E-Book Market Blasphemy - by Dax Moy

I thought this was a very interesting article:

Can I ask you a question?

When was the last time you walked into Amazon, Barnes and Noble

or even your local bookstore to buy a book?

Was it recently?

When you were browsing around reading the book-sleeve, did an attendant run up to you and say "Quick! There's only 2 left! Buy it before they go!"?

What about the last time you bought a book?

Did you hand over the book and the money only to find out that they'd thrown 18 other books, a CD collection, a bunch of book tokens, the author's telephone number and a money-off voucher to Starbucks in your bag?

No?

I wonder why that is?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that it's because bookstores generally value the works of each individual author and rely upon the fact that people are buying, say, a Stephen King novel because they actually like his work, value his craftsmanship actually WANT his book.

Nothing more, nothing less than that.

It's funny then, that in the internet publishing world we tend to do the exact opposite.

We tell people that 'There's only 4 left!' or that 'The price will go up at midnight... I can't guarantee the price!' or that 'Due to such high demand we'll be discontinuing the book but when we bring it back it'll be twice as expensive".

Worse still, we sell the book itself and then bundle it with a stack of bonuses so large that it would take 2 solid months of 8 hour days to get through them.. even if they wanted to!

(I recently looked at a product that had 103 'bonus' items attached to it!)

Excuse me, but this is just nuts!

I mean, seriously, what does it tell your prospect about you and your product?

1. That book is not good enough to be sold as a stand alone product.

If it were, it would be. That simple.

Borders doesn't give you 10 books as bonuses for the simple reason that each book on its shelves MUST be good enough to be there under its own merits and, that being the case, you should pay a fair price for it.

No ifs, no buts.

2. That you're not as confident of your materials as you should be.

If you were then you wouldn't want to bribe me with other stuff that, in many cases, doesn't support the primary offering.

And hey, if you're not confident then why should I be?

3. That you don't care whether or not I read your book.

If you really wanted me to read YOUR book and take what you're saying seriously, why on Earth would you want to distract me with 10 or more works from other people

Seriously, in this day and age the thing that people are most short on is time.

They want to be told what to do, how to do it and why in the shortest, quickest most concise way possible.

They don't want to read through War and Peace 10 times over from different people to figure out what they should be doing to get better abs or to lose weight.

In fact, they already get THAT kind of confusion for free on Google, so why should they pay YOU for adding even more?

4. That you want their money... BADLY!

What other message do you think people are getting when you say 'you can have this, and this, and this, and... oh yes, and don't forget this!'?

They're getting the message that for you it's all about the sale, nothing more, nothing less and that you'll keep bribing until they say 'yes'.

Now, the thing is, this has worked on the internet up until now but will it last?

Can it last?

Will we all find ourselves playing the 'He with the biggest pile of bonuses wins' game ad infinitum?

Will we see 500 bonus gift bundles in the not too distant future?

Who knows, but I hope not!

"But Dax, a lot of the 'big boys' have made a huge fortune this way... I want some of that"

Too true, over the years there has been some great money made from this approach but I don't think it'll last. I sincerely hope it doesn't!

You see, every one of these 'super bundles' just reinforces to the world at large that we're not 'real' authors.

They believe that we're 'just' e-book authors and that we're deserving of lesser status.

And, to be honest, most of the time they'd be right!

Yes, I know that much of this is coming off as marketing blasphemy but it's what I believe.

You may even think it's a bit rich coming from someone who's got e-books of his own but if you take a look at my own products you'll see that I offer no bonuses, no bribes and no slick sales techniques.

I simply offer what I'm selling in a (hopefully) captivating way and trust that those who want my books will buy and those that don't won't.

Yes, there are those who make far, far larger sales than I and yes, they use the bonus method to do so but I'm certain as certain can be that those days are coming to a close.

Regardless, the question is not just 'How many sales can I make?' but, 'what difference am I making when someone reads my book?'

If you're stealing precious time from them by loading them down with 15 books instead of just 1 good one, then are you really doing them a service?

Are you really making a difference?

The source of this article is here...it was written in Jan 2008.