AP 0532: Should I Make My Ebooks Printable?

AskPat 532 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat here. Welcome to Episode 532 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Glenn.

But before we get to Glenn's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com which is super cool because if you are a solopreneur, or even if you have people working with you already, if you're looking to expand your crew to add more people to your work force, you've got to check out ZipRecruiter. Because instead of posting a job posting on all the hundreds of different websites separately, all you have to do is go through ZipRecruiter.com and with one or two clicks, they'll send out that one job description to over a 100 different job sites, and then you'll also be instantly matched to candidates from over six million resumes in their system. And just one post in 24 hours, you'll get a ton of top candidates for that position. So it just makes recruiting very easily. And guess what? You can try it out for free. So all you have to do it go to ZipRecruiter.com/Pat. Again that's ZipRecruiter.com/Pat, and you can check it out.

Alright, thank you so much, and here's today question from Glenn.

Glenn: Hi Pat. My name is Glenn. I have a question about ebooks. I noticed recently I've been downloading and reading a lot of ebooks, and I like to print my ebooks off so I can highlight things and go through, you know, the content that I do want and get rid of the content that I don't want. And I noticed a lot of the ebooks that people put out are very graphics-oriented. They have a lot ink. So I haven't been printing them off. And that usually leads to me not using them or reading them at all. So I'm wondering if it's a good idea to make an ebook with all those fancy graphics and all that ink, or if it would be a better idea to create an ebook format which is very easily printable. Anyways, I just wanted to know your thoughts on this yeah hope to hear from you. Thanks. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Glenn, thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it. You know I haven't actually thought about this. I read a lot of ebooks, but I don't feel compelled to print them out. But I can see how it would be very useful especially for those who highlight. If there's a lot of exercises involved, I mean it makes sense. You wouldn't write on your Kindle, so why would you not want to print things out if there are exercises and things like that? And plus even if there aren't, you might want to highlight just so you can go back. And a lot of people actually don't use the highlight function of Kindle books. You know where you can highlight and it keeps track of it. I mean there's something to be said with putting pen or highlighter on paper.

So I definitely see where you are coming from. And I know from my own experience that on SPI, on SmartPassiveIncome.com, a lot of people like to print out my articles and highlight them and post them. You know if it's a thing they are working on, for instance, the podcasting tutorial at PodcastingTutorial.com, they'll print that out. They'll pin it up or they put it next to them. And they work through the steps right then and there.

So when it comes to ebooks that you might sell on something like Amazon or even off of your own website, here is the solution I would give. This is what I would do. I haven't done this. Will It Fly?—it just came out. And this was not available although I might now make it available. This is such a great idea. So I want to thank you Glenn for putting this in my mind. But here's what I would do. If you have a book that has all these graphics, you know, and the graphics are often very important. You want to include images where images make sense. You never want to include images just to make your book thicker or to make it look better. I mean, yes, maybe the cover of course. But inside you want to only have images that makes sense and that are relevant to the content in that book. I wouldn't strip images out that are necessary for a book just because you don't want people to be able to, you know, waste ink or something.

So here's what I would do. I would write your ebook. If you're going to write an ebook in whatever way you want to write it, have any graphics in there that you feel are necessary. But then somewhere in the beginning of the book, or if you have access to those people's email addresses, somewhere you surprise those readers. And you say, “Hey reader.” Obviously you don't want to say, “Hey reader,” but you essentially you're saying, “Hey, I have a print-friendly version of this book available to you for free. Go to this URL and you'll be able to get access to it for free.” That's what I would do. That way, the ebook isn't comprised for those who might need or want to see those images. But it's also kind of cool even if they're not going to print it out to know that that's there. And it's a value added. It makes your audience or your readers know that you're thinking about them. You're caring about them.

And really you can't choose how your audience is going to consume your content. You can only give them those options. So if somebody wants to print out that book, they have that option. Now here's the sort of cherry on top. You could offer that for free and just have people go to your URL where they then click a button to get that ebook for free. But here's what I would do. I would actually put it behind a subscription. So people would have to share their email address in order for you to get that. And here's the cherry on top of the cherry or the whip cream. I don't know what I'm saying. But when you collect those email addresses, you tag those people as wanting printer-friendly versions of stuff.

You can tag people in many email service providers. I use ConvertKit. If you want to check out ConvertKit, go to AskPat.com/ConvertKit. And you can see how to use it from there, but you can tag those people as wanting printer-friendly stuff. And then whenever you come out with something in the future that might be printer-friendly, or you might come out with something in the future that has a printer-friendly component, you can separate. Or send a separate email to those people that will make them feel really special because you've paid attention to and have kept track about the fact that they like printer-friendly stuff. You can develop more raving fans that way. They're going to feel appreciated. They're gonna want to share your stuff even more. Bada bing, bada bing. That's what I would do.

So Glenn, I want to thank you for that question and the idea because that is a great idea. And I am probably going to implement something similar with Will It Fly? soon if it has not yet been implemented. And what's cool about ebooks, also, fun fact, is that you get to update them as much as you want. And it's often updated on the fly. You don't need to create a whole new print version that the printers have to worry about. You just upload a new version, and it can include any of those additional bonuses or things that you can use to not only provide more value to your audience, but also collect more email subscribers and then put them into whatever funnel you want to have to add more value. Also, hopefully, down the road generate more income too.

So Glenn, thank you so much for the question. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. And I also want to thank everybody whose asking questions. Obviously the show wouldn't exist without you. So all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask your question that you have that you want potentially featured here on the show just right there. So click the button. Ask your question. Doesn't need to be perfect. As long as I can here you, that's all that matters. My job is to sound good. Your job to ask the questions. So again thank you. Go to AskPat.com.

I also want to thank secondary sponsor for today's episode, FreshBooks.com, which is an amazing tool that makes your life so much easier regarding your finances for your business. So if you're keeping track of your finances on something like Excel or some other third-party product, I would highly recommend you check out FreshBooks. I use it and it has made my life so much easier. And if you do any invoicing, you have any students or you do any coaching for any reason, you need to bill people. You can bill people through FreshBooks. It makes it so much easier for you to get paid. So you can worry less about all that stuff and focus more on what you need to do to serve others. So again if you want to check it out. You can go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again that's GetFreshBooks.com enter “AskPat. Thanks so much I appreciate you.

And here's a quote to finish off the day like I always have for you. And today's quote comes from Douglas Adams. He says, “Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.”

Yeah, good stuff. Alright guys, thanks so much cheers. And I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.