It’s important to remember that ebooks go far beyond talking about social media and marketing. The format can be effective in talking about everything under the sun, especially when you can take an informational slant on your material. How to Cut Your Grocery Budget in Half, from Susanne Myers, very clearly targets her audience’s needs. The ebook was released as a promotion for Myers’ site — which focuses on cutting household bills, especially in the area of food. The timing is especially ideal: I think that ebooks covering anything related to personal finance are flying off the metaphorical shelf right now.

I think it’s particularly interesting that Myers is promoting this download as a ‘report’ — whenever I see “how to” in the title, I expect a guide, rather than a report. It seems like a matter of personal preference, though: maybe I’ll get around to testing the results of labeling an ebook one or the other, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.

The Content

Myers broke her ebook into chapters, each of which is perhaps a page of text. She includes a few worksheets and charts that really added a lot of value to her content — I found myself wanting to print them out for later reference. I think it might be worthwhile to separate out these printable resources and offer them in another (perhaps editable) file, so that readers could print out just three pages rather than messing around with printing the whole ebook. There are some topics, like how she plans her meals, that I wish Myers had included — but I know that she has other resources on her website related to those topics. She did some linking back to her site towards the end of the ebook — assuming the primary purpose of the ebook is to market her website, however, I would suggest adding links throughout.

The footer on each page caught my eye. In addition to page numbers and copyright information, Myers included the following: “Please share this report with loved ones.” I’ve seen the occasional introduction or conclusion that encourages readers to pass along ebooks to interested friends and family — but I’ve never seen someone suggest sharing an ebook with your ‘loved ones.’ I think it will work very well with Myers’ target audience (housewives, mothers and so on). I’d hesitate to use a similar line on an ebook about motorcycles or marketing, although something like ‘your fellow motorcycle riders’ or ‘your fellow marketers’ might work.

The Design

Myers’ design is simple — and that’s not a bad thing. Her target audience is not hardcore social media types — usability is much more important than anything else. That said, some design elements, like the table laying out a sample menu, make for some awkward page breaks. The number of visual elements is also fairly low: this is an ebook on food and there are so many amazing photos of mouthwatering meals out there, even if you’re only using stock photography, that I think it’s worth putting some sort of visual element on each page.

Overall, I think that How to Cut Your Grocery Budget in Half‘s biggest strength is that Myers knew exactly what audience she was writing for, and she really met their needs.

Download the Ebook

How to Cut Your Grocery Budget in Half is available as a free download from Myers’ site, HillbillyHousewife.com. She also sends out a regular newsletter on related topics, and signing up for the newsletter will get you another ebook, Meal Planning 101.