I’ve read some harsh comments against eBooks lately on some of my favorite blogs and forums, mostly along the lines of:
1) “they’re [the eBook authors] just gathering information and packaging it together to sell you what you can find for free on your own”
and
2) “if their [the eBook authors] systems/methods/techniques really worked they wouldn’t share them in an eBook”
I don’t doubt that these ideas are true for some eBooks, heck they’re true for some products in every arena. I bet that 1 in 5 games I’ve purchased for the PC, SEGA, Nintendo and Playstation over the years was complete crap. Half the CD’s in my music collection have fewer than 3 songs I like on them. My favorite actors and actresses have all been in at least one movie I thought was really bad…
My point is that blanket statements [judgments] are always wrong, and there are gems out there to be found. That’s just as true for eBooks as it is for Independent music of films.
Much of what I know and have benefited from in doing business online has come from eBooks. Usually not directly, if you’re looking for a complete road map to success you better keep your day job because while we can–and should–learn from the experiences of others, copying exactly what they do will always fail; you need to learn how to take someone else’s experience and advice and then apply it in a unique way to your venture if you want to gain anything real from it.
That’s how I’ve benefited from countless great eBooks and informational sites over the years. I’ve never tried to duplicate what someone else was doing, but rather see what does and doesn’t work for them and then find a unique or creative way to apply the same “concepts” to my own projects.
For example, if you read that someone made a killing by marketing their Ringtones web site with the typo keyword “ringtoons”, don’t think you’re going to be able to do the same thing with the same typo… it won’t happen! Instead, the valuable lesson there is that typos and misspelled words are a good way to cut into a competitive market.
Since the first alphabet appeared we’ve stored valuable information in books, and I know first-hand that is still true with eBooks. You just need to be able to extract the gems from what you read and learn then apply them in your own ways.
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