Publishing and selling E-content

If you generate content on your blog or at work, there could be a market for these if re-packaged differently.

We all complain of information overload and never know what to read and what not to read. The problem is rendered acute not so much by the amount of information but the formats these are delivered in. Blogs and websites are fine but they are difficult to navigate. They have all kinds of content, and that too keeps getting pushed down as more comes in every day. It is not always possible to track content daily and you may miss out on important stuff. One also needs to be online to read it all. Bookmarking or mailing pages to oneself is cumbersome too.

Get into e-publishing content that is downloadable on demand, can be stored for offline consumption, is portable across various media and can even be printed. This includes:

E-Magazines: A PDF compilation of content on a given topic.

E-Books: Not all books lend themselves to being published on paper, or being distributed through conventional channels. These books can be as small as ten pages or running into hundreds. Topics could include any that come to mind: programming guides, travelogues, cooking, self help, fiction, non-fiction etc. If you have knowledge on a given subject like, say, fighting spam, you could write a book on it.

Print on Demand: If you have gone ahead and produced a book, there may be cases of customers wanting a hard copy of it. If you print these yourself, you will be straddled with inventories in multiples of a thousand, the minimum print run. This obviously makes little sense unless you are sure you will be able to sell these. Print-on-Demand service providers like Pothi.com (http://pothi.com) in India and Lulu.com (http://lulu.com) in the US can print even one copy at a time for your customers. Of course the pricing varies accordingly but is only a small fraction of what you would pay if you went to a regular printer to print one copy.

Podcasts are audio recordings that can be downloaded and played back on a computer or any audio device like the iPod. Content can be interviews you conduct with people, educational or informative programs, or entertainment or anything that lends itself to being listened to for the desired results.

Videos, like Podcasts, can be created for similar purposes. In addition, they are highly suited where you have to show visuals or when it helps to add faces to voices.

Webinars are more like online events where a people participate from all over the world for a real time discussion or to listen to an expert. These are usually announced in advance enabling people to register and add to their schedule.