Shortest E-book you would charge for?

13 years ago

To be honest, anything under ten pages should be termed a "report" rather than an ebook. What would I be willing to pay for? The value of these books/reports is far more determined by the value of their content.

What's the point of writing twelve, fifteen, twenty pages of fluff when the critical content can actually be explained in just two or three pages? I reviewed a WSO last week, where the first seven pages gave nothing more than a detailed description of the author and his perceived achievements in life in general.

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fcbafan 13 years ago

I think the buyer does not place much emphasis on the pages but what he intends to see when he gets the e-book.
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gjabiz

13 years ago

Originally Posted by iconoclast

What is the shortest e book that you think a customer might pay for? Thank you.

I honestly don't know.

I've personally paid $500.00 for a five page report...and it was a GREAT bargain at that price.

Over the years I've sold THOUSANDS of HOTSHEETS, which are usually one piece of paper, from anywhere between one dollar and 25 dollars.

What I've found is, people PAY for useful information.

I used to sell a short report and told the buyer if they wanted VOLUME and weight, I'd send along a phone book.

Special reports get what the TARGET market will pay. If you are into commodities and forex, you may be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for short little reports from experts.

If you are into Internet Marketing...your target may demand FREE. OR a few bucks.

So, my best guess is:

It depends on WHOM you are targeting the report? This probably dictates the asking price.

gjabiz

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JMSD

13 years ago

Originally Posted by gjabiz

I honestly don't know.

I've personally paid $500.00 for a five page report...and it was a GREAT bargain at that price.

Over the years I've sold THOUSANDS of HOTSHEETS, which are usually one piece of paper, from anywhere between one dollar and 25 dollars.

What I've found is, people PAY for useful information.

I used to sell a short report and told the buyer if they wanted VOLUME and weight, I'd send along a phone book.

Special reports get what the TARGET market will pay. If you are into commodities and forex, you may be willing to pay hundreds of dollars for short little reports from experts.

If you are into Internet Marketing...your target may demand FREE. OR a few bucks.

So, my best guess is:

It depends on WHOM you are targeting the report? This probably dictates the asking price.

gjabiz

I couldn't agree more with the above.

Determine your target market
Provide value
Charge accordingly

Like many of us, here, I've bought ebooks (reports) of no more than 25 pages for $27 and its been worth many times that in sheer good quality content. Yet other books of greater volume have been a waste of my time and money.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that we are much too busy, these days, to read any "how to" book over 100 pages long (excluding disclaimer, author bio, title page, etc).

I like short, sharp and succinct reports or books that have valuable content and no repetition. GOOD content is key. Many ebooks bought, today, are rehash of a number of articles and/or ebooks cobbled together and so several pages in, you begin to wonder if you'd scrolled back by mistake because the content is repeated more than once.

Anyone looking for volume as well as quality will be amused by John Locke's comments in his "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!"- I paraphrase: If you wish this book was twice as long, then go back to the begin and read it again! It made me laugh out loud. By the way, JL's book on marketing his books is excellent for marketing anything. Unfortunately I can't say the same about the quality of his novels as they don't appeal to me. But, boy, does he know how to sell them.

James

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tpw

13 years ago

Depends on what is in it.

But I do have one idea for a report that would make lots of people happy to own the information, yet the context of the information would fill no more than one page of text.

Would I charge for it? Absolutely.

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iconoclast

13 years ago

Thanks guys, good info.

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Kevin_Hutto

13 years ago

I used to sell an ebook that was a 1 pager for $49.95... Sold about 10 a day for several years.

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iconoclast 13 years ago

Would you mind telling me how you promoted this book?

Originally Posted by Kevin_Hutto

I used to sell an ebook that was a 1 pager for $49.95... Sold about 10 a day for several years.
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TanyaJ

13 years ago

[DELETED]

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Kevin_Hutto 13 years ago

Originally Posted by TanyaJ

It's not about size, it's about content.

THere is a joke in there somewhere...
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Alexdoerr

13 years ago

Make your content unique and knowledgeable. I have seen people selling eBooks with not a worth content. They repeat same thing on every pages. If you have the best content, you will make hundreds of dollars from that.

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Nick Walker

13 years ago

Say it's an ultimate loophole of some sort such as google, and say there's another ebook about scrapebooking. Than there would be a significant distance in price. So it all depends on the quality of the report / ebook.

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YasirYar

13 years ago

Originally Posted by iconoclast

What is the shortest e book that you think a customer might pay for? Thank you.

I always try to provide as much info as I can... so I would think a 100 page ebook should be a good way to get the sales going

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Mr Bill

13 years ago

I agree, I just want you to...save me time or money, make money, save frustration...etc anything that you can tell me that would make my life or job easier is worth at least a few bucks if not more and the shorter the better in my view - short of leaving anything out. Or, put the fluff at the end. That way we know the context of the "fluff" and may enjoy it on a lighter/background note.

