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Create Digital Children's Books
By Stephen Bucaro
They say, if you can't figure out how to do something with your computer, ask a
teenager. While computers intimidate adults, they seem to pique the curiosity of
children. This computer curiosity starts at a very young age.
Some Web entrepreneurs have learned how to profit from this young audience - by
creating children's ebooks. If you can tell stories that are interesting to children,
you can tap this market too.
An important component of a children's ebook is the pictures. If the ebook is written
for preschoolers, the artwork should be built from basic shapes with bold colors. If
written for older children, the pictures don't have to be of professional artist
quality, but they must be interesting.
Children's ebooks should be designed to teach reading. Woven within the story should
be additional learning about history, geography, mathematics or science. Most
importantly, your story should teach a moral lesson. This will please the parents, who
are, after all, the ones who will pay for the ebooks.
How to start a children's ebook business:
 Create a Web site
that is attractive to, and usable by children.
Provide free
access to the beginning of each story. This gets the child involved and curious to
learn what happens in the rest of the story. Curious enough, we hope, to convince mom
or dad to pay a small fee to download the entire story in an ebook.
Each ebook should
contain the beginning of another story and a link to the download page for that ebook.
Include extra free
goodies with each ebook, for example, cartoons, games, puzzles, coloring pages, and
patterns for making crafts or toys. This will make the child and the parent anticipate
what kind of goodies might come with the next ebook purchase.
Place ads for
child-related products on your Web site and in your ebooks. Select toys that are interesting
to children, and have an educational element that justifies purchase by mom or dad.
There is a wide variety of ebook formats and ebook compilers to choose from. I recommend
Help Workshop, a free download from Microsoft's Web site. With this application you can develop
your ebook as regular web pages, and then compile them into a standard Windows help file.
You can have static pictures in your ebook or visit the Design section of this Web site
to learn how to use Java Script to easily add animation, sound, and music to your ebooks
(and your Web site).
You can sell ebooks individually for the low price of $4 or $5 each. This is a digital
download product, so you have no manufacturing, delivery, or overhead cost.
After you have created eight or ten ebooks, you can sell a subscription that lets the
child download any ebooks they want for one year. The subscription fee should represent
a cost savings over purchasing the ebooks individually.
You can accept payments online through PayPal. Place a link to PayPal on your Web site.
The customer logs in (or signs up for a free account) at PayPal's Web site. Using your
email address, they deposit money in your PayPal account. PayPal sends you an email
notification of the payment, along with the customer's email address. You email the
customer a password to download the ebook.
For examples of successful childrens ebook Web businesses, visit the links below:
www.themoplady.com
www.mrmomsoftware.com/story.html
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