You Don’t Have to Call it an Ebook

You’ve spent months writing, editing, and designing a book for your business. It’s a great addition to your online content marketing plan. You can’t wait to tell your customers how to download the book from your website.

However, there’s one thing that’s standing in your way. You don’t want to call it an ebook.

The term “ebook” connotes a lot of different things. For me, I think of a piece that a business produces to share their expertise and promote their business. Others think of a poorly produced self published book or a snake oil-type product that the get-rich-quick-gurus use to sell their latest and greatest. And yet others automatically think of bestselling books that can be read on the Kindle or the iPad, and that’s nice, but not the same thing as what a business might produce.

To get over this hurdle, consider calling your ebook by one of these other terms instead:

Guide

Guidebook

White paper (usually based on research)

Booklet

Case study (only if it looks at a problem and the solutions to that problem)

Handbook

Manual

Omnibus (collection of works by same author)

Periodical (if it is one in a series of publications regularly published)

Compendium

Book

Anthology (if it’s a series of essays by different authors)

Digest

Monograph (scholarly)

Tale (usually fiction, but not necessarily)

Story

Packet

Novella (fiction)

Publication

Tour de force (masterpiece)

Title

Series of pages (this one might be a stretch:)

Tome (large and scholarly)

Journal

Notes

Last, you can call your business ebook nothing at all. Instead, just refer to its title.

What other words have I missed? What do you call your ebook?

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