Ebooks, along with dozens of other forms of digital goods, used to be hot sellers on eBay. Buyers loved them because they could purchase and download the item instantly, and sellers loved them because they could sell as many as they wanted without enduring any additional costs. EBay decided to change the rules, however, and now digital goods are no longer permitted to be sold through auctions. But you can still sell your ebooks on eBay – without breaking the rules.
Most modern home computers come standard with a CD burner. If you have purchased your computer within the last five years, chances are, you have a burner. Using this one piece of equipment, you can keep selling ebooks on eBay and still be within their restrictions. Instead of selling ebooks for digital download, you can burn each ebook onto a new CD, and mail them to your buyers.
Burning your ebooks onto a CD may seem like a setback, but it’s really not. For starters, blank CD’s are incredibly cheap, and you can pick them up just about anywhere – including Wal-Mart. The shipping costs for mailing a CD are incredibly low, especially if you utilize media post. So your buyer doesn’t have to pay that much more to have the item shipped to them, and you don’t have to spend that much more to burn the ebook onto a CD. And, you can still sell as many ebooks as you want; your only limit is how many blank CD’s you can get your hands on.
Besides the low costs, your buyers will actually be better off with buying ebooks on a CD. In the past, when a buyer decided to upgrade their computer or lost their files to corruption, they lost their ebooks along with it. That would mean they either had to repurchase the ebook – if it was even still available – or be out the money they spent. This can’t happen with a CD; buyers will have a hard copy of their ebook, will be able to make copies of their CD, and can keep on using it for years to come.
If you sell more than one ebook on eBay, you can cut down on costs by adding multiple purchases to one CD. If you have a buyer who purchases three of your ebooks, for instance, you can put all three ebooks on one CD instead of creating three separate ones. This is another convenience factor for your buyers, as well.
The ban on selling digital items on eBay has caused a lot of sellers to abandon the idea of selling ebooks. With less sellers marketing ebooks on eBay, you have far less competition on eBay than ever before. And by using CD’s to sell your ebooks, you won’t be breaking eBay’s rules, and you’ll be offering your buyers something tangible to keep their ebooks safe at the same time. Take advantage of the opportunity to make big money with your own home business on eBay by selling ebooks, and you’ll never look back!
3 comments:
Horrifying!
It is if it is pirated books being sold but I see the day coming when authors will sell their own books like this.
You could be right, Gary, but at this stage, who knows? Looking at the auction sites for print books and magazines, it's noticeable that most of the offerings are by dealers, not private sellers, authors or publishers.
The dealers pick up their stock for a song from charity shops and charity book sales, to which the books have been donated, or from estates, or even $1 library sales. By picking out the nuggets, they make themselves a living and argue they're doing collectors and readers a service in ensuring the items are valued by new owners.
How will a CD ebook buyer know whether he is buying a desirable title from an author or from a dealer recouping a hundred times over what he has laid out for one copy?
Yeah, I know -- I suffer from a lack of faith in human nature!
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