How can you help me to make an ebook?
Me? I can’t do anything but explain the path that I took, with adjustments based on my victories, mistakes, and hindsight.
Ebooks are a type of digital product, and the more you embrace them from that aspect than you would some laid-back art project like a book you craft on a typewriter, the better.
If you’re going to make eBooks, I expect it’s for one or more of these three reasons:
A: a substantial following of readers.
B: passive income from sales, plus new opportunities related to your books.
C: personal artistic satisfaction.
Personally, my motivation in my Ebook businesses has been all three at the same time, so my advice will come from that angle. Here’s what you need to know:
In order to make an eBook, it helps to break down the project into distinct tasks, which are only to be done in the order shown. Here’s what you need to do, and if you want, I can go into more detail on any of these that you have questions:
1) Select a profitable niche/topic, but one that you care about as well. If you are making an ebook as a hobby and not for solely commercial purposes, then picking a topic and idea that interests you is obviously the only factor that matters. A profitable topic, though, would be one that has a substantial number of interested people and is also associated with spending money.
For instance, health is a huge market of niches because it connects to several universal desires like longevity, pain relief, physical attractiveness, and well-being, things on which people will definitely spend money to protect or increase. If you’re helping someone protect or increase something important to their lives, you’re probably in a good niche. 😉
2) After you have selected the general topic, get into granular details of what you want your ebook to be and accordingly decide the title, which should be eye-catching and give insight into the book’s content. Try not to get cute with it. Does the title give a clear idea of what to expect inside? If it doesn’t, do something else.
3) Plan and outline the book accordingly to your personal style. Depending on what you’re making and your own style as a writer, this part is going to vary a lot. You might be entirely spontaneous, never outlining anything really except for a few key points, or you might need to outline most of the experience before you get started, so you don’t get lost.
4) Start writing. MS word is fine, or Google docs. There are special software products out there that make writing easier, but those are designed for particular types of ebooks, such as fiction.
5) Once you are done with it, perform proofreading and editing. Seriously, get an editor. At least let someone other than you, with a good English education, look at it and give their feedback. That extra perspective is important to catching errors and understanding your work better.
6) All the little, final things. Design the cover, or have it designed by a professional, which is what 99 percent of people should do. After writing, editing, and cover design are handled, usually, it’s time for formatting and publishing, a long series of variable steps, until it’s a done deed and a person could buy and/or download your book from somewhere online.
7) Promotion.
The true game starts at #7, when you have to find and get readers for your ebook, set up a brand, all that fun stuff. Ideally, you do a little promo in the beginning, as soon as you can, to help build more pre-launch audience interest, but I know most beginners won’t do that the first time since they lack confidence and don’t want to market something as they’re changing and re-writing and designing it. You get that confidence later, if you publish more books, to where you can comfortably and confidently talk about it while you’re still writing it, or haven’t even started. That’s a good place to be, but it takes time and dedication.
All of the above steps may sound easy and simple, but when it comes to the actual implementation, there are many different aspects that are to be considered. One or more of these steps will cause you at least a little frustration. Be prepared for that. Making an online career as an author is not that bad, but it’s not effortless. The gold rush with eBooks is more or less over now, as common tactics like blogging aren’t what they used to be. But it’s still a huge and gradually growing market right now.
Be prepared to treat it like a business, because if at all possible, it should be. It should be something you designed and conceived to make you money and to give you back more freedom and control in life. That deserves to be taken seriously, even when it gets hard.
Now, here’s what my friend suggested to me to make things a lot easier in the beginning. He suggested Perfect Product Creation. PPC is a short online course that tells you the key aspects of making a digital product idea that practically sells itself, because coming into the market with the right idea really makes a difference in how much money a book or book series can make you.
So, if you are making an ebook just as a hobby, then the above 7 steps can help you to do that. If you want to make real money online through your ebook, then I would recommend everything I just said plus PPC. In my case, my main aim was to make money online, so this specialized method is a perfect fit.
If you are interested, you can read a review of PPC on my website.
Feel free to reply if you have any questions.
Good Luck!
Thanks,
Cleo
