Come up with an idea. EBooks are no different from any other type of book except in their medium of publication, so the most important first step to writing one is to decide on, and develop, an idea for one. The basic way to do this is to sit down and write a brief phrase or sentence that encapsulates the information you'd like to put in your book. Once you have that, you can build on it to create a finished product. ![]() ![]() ![]() • Writers who plan to create a book of fiction will have to spend considerably more time coming up with ideas and plot points. Read for more relevant advice. • The eBook format has the advantage of being not only open to self-publishers, but essentially free for them, which means that “books” too short to really be worth printing on paper can make perfectly valid eBooks. Therefore, feel free to use a simple idea. Expand your idea. Start with the basic idea you wrote down, and think about different aspects of it. It may be helpful for you to draw a web of concepts to do this. ![]() For example, let's say you wanted to write a book about how to sell real estate for beginners. You could write down things like “licenses and fees,” “selling techniques,” and “cost vs. Expected returns.” Connect specifics that are related to each of them, and so on, until you have enough detail to see the structure of the words in your head. • Different books call for different approaches. How To Make A PDF eBook. Prev Article Next Article. Read: How to Create and Sell PROFITABLE EBooks. How To Make An eBook –. How to make money selling ebooks online. Discover the best ways to find ebook ideas, write your ebook, and how to market your ebook online. Creating an e-book and putting it up for sale is easier than you think. Learn this proven process that will get your ebook in the hands of your audience. Memoirs and self-help books might do better with a vertical outline; a book of fixes for common household problems will probably come together faster using a web of ideas. Organize your details. After unpacking and expanding your core idea, you should have a lot of information about your basic 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 in terms of 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 end up being a chapter in your book. If you can break the chapters into groups as well (for instance, if your book on home repairs has chapters that can be divided by room or type of problem), feel free to turn those into larger sections that contain a few related chapters each. Write the book. Don't worry about a title, table of contents, or any of the other stylistic elements of the book yet. Just sit down and start writing it. You may find it's easier to “start in the middle” by writing a chapter of your choice first; you may prefer to start at the very beginning and write straight through. Just remember that you don't have to pick one method and stick with it. Use whatever techniques you need to complete the book. • Writing a book – even a short book – takes time. The important thing is to persevere. Set aside time each day to write, or write until you hit a certain word count. Don't stand up from your desk until you meet your goal. Even if you feel stuck, the act of writing something down will help loosen up your mind, and before you know it your words will be flowing again. Keep at it for as long as it takes. Review and rewrite. 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. Do they make sense to you? Often, you'll find that some pieces seem to make more sense in a different spot than where you'd originally placed them. 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, simply 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 absolutely 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. Add the details. Once the body of your book looks solid, it's time to add a title, and any front or end material (such as an introduction or a bibliography) you'd like to add. Titles usually reveal themselves during the writing of the book; when in doubt, a plainspoken title (such as “How to Sell Real Estate”) is usually a safe choice. • If you pick a very simple title, have a couple of alternates on hand in case it's already been used. Adding adjectives or even your own name (as in “wikiHow's Guide to Selling Real Estate”) are simple ways to do this. • If you used information from elsewhere, always be sure to properly cite it in a bibliography. If your sources were friends, at least add in a page of acknowledgments so you can thank them by name. Like physical books, a major marketing tool for any eBook is its cover. Even though it's only a virtual cover, it's what potential buyers notice first. Consider springing for a professionally-designed cover, or go it alone if you think you can make something that looks good and will attract sales. Just be sure to get permission before you use any copyrighted images. • Even sections and pieces of copyrighted images are off-limits. When in doubt, get explicit permission from the copyright holder first. Last Update October 5th, 2016 So you want to learn how to make an eBook? I can help you with that. The trusty eBook is still an extremely powerful online format that is only going to get stronger as more people switch to smartphones and reading devices like Kindles. Today I’m going to show you how I do everything when I make an eBook – from brainstorming ideas to defining concepts, designing the layout and cover to finally uploading it to your blog or website. This article will focus on how to create an eBook to give away on a blog, but it will also have most of the information that you’ll need if you want to create one to sell on online marketplaces. Let’s do this! Quick steps for creating an eBook Let’s start by taking a look at the quick steps that are involved in creating an eBook and then we’ll go into some huge details below: • Research your target audience and topic • Ensure you have the right editing program • Write, edit and proofread your eBook • Add images, graphics and create cover art • Upload it to your blog or hosting platform for automatic delivery • Promote it everywhere Of course I am going to miss out on something so if you get stuck please and let me know what I’ve forgotten and I’ll do my best to help you out. For some (but not all!) of these tips it helps to have in order to get the best results and take advantage of certain programs and software. Disclosure –This post contains some affiliate links. I’ll let you know which ones they are below. If you purchase a product through one of those links I will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend services I’ve used and love. Thank you for the support! Why make an eBook? If you are reading this post it is likely that you already know the benefits of making an eBook so I won’t go in to too much detail. Some of the reasons all internet marketers and bloggers should make an eBook are: • Get pre-loyal subscribers If you want to make money you need loyal subscribers. And one of the best ways to in order to introduce them to your material is to give them a free eBook as a “bribe”. • Increase your exposure Those little PDF files are super easy to share and you will often find that people send them on to their friends who then get introduced to your stuff. Also, they tend to sit on people’s desktop for longer than a post or a web article and as such you have multiple chances to get them to read it. • Add a new revenue stream Many people think that the big bloggers just make money on their blogs. A lot of their income often comes from a combination of having tied to a successful eBook. Oh, did I mention you can sell the darn things? All these things are possible if you know what you are doing. Remember, the eBook market is extremely saturated so you need to do something extremely good. The good news is that as the tablet and smart phone market grows, so does the demand for PDF file eBooks. Step 1: Research your target market The first step on the how to make an eBook journey is to take a careful look at who you are pitching it to. Knowing this information is like knowing which person in a crowd is Waldo. You have to know what he looks like, what he’s wearing and why he might be looking for you. Unless you know your target market well you are essentially shooting blind. NOTE: This is the first step if you have an existing blog. If you want to make an eBook first and then build up promotional material around it you would do step two first. A) Get Market Samurai One of the best things you will ever buy as an internet marketer or blogger is. It will cost you $90 or so but it will make you thousands and save you just as much in wasted time. However, if you don’t want to make a purchase some of the following research can be done with. B) Look for popular keywords in Google/Clicky Analytics, and competitors The next thing you want to do is log in to and look at the popular keywords and search phrases that people are using to find your blog. Which posts are most popular? You can then take some time to look at your competitors on Google and see what posts are most popular for them. This gives us a good idea about useful keywords. C) Use Market Samurai to analyze traffic levels The next thing you want to do is input those keywords in to Market Samurai and find out if any other related keywords could perform better. For example, when I was researching the title of this article I found out that “make an eBook” gets slightly more searches than “create an eBook” and so I decided to target that instead. Over time these little bits of information can make or cost you a lot of money. D) Find out who they are Now you want to take that information and think about who these people are. Research this information wherever you can. Think about their age, sex and location. Think about their income levels and career paths. Most importantly, think about how you can write an eBook that will help them. Step 2: Come up with a killer topic and title Once you have narrowed down your target market you want to come up with a topic and a title that will absolutely blow people away and solve their problems. To do this it needs to have an original edge on a very relevant topic. E) It’s about you as much as them One important thing to realize is that making a good eBook is as much about you as it is your target audience. Because you are the one that is writing it, promoting it, selling it and believing in it. Unless you have a passionate and knowledgeable interest in the thing you are going to fail before you start. Don’t make an eBook about puppy training unless you know enough to help people and then love it enough to push it for the next five years. F) Personalize it The best eBooks are the ones that share a personal experience about a very common topic. Because it adds authority. Authority is very important when it comes to books and articles because you need to show potential readers and customers that you are experienced enough to know what you are talking about. Let’s take the example of making money online. Let’s say you write an eBook called How to Make a Million Dollars Per Year. Now, if you make a million dollars per year and think you can teach others how to do the same then that is a very good book to write. If, however, you have never made that money yourself then you really have no authority on the topic. And people will smell it a mile off. So, whatever topic you choose to write on, make sure you have a personalized angle attached to it. This is very important. G) Make the title specific Specific titles work best. It doesn’t matter whether it is a book or a blog post. For example, I wrote a post called that hit the front of Delicious and went on to even get picked up