There are many ways you can attract the attention of web readers. However, getting attraction cannot be the only reason people run websites. Ultimately, you have to convert the attraction into money in terms ad revenue or product sale. One of the popular ways to attract users on the web is to offer free or premium PDF eBooks. If you are interested or planned to write an eBook, here are the top things you should know.
Why to Write an eBook?
Gone are the days, you should have tens of years of experience to publish a book. The era of physical book is over and here we are living in digital publishing. The best part of writing an eBook is that you can be a novice in writing or first time author. You can understand the process and start with self-publishing an eBook. There are several advantages of publishing an eBook:
- There are multiple platforms available for selling your eBook; therefore, it is easily accessible to anyone.
- You can easily distribute in different countries and saves the cost of printing a paper book.
- It is quite easy to publish one, especially if you have your own blog.
Let us look at different phases in the life cycle of publishing an eBook.
1. Choose Your Niche or Topic
Though you do not need publishing, expertise, the most important factor to write an eBook is to find out your niche. Obviously, you should be an expert in the topic so that your readers can stick to the content. Wrangling around different topics can easily distract the attention of users. The best way is to read popular eBooks from different authors to understand the writing flow.
This will help you to define your own style and focus on the content part. Remember, the worst designed eBook with best content can still yield you good returns. On other hand, spending too much time on designing without quality content is of no use.
2. Conceptualizing Your eBook
After finding a topic in your niche, next step is in the lifecycle is to conceptualize the content. It is not any different from writing a traditional book. Presentation wise, few things are important such as title of your eBook, cover design etc. However, take some time to figure out conceptualizing your content by answering the below questions:
- What is unique about your content?
- Who is the audience for your content ?
- How your content can help your audience?
- What are the most pressing issues your readers have?
- How can you solve these issues by offering them your eBook?
There are techniques that you can use to do some research such as conducting surveys, being active in social media, writing a blog and getting feedback from viewers of your blog. Do some research on your competition but do not start writing until you conceptualized and confident about your topic.
3. Writing an eBook
When start writing your eBook, we recommend starting with an outline. Figure out chapters of your eBook and in which sequence would you like to order the chapters. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word, you can enable navigation pane from “View” tab. This will allow you to check the structure, drag and drop headings to rearrange the content in proper flow.
In addition to the concepts and theories, it is also important to provide many examples to support your theory. Most importantly write from a reader’s point of view.
4. Do Peer Review
Once you have the content nailed down, edit and review. We recommend not reviewing it in one go. Give some gap between reviews and look for different things in each review cycle. You can ask your friends, colleagues to proof read and give you honest feedback. This is important since you have already written and edited several times so you may not see anything missing. A different perspective in this case helps.
5. Formatting and Publishing
Formatting an eBook is a little different from a traditional book since there are no actual pages. You can find some helpful formatting tips in the Kindle guide. eBook readers also provide the capability to share content from the eBook over social media. You can keep that in mind and write content with inspiring quotes that you would like your readers to share with others.
There are many platforms for publishing your eBook. The best option is to sell through your own website. However, it depends on the traffic you get and needs to setup digital store. Platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing provides a fast and easy way to get your eBook published. You can also make it available in multiple countries and earn up to 70% royalty on sales. As far as pricing of the eBook, you can do some research into the competition in your field. Aim to set a reasonable price based on your content and size of your eBook.
6. Marketing an eBook
Marketing an eBook is the most exciting phase of the life cycle. You have written your eBook and now you are ready to share it with the world! There are many ways to market your eBook. Your marketing campaign should not only speak about your niche but should also engage the audience. Your campaign should relay to them what is unique about your eBook.
Marketing Through Your Website
If you already have a website, it makes it easier to market your eBook. This is important, as readers can trust you based on your website’s credibility. If you use WordPress content management system, it offers unlimited options to embed PDF and create custom eBook stores. If you do not have a website, there are several websites that feature new books and will help you market your eBook.
Promoting Your Authorship
Make yourself visible as an author by signing up on Amazon Author Central. It is a very powerful tool where you can share your tweets, blog posts etc. Your loyal clients will find your eBook on your website but in order to have a broader reach, an author needs more visibility. Also, make sure to tag your eBook with appropriate tags on Amazon so that people can found in online search.
Use Social Media Marketing
Alternatively, use social media in marketing your eBook. Promote your eBook on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to your friends and network. You can also create a short video introduction of your eBook and post it on YouTube.
7. Review and Include Feedback
Final and important phase in becoming a successful eBook author to take feedback and criticism from readers. You can request review from the buyers and try to evaluate received feedback. It is worth to revise your eBook version and update to include reader’s feedback.
Final Words
Nowadays, you have plenty of tools and resources to create a beautiful eBook. Simple Microsoft Word document or PowerPoint presentation is more than enough to start your publishing career. You can choose the predefined templates and straight away start writing your content. However, you should be an expert on your niche so that readers can stick to your content. In addition, have fun marketing your eBook and most importantly do it sincerely.
This is a guest post, if you are interested send your article to use for reviewing and publishing.
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