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CopywritingTony

13 years ago

Honestly, I've seen 3 or 5 page reports go for over $195
depending on the niche. As matter of fact I have a 2 page
weight loss report that cost me $79.99 - But guess what?
I lost just over 8 pounds that week.

It's all about how pure the content is that people are willing
to pay for. You just better be sure that whatever your selling
is worth it. NO FLUFF, what so ever.

Best Regards,
Copywriting Tony

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theory expert

Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by CopywritingTony

Honestly, I've seen 3 or 5 page reports go for over $195
depending on the niche. As matter of fact I have a 2 page
weight loss report that cost me $79.99 - But guess what?
I lost just over 8 pounds that week.

Did you buy it in a forum or a website? I'd like to see the sells page.

That goes for anyone else who has websites for these expensive 1 page hot sheets.

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CopywritingTony 13 years ago

Originally Posted by Team X

Did you buy it in a forum or a website? I'd like to see the sells page.

That goes for anyone else who has websites for these expensive 1 page hot sheets.

To be honest I bought this report from a weight loss/ bodybuilder forum.
Let me go find the forum. I'm not sure if its still available.

Best Regards,
Copywriting Tony
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IMWinner

13 years ago

Really depends on what is in that EBook that you are selling, regardless of the number of pages, if the content of the eBook is a trash, then you cannot charge for a rate more than $10 to your eBook. It is on the content and the quality of the eBook that people are willing to pay for.
I have a friend who purchased a 15 page eBook for around $114 (discount included) and it was worth it. I also have checked a 32 page eBook but the content was poorly written and doesn't make sense. So, why would I buy that kind of eBook?
It really depends how much that eBook will be charged in the market, you should base that on the content and quality of the eBook.

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Justin Jordan 13 years ago

I quite happily bought an ebook this week that was only five or six pages. On the other hand, I've gotten 5 page ebooks in exchange for my email and been annoyed by them.

So it depends. What matters isn't length, but the quality of the information. The ebook I bought this week was a succinct explanation of how to do something I didn't know how to do, and trying to figure it out on my own would have taken me a couple of hours. Those couple of hours are worth a hundred bucks, so a five dollar ebook was a steal, even if it was only five pages.

But if you give me an ebook that's five pages of absolutely nothing useful, I'm going to be annoyed that I bothered to take the time to fill out the email fields.
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DomainZaar

13 years ago

My latest eBook is 36 pages long. I've personally bought "eBooks" that were only 3 pages long and felt ripped off. The most important thing is to give your customer what they bargained for without them feeling like they were cheated out of their money.

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SteveJohnson

13 years ago

A friend of mine paid $8K+ for a one and a half page engineering report. Me: "OMG why did you pay so much for ONE PIECE OF PAPER???" Him: "I'll double my money next week."

And he did.

I should have learned the lesson earlier: information has value.

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theory expert

Banned 13 years ago

Originally Posted by SteveJohnson

A friend of mine paid $8K+ for a one and a half page engineering report. Me: "OMG why did you pay so much for ONE PIECE OF PAPER???" Him: "I'll double my money next week."

And he did.

I should have learned the lesson earlier: information has value.

I completely understand....I am just curious where are these short sheets being sold?

Did he buy it in a forum?

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Michael D Forbes

13 years ago

People pay $3-5 for 2-3 word "reports" by the millions each year, they just happen to be printed on card stock.

Most of them say things like "I Love You", "Thinking of you", "Happy Mother's Day"
and things of that nature.

Sounds like a fun contest... see who can get the best word to sales price ratio for an eBook. I would think a buck a word might be hard to top, but that engineering report sure did it.

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Nubieteky

13 years ago

short + pay as subject is completely irrelevant
maybe you could be a little more specific...

i would pay 1000$ for a one pager "get rich-blue-print" that could guarantee me to earn a million $ in two weeks..

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Mr Bill

13 years ago

That would probably cost at least a mill, maybe 2.

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Nubieteky

13 years ago

ah yes probably.

and there would be a catch if that document would only cost a thousand usd.

just a wishful scenario

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Ray Abraham

13 years ago

I'm comfortable with 10 pages and beyond, at $5-17 price tag.
But that's just me...

Ray

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theory expert

Banned 13 years ago

Anybody know of a hot sheet that will make me money overnight with no work? Gambling, stocks, lottery? LOL.

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CDarklock

13 years ago

Originally Posted by iconoclast

What is the shortest e book that you think a customer might pay for? Thank you.

I've paid $47 for three pages, one being a title page and one being a pitch for a $197 upsell. I felt the author delivered what was promised in the sales copy, and I got my money's worth, and it was totally fair.

If he had told me before I bought that I was going to get one page of content, I would never have bought. But I was glad I did.

The amusing part is that now I cannot for the life of me remember who that was or what it was about or how I could possibly have thought one page was worth $47.

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Shortest E-book you would charge for?

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