Are you thinking of creating your own information product to sell online? Wondering which format to use to deliver your valuable content? In this article I am going to compare the pros and cons of e-books and audio books for you. Then your decision should be pretty obvious and you can get down to the real business of creating your product and bringing it to market.
e-books
I’ll start by looking at the advantages of e-books. E-books are relatively simple to create and generally come at no cost. There are two main formats for e-books: pdf and EPUB. You can find free services online that will help you convert your Word documents to these formats, or you can choose to purchase the appropriate software or pay someone else to convert them for you. Another advantage is that there are many places where you can promote your e-books online, such as specialized e-book sites and Amazon.
From the customer’s point of view, e-books can be quickly scanned and skimmed to find the nuggets of gold and can be easily highlighted, annotated and printed. They can be accessed on a variety of devices.
So what are the downsides? Well, you have to write it, and writing takes more time than talking. You also need to be more finicky about things like spelling and grammar. Another disadvantage is that they generally do not have very high prices.
audio mp3
So what do audios have going for them? One of the biggest advantages is that they are very fast to create. Basically, a 1-hour audio doesn’t take much more than 1 hour to record, which gives you time to set it up and save it. They also don’t need any expensive equipment and you may already have what you need. You need a microphone and recording software. Many computers have built-in microphones, though it’s worth investing a small amount to get an external USB connector to improve quality. As for recording software, if you’re on Windows, you’ll almost certainly have Windows Movie Maker as standard, which can be used to record audio tracks (Macs have something similar), or look for a free program called Audacity. Another advantage is that they require less storage and computing power to upload and listen online.
For customers they have the advantage that they can listen on the go in the car etc. and make good use of time that would otherwise be redundant. Finally, they command much higher prices for the same information as e-books.
I really can’t think of too many cons. I guess some customers might not like them because if they want to go back to a single section to review it, it’s not as easy as with an e-book. You can solve this, in part, by breaking your audio product into shorter time chunks.
conclusion
Both electronic and audio books have their functions. I suggest that e-books are good to use for giveaways or to back up audio as part of a package. For a core product that’s really going to sell, I recommend making an audio product.