Blog Tour: Answers on E-Books

sAlyice Edrich is the author of several work-from-home e-books, including —where parents earn hundreds of dollars selling information they already possess.

My five questions for Alyice were:

1. How can you get a list of e-book publishers?

The easiest way to find an e-book publisher is to do a search online. Use they keywords, “ebook publishers."

That being said, be very careful when selecting an e-book publisher. Make sure you read the contract completely and that there aren’t any loop holes. One of the reasons many writers go the e-book route is instant publication. Another reason is the ability to attract a traditional publisher or test the waters of a specific book. If you sign a contract that locks your book into the contract for a specified time period, if a print publisher comes along and wants to buy your manuscript, you may not be able to sell those rights. And if your contract only buys electronic rights, a print publisher may not want to work with you for fear of losing sales.

2. Is the query to e-books the same as traditional?

Yes, a query or book proposal for e-books are often the same when going with an e-book publisher. The best way to know for sure is to read the guidelines of the e-book publisher you’re interested in working with.

3. How long does it take to get a e-book published?

If you self-publish, you can have your e-book up in a matter of days from completion. If you go with an e-book publisher, your wait will be longer. E-book publishers like to have “all their ducks in a row” so-to-speak. In other words, they’ll need to make sure your signed contract is returned, there is an ISBN number on your book, the cover art is done, the copyeditor approved the manuscript, you’ve sent a copy into the U.S. Copyright Registrar, and the book is in the right format. Once those preliminaries are done, the book will be passed onto the web designer who will load the e-book and get it into the shopping cart. The e-book publisher may even want you to do a little pre-selling and pre-publication marketing.

4. What is the most wanted genre in the e-book market?

How-to books. If you can narrow your book’s theme down to a very specific niche and then tell all there is to tell about that subject, you’ll have a winner! Just remember to market to the right audience or you won’t sell a single e-book.

5. What is the shelf life (web life) of an e-book?

That depends on the e-book. If you were right an e-book about a topic that changes monthly, the shelf life of that e-book would be one month. At which time you’d need to update it so that you could continue selling it. Many e-books that include resource lists are updated on an annual basis and always include a disclaimer that the resources may be out of date as companies go out of business, change location, or forget to renew their web addresses.

6. How many pages does an e-book usually average?

An e-book should be as long as it needs to be to get the point across. Some very narrow or niched ideas can be as short as 20 pages, but don't expect to charge a lot for short e-books. Shorter e-books usually run between $1 and $5 per e-book. Larger e-books run anywhere from $5 to $199, depending on the topic, the complexity of the topic, and how easy it is to find information on that topic.

You can visit Alyice Edrich at to order a copy of her e-book, today!