Your First e-Book
Getting your first e-book finished needn’t be a daunting task. Follow my simple steps and your will be ready in no time at all.
Step 1 – Write out your book in a word processor such as MS Word. Your finished book can be anything from a few to hundreds of pages. Don’t worry too much about spelling and the layout. You can (if you wish) hire somebody to edit your book into a more professional looking layout later on.
Step 2 – Get your book proof read. If you are going to give it away on your site as a way of getting people to join up you might want to stick with your spell checker. If your e-book is going to be business related or read with a view to selling other items you may want to get it professionally proof read.
Go to Elance.com and hire a proof reader there. Make sure they proof in your chosen countries version of English (US or UK). Expect to pay around $10 per 100 words.
Step 3 – get your book laid out by an editor. This step is optional but the finished version will make an impression on your reader. Short motivational e-books available on some of my sites I laid out myself using automated software bundled with the word processor.
Step 4 – get an e-book cover designed for your e-book. Again, this is optional. You can find free software and do it yourself or pay a graphic designer to do it. Budget for around $50 for a simple cover. Use Elance.com again.
Step 5 – post your book on your site for sale or for free. Track how many download it with shopping cart software such as that on www.paulcart.com
Best of luck.
Paul Browning
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16 Comments
Does writing an e-book really help you gain followers?
Sounds like you are a fan of this Elance. I love a good tip. I may check them out!
I have been thinking about writing an e-book. This post was well timed.
An e-book can definitely help you gain followers. Any (positive) attention that you can direct to your brand can have a great impact on the number of people who want to become familiar with it.
Thanks for the tips, very insightful.
The how-to e-books are very popular these days, check them out and find some inspiration~
Earlier in 2010 I was working on a small business networking handbook – I have not worked on it for months but your approach of outsourcing many of the components of the book makes me think I COULD pick it up again and have my own e-book fairly easily. An excerpt can be found at http://cisconetworkingblog.com/small-business-networking-handbook/
Thanks for the tips!
Paul I have always wanted to write a book but I just freeze up when I try to write. How do you come up with so much content? I would love to know what you do to organize your thoughts.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the tip – a friend and i have been thinking of doing this also –
Are there sites where you can post your book on if you do not have your own site?
Hi Paul,
I’ m working on my first e-book but things did not move smoothly. The volume of work exceeds my expectation. How should I manage the mess? I’d like to hear your advice. Thank you.
Nice instructions, thank you. Can you recommend some useful tools to draft an e-book?
I have been teaching IT courses for 10-12 years – from programming to web design to Microsoft Office. In that time, I have written whole courses (presentations, study guides, lab guides etc) but never had the nous to get these published professionally or even e-books.
A couple of years ago I registered a domain on the spur of the moment. i was interested in selling ebooks. I guess I’ll look into getting the website up and running.
I’ve noticed more businesses making ebooks available on their websites. I think it is a great idea. Any information on how to sell an ebook on the iTunes store?
I’ve been writing an ebook and I am planning on selling it on my website. I have been thinking of offering the first chapter for free, but in order to read the entire book, you must purchase it.
I like your idea of hiring someone to proofread my work. I had been worried about trying to publish something that needed to be refined a bit more than I can make it. I will check out your suggestions.
I?m really glad I found this blog post. (I?ve been following all the links in the ?internet marketing? category. These suggestions give me some hope that I could write an e-book that others would want to read, with a little outsourced help. Great comments, everyone!