To Resell or Not to Resell? The Big Question for eBook Sellers on eBay

Opinions vary, often widely, as to whether it is better to sell eBooks with resell rights, allowing other people to resell your goods for profit, or if it’s more profitable to be the sole seller of those items.

Furthermore, there are benefits to promoting resell rights products alongside exclusive items in an overall book selling strategy.

Let’s look at the pros and cons of offering resell rights, exclusive products, or a combination, to help you decide the best route for you to follow.

* Resell rights eBooks pass quickly between sellers, creating a viral effect that can achieve immense sales of other products featured inside those eBooks. Imagine, for example, you have a book about getting rid of pimples for which there is no comparable eBook on the market right now. Let’s say you’ve tested the market and you’re sure you can sell ten reader only copies each week or two copies with resell rights. Which is the more profitable option?

Well, that largely depends on:

- Potential profits on initial sales.

- Potential profits on later sales of products featured inside those books.

Let’s say your book costs $30 for reader copies, and $100 with resell rights. There is a skin cream mentioned inside the eBook that eliminates pimples fast and earns you $40 on every sale.

These are the factors that might influence your decision:

* Bear in mind you can sell either ten reader copies at $30 each or two resell rights copies at $100 dollars each, you can not sell both product types. Those ten copies net $300, the resell rights items offer $200 per week. In the short term, selling reader copies looks by far the best option, and means also the entire market for the book is yours alone. Resell rights titles mean sharing your market and can lead to price wars that might eventually find your books selling at pennies apiece. Without some back end selling potential, offering resell rights is a fast way to lose control of your product as well as earning you little or nothing once resell rights marketers have flooded the market for your book. So, definitely, unique selling’s the way to go where no potential exists for future sales to buyers of either product type.

* Now consider eBook sales, exclusive or with resell rights, with integrated affiliate links, in this case for skin cream costing $80 a time of which you earn half. Let’s say approximately two in ten book buyers purchase the cream. So those ten exclusive sales, generating two skin cream orders, net you another $80. As to the two resell rights product sales, well it’s unlikely many first line buyers will purchase the cream, they’re here to make money from selling marketing rights to other publishers. So to first line resell rights buyers you net zero affiliate commissions. Total profits from ten exclusive sales currently stand at $380, resell rights sales remain at $200. At face value, exclusive book marketing looks the outright winner. But read on, and prepare for a big surprise!

* Don’t let the last paragraph fool you, it’s not time yet to rule out resell rights in your product. To prove it, let’s see what happens when your first line resell rights buyers begin selling copies to other resellers and readers, and those other resellers also begin selling to resellers and readers, and so on, potentially for weeks or years to come. Every single resell rights sale can generate hundreds of future sales and thousands of ultimate readers for your book about getting rid of pimples, even though you’ll probably earn nothing from book sales per se. The really big money lies elsewhere because, if your two resell right sales each week, approximately one hundred each year, sell just ten reader copies each, that’s one thousand new readers potentially to purchase your skin cream. That’s very low indeed, for really popular titles many thousands of ultimate readers are possible, even hundreds of thousands. And, if 20% (2 out of 10) of ten thousand people buy your cream, netting you $40 each, that’s 2,000 sales, and $80,000 going into your bank account.

Summing up, without back end profit potential you’ll probably earn more by selling direct to readers, with or without an affiliate program, meaning every sale makes money for you. Conversely, resell rights, with potential to target tens of thousands of eventual buyers, might earn you nothing on second line product sales but could be a fast way to making really big profits from sales of additional products within your book.

There is no right and wrong choice between giving or not allowing resell rights in any product, market testing is the only way to determine the likely most profitable option, and the process is relatively simple. It goes like this:

* Start by selling reader copies only, determine what percentage of buyers purchase something recommended inside the book. Determine likely weekly book sales, calculate likely initial and back end profit potential.

* If back end sales are few or non-existent from the initial product, it’s unlikely they’ll improve using resell rights.

* If back end profits grossly exceed income from initial eBook sales, resell rights could be much more profitable than retaining sole rights in your product.