Interesting business model for eBook

Earli­er this week I found an eBook over on Zen­Hab­its. The book looks inter­est­ing and I’m look­ing for­ward to giv­ing it a read, but the think that caught my eye was the busi­ness mod­el; you can get the book for free. The whole book, as a down­load­able eBook. Free. Now, there is a Premi­um ver­sion…


Earli­er this week I found an eBook over on Zen­Hab­its. The book looks inter­est­ing and I’m look­ing for­ward to giv­ing it a read, but the think that caught my eye was the busi­ness mod­el; you can get the book for free. The whole book, as a down­load­able eBook. Free.

Now, there is a Premi­um ver­sion of the eBook avail­able that includes a lot more inter­est­ing look­ing con­tent.

This busi­ness mod­el reminds me of  ‘Dir­ect­or’s Cut’ DVDs. You get the basic movie, the Dir­ect­or’s cut, the out-takes, the concept art, maybe a mak­ing-of video, and dir­ect­or com­ment­ary, over and above the basic movie.

Con­tent you’re pay­ing a premi­um for.

So, this 27 chapter eBook is free, and the premi­um stuff looks like it might be worth pay­ing for, if you think it’ll add value to the basic con­tent in the eBook.

Well, I’m going to bite, and give it a read. It’s free. It may (or may not) entice me into check­ing out the premi­um ver­sion, but at the very least, I’ll get some ideas. And hope­fully learn something.

And try and fig­ure out how this busi­ness mod­el really makes sense.

1. All 27 chapters of the free ebook
Along with a crap­load of extra material …

2. How-to videos
Going into more depth on focus-related topics:

  • How to Single-task
  • Beat­ing the Fears of Disconnecting
  • How to Find Still­ness & Disconnect
  • Focus & Health, Part 1: eat­ing healthy and get­ting active
  • Focus & Health, Part 2: sleep and stress

3. Audio inter­views with experts

4. Bonus chapters from Leo

  • cre­ativ­ity and prac­ti­cing deep focus
  • find­ing still­ness and reflection
  • how to start changes on a broad­er level

5. Bonus chapters from oth­er writers

6. Bonus PDF guides

  • How to cre­ate new habits
  • Quick-start declut­ter­ing guide
  • Focused email guide

Comments

3 responses to “Interesting business model for eBook”

  1. Tema Frank Avatar

    It is actu­ally a busi­ness mod­el that is being used quite suc­cess­fully by online mar­keters of “info products”. See people like Jeff Walk­er, Eben Pagan, etc for some of the pros in the field. You give away a lot of free con­tent, to get people inter­ested enough to pay for the premi­um stuff.

    1. Brad Grier Avatar

      Thanks Tema, yeah, now that you men­tion it…I’ve have seen it around before, but for some reas­on, the mar­ket­ing and pack­aging around the ‘free ebook’ offers I’d seen in the past always seemed to be a bit sleezy…mostly centred around SEO. This book stuck me as authen­t­ic and offer­ing a lot of actu­al value.
      And, as I think of it a bit more, there was that inter­est­ing busi­ness book: Free, by Chris Ander­son, describ­ing how to make it all work.

      Per­haps I should­n’t sound so sur­prised when I find someone doing it right 🙂

  2. Tema Frank Avatar

    I’ve been research­ing these online sales tac­tics, and it is true that they tend to seem sleazy. The sad thing is that the approaches they use work incred­ibly well. And some­times they actu­ally do have good content.

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