Send to KindleIf you’ve been blogging and content marketing longer than 5 minutes you’ll know that there’s nothing more powerful that giving away a free report to generate opt-ins to your mailing list. In time you’ll create simple ebooks, first as PDFs and then perhaps create epub documents and publish them on Kindle.
Getting started with an ebook can be a huge pain in the backside. To counteract this pain, I wrote Zero to Ebook, the plan for getting stuff written and up for sale in just 7 days. In this guide I have a section on how to use Word to prettify your Word documents so that your finished PDF looks better. When your PDF ebook looks better, your readers value it more. But it still takes a lot of time.
I also wrote a post about Anthologize where you can create ebooks from existing content on your blog. Anthologize doesn’t make your documents look sexy at all, but it does mean you’ll get the content for your ebook in an easy to use format. It saves a lot of time.
Zero to ebook sold well but a few months I decided to stop selling ebooks as they were simply too much hassle to create and time is precious. I did have options – I could get someone to create the ebooks with my content for me ($400+) or get a VA to do them or I could give up. I chose to give up and focus on other things.
Then 3 weeks ago someone emailed me to say about Product Creator Pro and I thought interesting… and I looked at the sales page and thought hmm, for $49/£30 (a month) I’ll give it a go as I have a file full of ebooks and special reports that are just sitting here…
First thoughts about Product Creator Pro
1. It’s as easy as the introduction video says it is to create a great looking ebook
2. There is a free option which creates 3 free branded reports / ebooks a month. It’s not your branding, it’s Product Creator Pro’s.
3. There has to be something making this really complicated somewhere but I’m not getting it… turns out I was wrong here.
Who can use Product Creator Pro
- Online/Offline Marketers
- Bloggers
- Business owners (online/offline)
- Teachers, Managers, Admin Assistants
- Self-Publishers
- Consultants
- Sales Staff
- Speakers
- And anyone who uses content to communicate
Looking around the Product Creator Pro site I noticed a favourite feature where you can save some reports or ebooks. This could be useful for newletters creators.
The Pros
- Very quick to create an attractive looking ebook from a docx
- A good selection of cover layouts and page layouts to choose from
- Awesome converting to Kindle
- Attractive covers created easily
- Downloads as PDF, HTML and Kindle version
- The end ebook looks fabulous
- Very fast and simple to use
- Cost effective approx $1/75p per ebook
The cons to Product Creator Pro are few.
I’d like to see a middle option for say 5 credits a month. I currently have 50 a month and given that I have 63 different websites, I have just enough to create most sites with one report/ebook a month 
for some users this would be too many credits and it seems to become an expensive tool. Compare that to what you’ll need to do it yourself… You’ll need $699 for Adobe’s Photoshop, so you can design your front cover. Then you’ll need $699 for Adobe’s InDesign, so you can design your inner pages to a professional standard. Or you could go with Apple Pages, assuming you already own a $1,000 MacBook Air. When you break it down like that $49 isn’t expensive at all.
No review of mine would be complete with out my wish list, so here’s mine for Product Creator Pro.
- I’d like to create multiple profiles so it’s easier to use for my multiple sites
- I’d like some red or black pages template in the report section, there’s some stunning blue ones but none in the colours that suit my branding
- Live links in my reports
I love what is available so far and I can see this becoming a powerful tool, very quickly.
You can see this post recreated as a report using Product Creator Pro here – quick report created using PCP, hit the back button to return to this page.
What do you think?
Sarah Arrow
send to a friendOr subscribe to my newsletter for awesome blogging goodies
Useful to have a trusted review, Sarah, for something that will suit those of us that insist on rolling up our sleeves and doing it ourselves. Thank you – will give it a go…
It’s dead simple Babs and has some lovely pale blue templates that match your branding. Have fun
Twitter: saraharrow
This sounds absolutely up my street, Sarah. I agree with you that a middle price option would be a good thing – 5 credits a month would be more than enough for a solo blogger like me (I don’t think I could write more than 5 eBooks a month anyway!) Thanks for this very thorough review.
Twitter: SuzanStMaur
I bet you could write more than 5!
Yes, a middle ground offering would be useful. If I had fewer sites and less stuff waiting for me to publish I would get annoyed with “wasting” so many credits each month.
Twitter: saraharrow
Definitely one for me to consider, Sarah – thank you for a very helpful review. I think I’ll have to consider carefully whether the cost is a bit prohibitive at the moment, given that I’m just starting out on the ebook road, but it does look very useful and a great tool to have.
Twitter: StudyingOnline
Ooo, when can we expect your first ebook Angela? The great thing about the software is the kindle conversion, it’s worth considering for that aspect alone (many hours I’ve lost on Kindle conversion).
Twitter: saraharrow
Looks very interesting and simple to use, Sarah. Would it be suitable for business / technical reports as well do you think?
Twitter: maverickny
Yes, they have some excellent templates that would work well for your market place too Sally. It’s worth taking a look and loading some content in on the free version to see how it looks and if its worth upgrading.
Twitter: saraharrow
That’s a good idea, Sarah. Presumably one can change the template easily if you upgrade from a basic look?
I confess that it looks really easy to use, the same of which cannot be said for InDesign, which is so frustrating for a novice one might as well not waste the time.
Twitter: maverickny
Sarah, the sample e-book you linked to looks fabulous! I’m not in the market because I actually do have the tools you mention (Photoshop, InDesign, etc.). But I love the concept.
Also love the red, white, and black of your site. Very clean!
Twitter: themusclediva
Thanks Mary. I am sure Photoshop and Indesign are cool tools, but I just don’t have the brain width to learn them at the moment!
Twitter: saraharrow
Really useful review Sarah! I don’t suppose you can pay to use it for a month and then stop can you? Sounds great but it takes me a while to write a novel so I’d like to just ‘rent’ it for when I need it.
That’s exactly what I’d do in your circumstances Russ. I have a client that does this, he’s pulled all his content together, created everything he needs and then cancelled his subscription. It works for him, and it sounds like that way would work for you to. Thanks for stopping by and commenting
Twitter: saraharrow
Thanks for a useful review Sarah. This is something I want to work on over the next few months so will definitely give it a try!
Twitter: coxconsultancy
Glad you found it useful Emma
thanks for stopping by and commenting
Twitter: saraharrow