Publishing E-Books For Dummies

Creating Merchandise Based on Your E-Book

Certain e-books lend themselves well to physical products, or merchandise. Plenty of sites on the Internet let you create your own products, such as T-shirts, mugs, stationery, and other items from CafePress (www.cafepress.com ), or greeting cards and other photo-printed items from PhotoBox (www.photobox.com ).

You can produce merchandise for promotional purposes, such as your e-book’s cover, title, and blurb printed on T-shirts to wear at conferences or on postcards to mail. You can also make merchandise that you plan to sell directly to customers. (Sites such as CafePress work similarly to print-on-demand publishing, so you don’t need to stock up on supplies initially.) If individuals have helped you by serving as beta (advance) readers or even by helping fund your e-book, you can thank them by sending them T-shirts, mugs, or other gifts you’ve designed.

Unless your e-book has an extremely loyal or extremely large fan base, you’re unlikely to get rich selling merchandise — so don’t invest large sums of money in design or manufacturing unless you’re sure of a good return. Survey your audience before creating products to find out what might be popular.