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
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!