Are people afraid of opening .exe ebooks?

[Alexa Smith]

Thanks for your observations, n00b.

Originally Posted by n00b

I almost never ask for refunds because it's too much hassle, I just don't buy from that person again.

I hear you. I'm sure you'll agree, though, that this seems not to be a problem for all the people making their living selling e-books in this format? Admittedly, only one has so far responded here, but he hasn't had a single refund request over this issue out of tens of thousands of sales. Kind of hard to argue with that, really, isn't it?

Originally Posted by n00b

I like to make things as easy and comfortable for people as possible, it builds trust.

Indeed - as do I, other things being equal. These, though, are unusual and atypical circumstances in which other things are not equal, for the reasons I mentioned above.

Originally Posted by n00b

I do like the idea of password protected content on a website with the option to download.

It sounds an attractive proposition. Though I suspect that the "option to download" may boil down to a PDF file which people can circulate, which brings me back to square one. For myself, the suggestion of presenting the information as a free e-course and sending it out in instalments by autoresponder seemed perhaps more plausible.

Originally Posted by n00b

do you think that we as internet marketers don't have other interests in life?

No, I don't think that at all. But "we" are not really my target audience in any meaningfully representative sense.

Originally Posted by n00b

you can't say that IMers aren't at least somewhat representative of your audience.

Oops, sorry: I think I just did.

Originally Posted by n00b

You might want to join a forum for the niche you're trying to sell to and just ask them, "Hey I found this great ebook but I have to download this software thing to view it in, do you guys think that's ok?" and see what kind of response you get.

I did that a while ago (with a representative sample of them, not all of them) and didn't get a single negative response at all.

[John Sullivan]

I am very reluctant to download .exe files as I have found many to contain viruses and I am sure many people feel the same way. I always check for viruses but have found a few problems with this type of extension.

John

[Eric Lorence]

I won't use them, or buy them.

You also rule out Mac, Linux`users.

Too many exe books that were nothing more then "ad-browsers" and malware distributions saturated the market.

And many other reasons...

Though it's too bad Adobe has the market cornered on portable documents.

[Jon Steel]

Well - if you go with the .exe you have 2 issues.

1) Some people WONT want to take them because of the risk associated (which sounds like quite a few people from this post)

2) Some people CANNOT take them because they own a MAC (which I read is around 20% and growing of internet users)

I guess it's going to come down to cost/benefit analysis on your part. Personally - I go with .pdf.

Here's a question: Is your info so great where you feel you need to lock it? Even a lot of the "greats" still go with .pdf knowing their target market is all over their products...

Just a thought -

js

[Steven Carl Kelly]

This is my personal stance:

I've never asked for a refund on an infoproduct. Ever. Even when I accidentally bought the same thing twice.

If I received an infoproduct in a format I didn't like, I'd probably use it, I almost definitely would NOT ask for a refund, and I'd be reluctant to order anything else from the same publisher.

I've never, ever bought and infoproduct that has come in EXE format, so I haven't had to cross that bridge as yet. I can tell you that if it weren't disclosed to me upfront, prior to ordering, that the format was an executable file I'd definitely be perturbed and that alone would probably be enough to lead lead me away from the seller in the future.

In this business, it is all about getting it RIGHT when it comes to your customers. I don't care to throw potential stumbling blocks like EXE e-books in front of them.