Getting Best Bang For Free e-Book

[bathgems]

I am writing an e-book about negotiating a large loss with your insurer after having a fire. I went through this drama after our house sustained a major fire in 2000. I am now a lawyer and want to parlay this experience into a practice area.

There are public adjusters who offer to negotiate these losses for the insured but I think for the same fee the insured is better off negotiating a major multi-$100 thousand contract with a lawyer.

The insured may also want to handle it themselves so this is where the book comes in. I can lay out pretty much what someone needs to do to win. Even so, I think there are some people who will not be able to handle it themselves and may want to engage my services.

So the point of the book is

1)to help those who can help themselve
2)to set myself as the expert for those who want representation
3)to have serious link bait for fire departments and insurance agents who come into contact with potential users of this information.

I would even consider having this printed and sending it out to fire departments and insurance agents to give away as the need arises.

But my question for the electronic version is how to get the most benefit while at the same time making it freely available? Would I split is up into chapters and post them ont he website so I could intersperse it with self-promotion? Make it freely downloadable? Require an email for free download so I can follow up? Post a few chapters for SEO and make the rest of the book download by email?

What is the common wisdom?

Thanks,

Steve

[khurramali]

Ask people to sign up on your newsletter before they download your ebook.

Then you can build your mailing list, build a community style website, where people can share their stories and bad experiences about fire insurace etc.

you can send people weekly or after 15 days, latest information about fire insurance offers etc. other advertisements which you can get.

then you can slip in your service advertisements also.

It will be a time consuming work in the beginning, but once everything is organized, then it will run on its own.

[AjiNIMC]

Try http://www.lulu.com

[TrafficProducer]

How about setting up a Forum??

A lot of Hosts proved code do do this... Will need maintenance. Check that you do not commit libel, slander or plagiarism.

[bathgems]

Libel, or written defamation, is a concern. I personally would not talk about individual insurance companies but I imagine forum participants would. I will need to look into the relevant cases on forums and libel.

lulu is good for print on demand but I think I would go ahead and print them for my own distribution. Therefore the price will be a lot lower if I just order extra for sales. I am also thinking about advertising in the book to offset printing costs.