Information products are a great way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to turn their expertise into dollars. And despite all the warnings about people not liking to read–and video and audio killing off the ebook–they are still going strong.

In fact, Teleread recently reported that January 2009 ebook sales were more than $8.8 million, up more than 170% over January 2008. And those numbers are just based on wholesale revenues from 13 trade publishers reporting to the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

Why? Ebook sales have been growing for a while but the spike in popularity for Amazon’s Kindle and gadgets certainly helps.

But the recession helps too–people are both staying home more and more focused on learning new things to enhance their money-making skills or escape from their financial worries. Ebooks are a convenient source for how-to information. After all, you want to know how to implement that great idea now, not a week from now when the book finally arrives.

And in the end, nothing beats the flexibility and reference-ability (a new word?!) of ebooks.

• Don’t have an hour to devote? You can  read them in bits and pieces, whenever you have time–whether you’re waiting at the doctor’s office, eating breakfast in the morning, sitting in a boring meeting. (Try doing the latter with your iPod!)
• Want to skip over the parts that don’t appeal to you? No problem.  Some online videos don’t even offer fast forward and rewind.
• Trying to find some detail you read again? it’s as simple as searching the PDF. And with a good desktop search tool, you don’t even need to know which ebook you read it in.

For business owners, there are three more advantages as well:

• They’re super simple to create
• They’re easy to change or update
• The sheer number of pages adds “heft” to a product–even though they’re digital

It’s true–adding audio and/or video to an ebook will probably boost your sales.  But ebooks are still a great way to start turning your expertise into passive income.

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