Sounds like a great idea. Publetariat has an article on this today:
Publetariat welcomes author Cheri Lasota. In this guest post, Cheri introduces the idea of using physical gift cards as a means of ebook distribution through brick-and-mortar and other offline outlets.
Have you heard of e-book cards? If you haven’t already, I think you will soon. They are a new book marketing technique making headway and headlines around the country now.
I heard about them from author Dean Wesley Smith. The idea stems from this simple question: how do authors and publishers sell a digital product in a physical store?
So many of us are releasing e-book only versions of our fiction. In such cases, how do we sign our books at events? How can we hand-sell our books at conferences, speaking tours, or to the neighbor next door? How do we start to educate the paperback public that e-books are both the wave of the future and the here and now? E-book cards can accomplish all this.
These plastic cards are the same size as your credit card or the gift cards you might buy at the store. Why that size and shape?
· You can fit them into your wallet or purse.
· You can slip them into larger sleeves or envelopes that can display even more content about the book.
· You can put them in a display holder that has a slot for business cards.
· You can sign them at events because the plastic makes them durable.
· You can mail them in a standard envelope for promotional packages because they are so small and compact.
And just think about how little space they would take up on the bookstore shelf, as opposed to a 600- to 800-page paperback?
SpireHouse Books released my novel on Sept. 13, 2011 and we have wholeheartedly embraced e-book cards in our marketing campaigns since then.
Who writes this stuff ?
There’s nothing wrong with this idea, if you insist on a physical presence for your bookselling, like bookstore or show appearances. There are other ways to sell ebooks on-the-spot, like Square. But don’t forget, a lot of people still respond to gift cards and physical representations of media.
I wouldn’t do it, myself, but the thought had crossed my mind many times.
I discussed these cards at my favourite bookstore and discovered they couldn’t see any advantage for the store. It was just another physical item to order and inventory. They would have to have the physical book anyway, and the card sends the purchaser to some site where all the authors other ebooks are available. Great for the author, not so much for the bookstore.
Good point, Phil; that’s why I’ve emphasized for years that bookstores need to find a way to offer easy ebook sales in-store and a system to skim something off the top for themselves. If there was such a system in place, the bookstore could profit off of cards used in the store, or even cards with a store code added, so a portion of the sale would be redirected to them.
Until that happens, as you said: Not much value to the bookstore other than drawing in customers and hoping to make additional sales… say, what’s wrong with that, exactly?
We are releasing this program for brick and mortar retailers in early 2012: http://enthrill.com/edistribution/video-presentation
There are two main retail markets for this type of product: Impulse purchase (in store discovery) and gifting. From a wholesale side, authors and publishers can purchase pre-activated cards in bulk to sell or distribute however they like.