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Back in the day, publishing was a pretty straightforward process. On the one hand, it was phenomenally difficult to succeed. You had to get the attention of the right editor at the right time, have a good publicist, and be extremely lucky to even be considered in the first place. On the other hand, however, once it was in the door it was comparatively easy. The big publishing houses really controlled the market and, if you could get in tight with one of them, your future was secure.
Nowadays, things have changed somewhat. Writing an ebook is often considered a more viable option than sending your book to a publisher. Ebooks have a lot of advantages, but they also have some disadvantages. Before writing an ebook, you should carefully consider both.
One of the big advantages to writing an ebook is that you can publish it, advertise it, and sell it for almost no investment. Writing ebooks is almost as easy as posting something on the Internet. You can package it in a fancy PDF document with good illustrations and excellent font, but even that won't cost you much. The biggest expense is going to be hiring an artist to do the cover art and a proofreader to do a final edit. Everything else is going be pretty cheap.
The downside, of course, is that it is a lot harder to make money writing an ebook. Writing a successful ebook doesn't just require that you get it right, but that you get people to pay for it. In a bookstore, people can skim your book at length, but with one that is on the Internet they will only have samples to look at. This makes it a little bit less likely that they will be willing to purchase it in the first place.
Another downside to writing a book is that it is an in paper format. A lot of people really like the feel of the book in their hands. When you write an ebook, you restrict people to just looking at it on the Internet. Although there are a few different ebook readers out nowadays, they still haven't quite caught on.
Still, even with all of these disadvantages, writing an ebook still makes a lot of sense for a lot of writers. It is a great way to get exposure if you have not had anything significant published before, and it will make you a little bit of money. Best of all, it is a good way to stay on the cutting edge as electronic books will become more and more popular in the future.
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