Flip It Good
Today’s consumers are hungry for information, and as I’ve written before, an ebook generally fits the bill. Ebooks educate clients about their rights, while demonstrating your law firm’s expertise. Even if you’re an avid blogger, blogs aren’t exactly portable – so even compiling posts into a single document may buy you some added exposure.
While a plain, self-created PDF file is adequate for publishing an ebook, today’s consumers’ expect something a bit nicer. Paying for a professional to design your ebook is one option – and today’s desk-top publishing packages and free and easy to deploy fonts, via Font Squirrel also provide an easy way to enhance plain text.
But increasingly folks are reading books on mobile devices like ipads or phones. So to get the most out of an ebook, you may want to convert it into a flipbook or app. Recently, I experimented with InstantFlipBook.com to convert my trade association’s road map for the marine renewables industry into a an online flip book. The instant flip book tool was free and allowed me to do the conversion online, almost instantly. But I found other products that you can download to your desktop to complete the conversion – and I also saw that a Fiverr contractor will convert your ebook into an
app for Android for five bucks. Given the minimal time and low investment to convert your ebook to a flip book or app, isn’t it worth a try?
Carolyn, you raise some wonderful points. I’m in the middle of finishing my book while trying to meet the demands of actual consulting work.
The minor investment in setting up a downloadable version of your book pale in comparison to having your book in multiple formats. I would also suggest protecting domain names (especially .com & .mobi extensions) for the book title, your personal name, and maybe the name of your firm. THAT is not a minor investment, but start slowly; it’s worth it in the long run.
I’m more concerned about the major investment of time that this would take. Carefully assess the monetary savings of “publishing” your own downloadable version against the time it would take. Sure you’re taking time to write it. Authors, especially lawyer/authors, have convinced themselves that “self-publishing” should mean exactly that. But if you’re going to stay up until 3 am anyway, wouldn’t you rather be spending it on a billable project?
Anything you spend on creating this marketing tool (face it, that’s what a book is in our profession) should be charged off as a firm expense. Unless I have an irresistible desire to be more involved in fun software like InstantFlipBook, I’ve had more success farming out the more mundane production requirements to others. Some will even write the thing for you on Fiverr.