Help Needed on Internet Marketing of an E-Book

[Jutta]

Dear All

A friend of mine has written a book about "Fee Recovery" and the target group are private/independent schools. I ran some keyword searches, but to no avail. Nobody searches for those keywords 'fee recovery'. The closest keywords would be around 'debt recovery'. But that is not really what the book is about.

Now since there is no demand as in searches on the internet, I believe there is still a chance to market this book internationally (the Australian market is saturated): Establishing a website, and then run a marketing campaign targeting all schools in question via e-mail. The e-mail would tell them about the website where they can review the book and place an order.

Questions:

1. Are there any directories available that would have e-mail addresses from any school/university that charges tuition fees (ie USA, Canada,UK)?

2. To send out mass-e-mail would that be classified as 'spamming'? Or would it be ok because the e-mail addresses were taken from public directories?

3. Should that book to be an "E-Book" or can it be just in the form of a downloadable PDF file?

4. Anything else I forgot to ask here, but what is important?

Thanks for taking the time to reading this.
Cheers Jutta

[Tubby]

Jutta, It sounds like you probably need to target probably a single person in each school, chances are teachers and most of the admin staff will have nothing to do with fee collection. Is there a "trade magazine"? you know the sort of thing 'School adminitrator monthly'? . . With such a select target group I would delay the website decision until I had researched the problem. I would be looking for school suppliers. School purchase things from specialised firms that supply everything from exercise books to wall maps. I would at least check these out. selling the book might be as easy as getting a few suppliers to list is as an adminitration supply item.
If you cannot find 'fee recovery' as a search item . this is a big hint. .

If you had millions of potential buyers it could be worth the effort to attempt to create some demand. I think your market needs to be targeted, and I think it needs to be presented with some authority, (I suspect emails will get dismissed by too large a percentage) and it will not present a profesional authorative image.

You might well need to present your book in person to a supplier who can distribute it. This might well be good, It means you might only have to sell the book to one person, or publisher ...

Clubs collect fees, lots of health clubs! tons of organisations collect fees. It might well sell on the net.
Jutta, you have read the book, I have not, So I am writing this a bit blindfolded. . I imagine fees are structured many different ways, and your target is probably an expert field. I have not read the book.

[nottheusual1]

Some US info:

Start with a site like this:

http://www.school-directory.net/

You'll see listings of many of the types of schools you are looking to target - and you'll see that they belong to a small list of trade associations, who I'm sure offer marketing opportunities to their membership.

"Reverse marketing" has served us well a number of times.....

[Jutta]

thank you both, Tubby and Nottheusual1, for your good advise!!

Cheers Jutta

[Alli]

Offline promotion can do amazing things for your product launch. Get a few good media listings to rev up your campaign. This is actually much easier to do than most people realize.

Joe Vitale is one of the leading experts on media releases. Check out his advice at http://www.hypnoticlibrary.com