Books, ebooks, and self-publishing.

1. I've been slowly working on a book proposal for a marketing title that I'll be submitting to a friend's agent.

2. I'm also working on finishing up a piece dealing with music publicity / indie music that I'm planning to simply self-publish (POD) with www.lulu.com, because I'm simply going to be targeting a very small niche of musicians I work with already. It's just easier for me to maintain control, and market it myself since I already have extensive contacts in the niche.

3. I've been asked a couple of times if I have an ebook available dealing with press releases, other promotional / PR issues, or marketing in general. While I do have a site on the topic that I'm building up, I have to wonder if I should go ahead and do this. If I do, I'd probably use lulu.com again to host and deal with sales... not positive on that.

So.... obviously, if the proposal is accepted, that needs to take first priority. I already know I have a viable product for the POD option and strong enough contacts to make a decent profit off of the time I invest, without question.

But what about an ebook? If I go with that option for a new project, would I be better off distributing it for free, or charging for it. I'm not a huge fan of ebooks myself, so I would almost feel bad charging for it, but I'd also need to recoup my time investment, not to mention the fact that I charge a great deal to give that same information to clients in a consulting session. So I don't know that giving it away for free would be a great idea. What are your thoughts? Is it a topic worth putting an ebook together on? Is there a particular distribution method you would recommend? If I don't charge, I would end up probably adding affiliate links and such to recoup my time. I really don't want to do that. I'd rather just have a simple link to one of my sites at the bottom of each page or something, and leave it ad-free. I hate the thought of littering quality information with ads. There's enough of that already on websites, imo at least. I definitely have my own avenues to market an ebook on marketing / PR issues, so that wouldn't be a problem.

OK. I rambled on too long. Sorry. If you have any feedback on whether something like this is worth looking into compared to the other projects, or any feedback on issues like pricing, I'd really love to hear it.

Jenn