First Amazon had its Kindle. Then came Sony’s or was it Barnes & Noble’s e-reader?  Now the Ipad. And, of course about 20 other e-book readers that you probably don’t know unless you have a particular reading need. Everyone is battling it out.

That’s not all, by any means. As the battle continues on e-book readers, the same is happening for e-books. As you know, there are millions of e-books for free or sale online and through the libraries. These have been sold by Amazon and Kobo, as well as smaller online businesses. Many of these smaller Web sites have niches, such as a certain theme, or publish people’s works and then sell them on their site.

Google, is joining this area, too, in June or July. You will be seeing Google e-book stores that have about 4 million or so books for sale. This is going to have a major impact on all the smaller stores, and even the larger ones.  or need to quickly niche themselves. They need to differentiate their online business from the big guys. What can they offer to their customers besides the books and price?  This is why a blog and e-mails and e-zines to customers is so important. They build up a following.

Why am I writing about this? For three reasons: 1) It shows you the direction in which the industry is moving. People are getting used to reading their information in electronic form–including books. Also, they are reading this information on a variety of vehicles–online, mobile, ipad, laptops, etc. etc. 

2) Smaller businesses that are already in the e-book selling business should have established a niche in order to compete with these big guys. They need to differentiate themselves. That is why blogs, e-zines, e-mail and social media is so important. It builds up a following.

3) In the very near future, online businesses will have to reach their customers via other vehicles besides the Internet. They have to start thinking about developing marketing e-books, e-zines, reports, and other marketing tools for all those people reading information from their phones, ipads and e-readers. In addition to a blog, you are going to need an informative e-book/e-report that lets your customers or clients know about you and your business.  Let me know if you are interested in hearing more about this!