I just got an e-mail from Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book that I found interesting:

Over the course of the past couple years it became obvious to me that the perceived value of ebooks was dropping, the field of SEO was getting more complex, and many people who purchased my book wanted to be able to interact with me and ask me many questions. This caused me to need to change the SEO Book business model away from selling a downloadable ebook, and toward selling a web based information product backed by a community forum that helped turn it into a service more than a product.

I already have affiliate tracking in place for the new affiliate program. On February 20th at midnight I am going to shift the default affiliate traffic location to pointing at the new landing page instead of the old landing page, as we have no further plans to sell the SEO Book ebook.

For those that haven’t heard of SEO Book, I’d say the majority of people in the industry would consider it the bible when it comes to search engine optimization.  I’m personally still working my way through the book, trying to learn as much as I can about SEO…it’s an excellent resource.  I knew it was popular, so this e-mail surprised me to find how Aaron was changing the business model behind teaching his SEO expertise.

Aaron mentions that the perceived value of ebooks was dropping, and I could agree to that…but they still do sell.  For example, FreelanceSwitch’s “How To Be A Rockstar Freelancer” book did about $20,000 in sales in the first month.  “Getting Real” by 37Signals has sold over 30,000 copies, and I’m sure SEO Book has done a decent number as well.

So do you think this is a sign of things to come for eBooks?  Are authors going to have a lot more trouble selling books, and having to figure out different alternatives to make money?  Or is this a one-off because of the fact that Aaron’s readers wanted to interact with him and other SEO-interested people?