Ebooks can be life-changing. If you want a steady stream of side income or are eager to take the first big step in your career as a writer, writing an ebook is a great place to begin.
Many writers (and would-be writers) recognize that but have yet to get started on their ebooks. Perhaps you’re not sure where to begin, or you’re worried about how you’ll find the time—these 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook.
How to Write an ebook
Step 1: Research your target market
The first among the 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook is if you’re creating an ebook to market your business, that target audience should be the same as your product or service. If you’re creating an ebook as a self-contained product, you’ll want to do more research into your ideal readers.
Your user base won’t be a monolith, but it can help generalize for a hot second with factors like age, types of occupation, or level of disposable income. These insights can help make choices about the topic you write about or the solutions you suggest, so it’s essential to conduct some research into them.
Once you’ve gathered your data, you need to burrow into that reader’s mind and choose your topic wisely — more on that next!
Step 2: Select an Ebook Topic
Then next, among 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook, some topics might sound like great possibilities because you know there’s a big market out there. But don’t decide to write a “dieting book” or “self-help book” (or any other type of book) just because you think it will make money. You may find that the market is saturated, and only established big names are currently selling well.
Instead, choose a topic that
(a) you already know a lot about and
(b) you’ll enjoy writing about.
This saves you doing lots of research to get up to speed, and it substantially increases the chance that you’ll see your ebook through to a final draft.
Step 3: Survey Your Audience
You’re well ahead in the ebook game if you’ve got a blog or an email newsletter. You not only have a ready-made audience for your work, but you also have a great source of ideas.
Two simple ways to do this:
- Come up with three to seven possible ebook titles or topics, and survey your audience to find out which they prefer. SurveyMonkey and Google Form are outstanding for this.
- Go through comments or emails you’ve received. What questions or problems crop up again and again? Could you write an ebook addressing those?
Step 4: Organize your details
After unpacking and expanding your core idea, you should have a lot of information about your essential topic written down. Rearrange and organize it in a vertical outline until it makes sense to you and matches the way you’d like your book to flow. Think about what your audience will need to know first, and put basics at the beginning. Once those have been covered, more advanced concepts can follow without losing the reader.
Each step along your line will be a chapter in your book. If you can break the branches into groups, feel free to turn those into larger sections that contain a few related chapters each.
Give your ebook a good structure using the following:
- Write an outline
- Create an ebook cover
- Have a Table of Contents
- Write small paragraphs
- Use bullet points
- Add clear headings
Step 5: Design Your Ebook
All tools have free ebook templates you can choose from. Follow the steps each device describes to customize the design of the ebook to your needs and preferences.
This article will demonstrate how to create an ebook with Canva.
Canva is a specialist in ebook cover design and has some eye-catching ebook templates that are easy to customize to match your brand.
The first step is to choose a free template and then customize its colours and text – the fonts and their size – to match your brand and marketing copy.
Layouts are Important!!!
An essential point in the 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook is that the fixed layout is similar to the PDF, which supports hyperlinking and complex visual formatting that works on a layout of text that stays the same as the screen changes. However, they require more excellent XML/HTML knowledge for a more advanced visual formatting.
MOBI – the MOBI format by Mobipocket Reader software was purchased by Amazon in 2005 but then shut down in 2016. MOBI does not support audio or video.
AZW – AZW is an ebook format designed for Kindle by Amazon, but many smartphones, tablets and computers also support it.
ODF – ODF stands for OpenDocument format and is a file type used for OpenOffice – open-source content creation programs like Microsoft Office.
IBA – The IBA format is the ebook format only for books written in the Apple iBooks author app, and it is not compatible with any other e-reader. It supports video, sound, images and interactive media.
The MOBI format, along with PDF and EPUB, is the most common file format you can use.
Step 6: Review and rewrite
Most important among the 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook is Once your book is finished, let it sit for a week or so, and then come back to it with a critical eye. Look at the order of the chapters and sections first. After you’re satisfied with the order of the book, read each chapter in order and edit and revise it.
- Like writing, editing takes time – not as much time, but still a significant amount. Pace yourself by editing a certain number of words or chapters each day.
- You will often find that words, like chapters, need to be rearranged. Do your best to keep related ideas together, and don’t forget to alter connecting sentences so that the new order still fits the text.
- It has often been said that “deletion is the soul of editing.” If you find that a chapter is going down the proverbial rabbit hole on a particular point, bring it back in line with the overall flow of that chapter by deleting the extra detail.
- If such information is vital, consider setting it aside in a sidebar instead, or try to more smoothly incorporate it into the text so that it continues to flow smoothly when you read it.
Once your ebook is ready, you can publish and share it with your network.
If you are offering it for free, you can use the publication URL of your ebook or share the PDF file on your favourite social media channels, your website, your blog or your author page.
Ebooks are great lead magnets, and you can offer them as free downloads in exchange for the contact details of your readers – their names and email addresses. This way, you can grow your email list.
If you are offering it at a price, you have to think about how you will make it available to your audience.
The easiest way to publish your ebook is through Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform.
- Step 1: Create a KDP account here.
- Step 2: Choose a book title and subtitle for your ebook and write a description.
- Step 3: Pick the right keywords and Amazon categories for your ebook.
- Step 4: Upload your ebook and create a cover.
- Step 5: Price your ebook, click ‘Publish’ and get ready to sell.
Step 8: Promote & Sell Your Ebook
Finally, in the last step among 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook, you need to start investing in promoting your ebook.
The more times you share your ebook with your audience, the better are the chances of selling it and generating a decent passive income through it.
You can try the following:
Facebook – announce the big news to your friends and make your ebook a profile cover.
Instagram – share stories to inform people and add the link to your ebook on your profile.
Twitter – create a pinned post on your profile and generate buzz with popular keywords.
LinkedIn – insert the ebook link to your profile and write a short description.
YouTube – mention your ebook in one of your videos and offer it as a prize in a contest.
This is the time to go big on promotion, and email is the best way to spread the word and always ask for Feedback. I hope this step by step guide on 8 Simple Steps on How to Write and Publish an ebook helped you write your first ebook.
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