another job is a lot of work. Focusing on two platforms allows you to create quality content for those platforms.
For example, I focus primarily on creating content for Instagram and my Substack, and only engage in TikTok when I absolutely have the time and the bandwidth.
Creating Content to market an eBook:
Social media content to market an eBook should provide express value to the reader and prompt viewers to your eBook for more of your high-quality content. For example, if you’ve written a cookbook, you’ll want to dedicate your online content creation to sharing cooking and food tips.
Above, I’m marketing my Midwest Adventure eBook Bundle via Instagram Reel. I begin with catchy video content, followed by a prompt to open the caption for the best things to do in the area, followed lastly by a call to action to click my bio link for the full book.
How to launch an eBook on Social Media:
One of the best ways to market your eBook on social media to make sales is to plan your eBook launch at least 1-2 months in advance. This way, your potential readers will know when your eBook is launching and what to expect before it is even available, you can build excitement and anticipation, and you will likely see a huge spike in sales when you decide to launch the eBook.
In posting about your eBook launch, share as much as you can about what to expect in your eBook, the process of creating it, and more! Send out a few advanced reader copies of your eBook in exchange for reviews and blurbs you can use to market your eBook as launch date approaches.
Before you launch your eBook, send it to a freelance editor! I have sent all of my eBooks to a freelance editor before editing (I also offer freelance editing services at affordable rates for eBook-length content).
How to use Substack to Market your eBook
Social Media is in general a great way to market yourself and your products, but ultimately can be unreliable and subject to industry trends. Newsletters and email lists allow you to more directly access your audience and readership and is ultimately a much more powerful tool for marketing your eBook.
Typical newsletters can be run through platforms like MailChimp, but I reccomend using a platform like Susbtack if you are a content creator.
Why Substack is the best way to market your eBook
Substack is an app and newsletter provider designed to
provide writers with their own publishing platform built into email. Substack is unique in that you own your audience, and it’s easy to export your email list and leave.
In addition to making money through Substack directly via paid subscriptions, Substack can be used to build a relationship with your readers, and in the long term promote your eBook. Most of my eBook sales were referred by Substack, in addition to rolling in the books with a paid subscription.
No matter how my content is preforming on social media, Substack is an excellent and consistent way to reach my readers and make sales.
Substack is my #1 referrer for eBook sales resulting in a purchase, followed by Instagram, followed by my blog (what you’re reading now). However it’s important to keep in mind that most of my Substack readers were introduced to Substack via my Instagram (80%) or via this blog (20%).
Readers are more likely to buy your eBooks after they are familiar with you and your content, which is why it’s a good idea to invest in building social media as well as a newsletter.
With social media, newsletters, and book sales it’s important to keep in mind that the more laser-focus you are, the better results you will achieve with book sales. For example, my eBooks are primarily focused on adventure in the Midwest. If I wanted to drive more book sales exclusively, I would focus exclusively on content directly related to exploring the Midwest, posting mostly just hiking trails and adventure in the Midwest both on Instagram and on Substack.
Unfortunately I have many interests and a short attention span and am thus, not particularly laser-focused. Better luck to you than me.
Using SEO-Optimized Blog Posts to Market your ebook
One of the best investments you can make when marketing your book is investing your time in writing SEO optimized blog posts. Blog posts that rank high in Google can drive consistent traffic to your website for years after they are published.
You can market your eBook through blogging in a few ways…
At the end of my blog post 30 Best Things to do on the North Shore , I include this call to action to check out the eBook for more information on visiting the area!
Write Topical SEO-Optimized Blog Posts Relating to your eBook’s Topic
Firstly, you can market your eBook through SEO-optimized blog posts by writing informative posts related to the topic of your eBook. These blog posts should answer a question your readers might have.
For example, if you’ve written an eBook on backpacking for beginners, your key readers might have questions like “what do I need for my first time backpacking?”, or “how do I plan a backpacking trip?”.
To reach those readers via blog post, you would write articles ranging 1500-3000 words answering those questions with titles and key words like “12 tips for packing for a backpacking trip” and “14 steps to planning your first backpacking trip”. In these articles, you would answer these questions in enough detail to be useful to the reader and demonstrate that you are a good resource on the topic.
From here, you can link & recommend your readers to your eBook for more information, or even to your Newsletter to stay updated on future tips & articles.
Market your eBook through Embedded Ads on your website
Embedding ads in the sidebar of your website works well in familiarizing website visitors with your eBook as a concept, but I have not found this link directly drives a lot of sales. Worry not, that’s okay! Most people making a purchase have thought about the product several times before actually making the purchase.
A sidebar ad can serve as an introduction to your eBook and a mention in your Substack email newsletter months later can drive the actual sale.
Market your eBook through backlinks in articles
The last way you can use SEO-optimized blog posts to sell your eBooks is including lines throughout the blog post that backlink to your book or reference your book. For example, when marketing my Midwest Adventure eBooks, I write an SEO-optimized blog post 30 Best Things to Do on the North Shore. In this blog post, I list out things you should pack for a trip to the North Shore of Minnesota, and include a link to the eBooks as something to pack, along with a quick, 1-2 sentence explanation of what the eBooks provide!
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