E-commerce

Thanks Justyn. I wrote to them a few weeks ago, and one responded with the name of the person who was looking at the book. The next letter I write to them will probably be to ask for the return of the materials (I was going to give them until January), but I don't want to jeopardise any chance there might be of getting somewhere.

my mate is sellin all some of his stuff to get the money to go to new york. its called mebay. he made it up and he is makin quite a bit. http://mebay.blogspot.com

I've heard the sales of E's has grown exponentially so I guess it does actually work Jeff.

ecommerce does work for the right things, usually information-based products. So you might be in with a chance with your EFL books, especially if they are downloadable ebooks. But it is not sufficient just to stick a few products on a site and say hi folks, buy this. there is a whole science and art to driving the right kind of traffic to your site in the right volumes, quickly capturing the interest of your visitors with very focused copy and then steering them remorselessly towards a purchase. you have to list all the benefits to them and anticipate all their objections and address them one by one, and the whole thing has to be fine-tuned for perfect clarity and usability. there's a huge amount of work involved in getting an ecommerce site right and there will be a lot of trials and errors along the way. ideally the site needs to concentrate on just one thing (ie ecommerce) and have no distractions which might lure the reader away. you also have to clearly prove to your readers that you are a bona fide person who will not run off with their money. you should for example include your name, pic of yourself, telephone number and postal address and if possible testimonials (am I putting you off yet?) because if you don't few people will trust you. if you get it right and it's a worthwhile product you can make a lot of money, however if you fall down on any of the things outlined above, you could easily make zilch. by the way teachers seems a very narrow audience, can you not produce something for students and then your potential customer base is massive, hope that helps, best of British.

If your stuff is really good, you'd be better off taking it to a publisher specializing in EFL materials and see if they'll publish it for you. Alternatively, you could try printing 500-1000 copies yourself and selling it via amazon. I think they will stock and sell self-published materials.

Another thought: to be blunt, there are hundreds of thousands of people teaching ESL around the world. There is nothing all that unique about ESL material. There are about 25 private schools here in Warsaw alone teaching English, so many that some of them hire people to stand on street corners passing out flyers for the courses. One outfit has been giving away CDs in the local daily newspaper once per week. ESL material is like grains of wheat and these schools routinely steal even from major publishers. As I wrote earlier, your best bet is to sell it to a publisher or to a private school with a number of branches and let them do the marketing and take the risks.

I agree Justin. I have friends who've tried this and failed, the only one still in existance is Dave's EFL Café (don't have the URL). However, publishers are often looking for new materials for updates to text books. Try OUP or CUP as your best bet. JT - I used to work with an EFL school in Warsaw called Buminvest!

(as worn by one of the villiage people)

Boom boom!

BUMINVEST!!??? LOL....never heard of that one. There are so many now, I see new names every week. It's amazing. Oddly enough, I did some work for a Polish publisher here, writing short texts in English which will appear in their Polish textbooks for teaching English in high school. Sadly, no royalties, just a flat fee. There is an interesting esl web site called www.ajarn.com (I think) which focuses on teaching English in Thailand; however, it also has a lot of good general information on the subject and a good catalog of links. I have two private students who work as lawyers for a big firm here, but I've never actually taught English as such. These two are already advanced and want to learn how to progress from occasionally laughable English to something that won't embarass them when dealing with native speakers. It's fun because I get to explain all the American sports analogies and idioms, boxing references, etc. Still, ESL materials are available for free on the internet or can easily be copies from books in the library. I use the short stories I've posted to abctales and the chapter I wrote for the US business textbook.

have you tried or They're both e-commerce sites that work very well! (coughs)

Thanks everyone! Will check out those sites, Tony. Not heard of Big Issue Lists. Is that something new to do with The Big Issue (only joking...!) I'm already giving away two of my English books for free download on my website at www.EnglishBanana.com. You have to provide your own paper and ink and binder etc. You can check them out here: http://www.englishbanana.com/books.html I've got two more collections of worksheets though that are finished and would like to print and sell them somehow. I have approached a couple of publishers who are "looking" at them, and have been for what seems like a very long time indeed!

sorry jeff, but the web is already awash with free stuff for teachers

Yes, that's the conclusion I'm coming to as well, Stormy. Teachers only want free stuff, and why not? (As Barry Norman used to say) Actually, in my opinion people surfing the net only want free stuff. That's why free sites for tight-fisted webmasters such as Bravenet.com are so popular.

Just looked at your site. You've got a lot of stuff on there. I'm impressed. Still, selling it is a different story. I'd contact that publisher and tell them you want a straight yea or nay within a week, plus return of the materials and assurance that they aren't using it without your permission. That will show them you're serious. Years ago I sent something to a publisher in the US who ignored me for months. It was obvious they were'nt going to buy my stuff...this was novelty items like designs for funny coffee mugs etc. But I wanted an answer. So I sent them an email stating that they had 48 hours to respond or I would assume they had stolen my material with the intention of using it without my permission and that they next person they would hear from would be my lawyer. I got a response within one hour, claiming they couldn't find anything from me. A week later I received all my materials back in the post (except the coffee mugs which no doubt someone had taken home with them) with a rejection letter. On the same day, I received an email stating that they had looked everywhere and had no record of ever receiving anything from me. I faxed them a copy of their own letter and thanked them for not stealing from me. This was an American outfit and I seriously doubt that they receive many fedex packages from Poland containing coffee mugs and mock ups of calendars and postcards.