How to write an eBook – eBook Marketing Day #1

How to write a ebook

Are you thinking about writing an e-book? You may think it is a pretty simple process. On the other hand, you might think researching, writing, formatting, publishing and marketing your e-book is incredibly difficult and detailed. The truth of the matter is, the reality of the situation is somewhere in the middle of those two schools of thought.

E-book creation and publishing is not as hard as some people make it out to be, but it is not drop-dead simple either.

The secret is to follow a proven system that has worked for others. That is exactly what you have in your hands. The roughly 4,600 words of information compiled here make up a step-by-step process that can take you from wannabe author to proudly published e-book writer. Here’s a quick look at exactly what you will learn.

  • How to choose the topic for your e-book
  • How to research the smart way
  • The “right” way to write an outline
  • Tips on actually writing your e-book
  • Smart and easy editing strategies
  • Easy, headache-free formatting practices
  • How to create a high quality e-book cover for free, or very little money
  • Where to publish for maximum exposure, sales and profitability

This article series is divided into 9 sections and 4 publication days.

 

The sections are:

Day 1 (Today ;-))

  • Choosing Your E-book Topic
  • Researching Your eBook

Day 2 (Friday)

  • Outlining Your E-book
  • Writing Your eBook
  • Editing Your eBook

Day 3 (Sunday)

  • Formatting Your E-book
  • Pricing Your E-book

Day 4 (Tuesday)

  • Creating an eBook Cover
  • Distributing Your eBook
  • Putting It All Together

 

Clue4u.co, SectionsEach of those packets of information can serve as a “mini guide” or standalone resource. If you are just having a problem in one of those areas, turn to that section for help.

Followed step-by-step, from beginning to end, all 9 of those sections can take you from unpublished writing hopeful to published and profitable, in the shortest amount of time possible.

 

Choosing Your eBook Topic

Believe it or not, this is one of the harder steps of e-book creation for some people. They just can’t seem to pick a topic. They have the ability to write, and they know it. They have looked into how to publish and where to publish, they know what to charge and how to handle marketing, but they just can’t get started.

This is sometimes because they toss around several different e-book topics in their mind, and can never seem to settle on one. They obsess that they will choose the wrong idea, and end up investing what turns out to be a lot of wasted time. So instead of getting their first e-book under their belt, they end up investing all their time and energy upon procrastinating.

Either you have written a book before, or this is your first effort.

Either way, choosing a topic is important. Still, you don’t want to suffer from analysis paralysis and eventually did nothing. Let’s look at a few ways you can ensure you choose a topic where there is a lot of demand, and a field where people are already purchasing e-books by the droves.

 

Start With You

Think about your experiences. Of the more than 7 billion people on the planet, you’re the only “you” out there. Your style, your personality, the things that happen to you in your life are all unique to you. Your skills, perspectives, personal resources, knowledge and collection of failures and successes are all excellent sources of information for an e-book.

 

What Are Your Customer Asking For?

If you have current clients or customers, what questions do they ask over and over? Check out the comments section of your blog. What are people asking for help with?

Webinars, tele-seminars, coaching and consulting calls, group classes and one-on-one experiences with your customers can reveal a lot of possible topics you could write about. An added bonus here is you know you have a prospect pool of people that are ready to buy your e-book when it is finished.

 

What Are You Good at, and What Do You Know a Lot About?

Everyone is good at something. Most likely, whether you believe it or not, you are excellent in some way. You also know more than 99% of the population about a particular topic. This knowledge may seem commonplace to you, but it is not. If you are better than someone else at anything, that is something you can write about.

If you have a wealth of knowledge in any area, that could be your topic. If you already have blog posts or webpages full of content about a particular endeavor, process, resource or ability, not only have you found your e-book topic, but all of the writing is already done for you.

 

Let Amazon Prove/Disprove There Is a Viable Marketplace 

The previous 3 tips on choosing an e-book topic should have left you with a lot of ideas. List them in order of importance, starting with the subject you would like to write about most. Head over to Amazon’s Kindle section.

Type your first e-book subject idea into the Amazon Kindle search box. If you have decided to write about catching yellowtail catfish, search for “catching yellowtail catfish”. Make sure you have the Amazon search filter set to “sort by relevance”. Look through the results.

Are there a lot of listings? If so, this means your e-book idea is potentially profitable, and definitely popular. Look through all of your possible subjects until you hit upon one that you are interested in writing about, and that also has a built-in Amazon marketplace that is buying a lot of similar books.

Amazon sells more e-books than anyone. So it makes sense to use the company’s powerful e-book search engine to help you find a writing subject. When you decide where to publish your e-book (more on that in the last section of this report), Amazon is going to be your number one choice. Guaranteeing that there are already people out there waiting for the release of all of your hard work is a smart way to narrow down your list of ideas.

 

Researching Your eBook

Great! You have chosen a topic to write about. Now you need to know what to leave in, what to leave out, and what people are looking for regarding your subject. That means your next step is that cringe-inducing word called …

… Research!

Don’t freak out. You’re not going to be spending a lot of time in this area. Chances are you already know a lot about your topic. That means you know the basics of your subject. The problem is, you probably have way too much knowledge to include in your e-book. If you are producing an information product, shorter is usually better.

People purchasing “how-to” information want absolutely zero fluff. They only want a process explained clearly and simply, including actionable information that can solve a big problem or answer a big question. This means your e-book will almost always be less than 20 or 30 pages long.

If you plan on writing “The Definitive Guide To” something, your e-book will be much longer. In either case, handle your research in the following manner.

 

Head Back to Amazon 

Type your chosen e-book subject into the Amazon search engine once again. On the left-hand side of your monitor you can scroll down and filter the results by rating. Select the “4 stars and up” filter and look at the results. Find a book that has lots of reviews, and click on its title.

As you probably know, every e-book listed on Amazon allows you to preview it.

On the upper left portion of an e-book’s sales page you will see its cover picture. Right above that is a clickable button that says “Look inside”, and it’s accompanied with a blue arrow showing you where to click. Clicking there shows you the first few pages of that book.

You can also read the Table of Contents.

This is incredibly powerful and free information. If you have chosen an e-book with a lot of positive reviews, it is selling very well. The reason why it sells well, and has a very high customer satisfaction rating, is because it must be delivering the right kind of information that people are looking for regarding the subject you have chosen. Write down the chapter titles, headings and subheadings that are relevant to what you’re going to write about. Follow this same process with other books that cover your e-book idea.

What you have in your hands is potentially profitable research. These are the topics and ideas you need to write about. Obviously, it is wrong to simply copy and paste those chapter titles. However, your intentions are not to plagiarize, but to get an idea about the things you are going to be writing about that will appeal to potential customers. This is the information that will serve as chapter titles and section headings for your book.

 

Other Sources of Research

Yahoo Answers and Quora.com are question and answer sites. Searching there for your e-book subject reveals actual questions that people are asking concerning the topic you are going to write about! The answers to those questions are even provided. This is “done for you” research that guarantees there are people out there who will be interested about your finished product. Searching on Google for “_____ forums” is another quick and easy way to discover what people are talking about, and the questions they are asking, surrounding the topic you chose. Simply fill in the blank with your e-book subject.

Look at your Amazon research information. Add the info you got from browsing Internet forums, as well as the questions and answers on Yahoo Answers and Quora, that relate to your e-book subject. In just 20 to 30 minutes or less, you have more than enough information to decide on what different areas of your topic you will be writing about.

 

Okay, that’s enough for the first day. I hope you enjoyed the first chapter like and I’ll see you Friday again.

Until then, I wish you a good time

Oliver

Author: Oliver Flossdorf

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Anti-spam image