by some newspapers. If I had called it How to Sell a Blog I don’t think it would have done nearly as well. Make your title specific. Step 3: Write the eBook and make it pretty So now you have to write your eBook and format it so that it is all pretty. This is where the magic happens and, unless you know what you are doing, the obstacles. H) Use Open Office to write it Now, this will probably be contested by a lot of you but I have found to be the best program to write eBooks. Because it is totally free and has an excellent selection of features. For example, it allows you to instantly convert your regular.doc file to a.pdf and it also has a massive range of really nice fonts to choose from. If you have a new version of Microsoft you can probably do all of this stuff but please do not go out and buy anything for the purpose of eBook writing. I) Start with an end result and work backwards People are downloading your eBook because they want to figure out how to do something. For this reason you should start with the end result that they are looking for and work your way backwards. Sometimes I will write the contents page first because it gives me a good plan. Other times I will just write like crazy and worry about the format later. It doesn’t matter as long as you are systematically getting people closer to achieving their goals. J) Use two types of headers and lots of paragraphs, lists and breaks Have a look at all of my posts here on Blog Tyrant. They have two types of headers (main and sub) and they have lots of lists and paragraphs. The reason for this is because people hate digesting large lumps of content. While is getting more popular, it needs to be formatted in a scan-able way. K) Get some really good images Over the years I have tried so many different and the two best solutions I have found are and taking/making my own. Remember, when using photos you need to make sure you purchase the correct license and get permission. You also want to avoid stock photography that has been used thousands of times before. If you are really specific about what you want photos of or if you need your own product in there somewhere then you are going to have to hire your own photographer. And this is expensive. You’re usually looking at between $500 and $3000 for a full day’s shoot. Taking the photos yourself on the family camera is never a good idea because they generally look really amateurish. L) Use a safe, well-proven font and simple colors Sometimes I download eBooks and wonder whether the author/designer was blind. You really only need to use a simple font like Arial, Verdana or Georgia at size 14 or 16 and then a simple color scheme like black with one other. Don’t go overboard when it comes to this stuff! Less is always more in the design field. You should also avoid bright reds for text as it looks spammy. M) Get it proofread, and not by your mom The next step is to get your eBook proofread by someone who is not afraid to give you harsh feedback. Think professional writers or other people in your industry. The point is not so much to find spelling mistakes (although that is important) but to figure out whether it is solving problems, coherent, etc. You really need someone to be able to give you the hard truths about your writing style and execution of ideas. N) Make an eBook cover to use on your site A really important part of the process here is to have to promote your PDF file. Here’s my latest updated one: These things are great because they increase the perceived value of the product by making it seem like something solid. Of course, its just a PDF file and not a real book, but by giving it a graphical representation people will feel like it is worth more. I highly recommend getting a designer on to make you something professional. Remember, this is going to represent your whole brand. Step 4: Convert to a PDF file and give it away This final step is the part where the eBook baby is born. Now, I am not going to talk about how to sell an eBook because I really believe it giving them away for free. But if you want to learn about landing pages and sales have a look. O) Convert to a PDF file All eBooks are in PDF format. Because they are universally recognized by Macs and PCs alike and work on all eBook readers. They also provide a consistent output. This is important. When you save a DOC file and send it to your friends chances are everyone will see something different. Not with a PDF. They all look the same. This means your design and formatting work won’t go to waste. If you are using Open Office you just need to go FILE > EXPORT AS PDF and then select your settings. P) Choosing the right settings Now, you want to make sure you select the right zoom levels because sometimes it will save blurry. I saved my Blog Tyrant eBook at 120% because this was smoothest. It will all depend on your graphics and logos and how well you have created and saved them in Illustrator or Photoshop. Sometimes it is a good idea to get advice on this issue. You also want to save it at a high quality level as long as this doesn’t mean the file size gets too big. Try to keep it below 1MB if you can. Q) Give it away in exchange for email subscriptions The next step is to set up a system where people get delivered the eBook for free when they enter their email address in to your subscription form. I have done an instruction video on so I won’t go through all the steps again other than to say that it’s easy to do with. R) Promote your eBook Promoting your eBook is actually the bulk of the work. I highly recommend you follow to help you understand the relationship between your website, mailing list and a successful eBook. Simply put, the idea is to create quality content on your site and other sites that drives relevant traffic back to your eBook’s landing page. It’s called a sales funnel and works extremely well. What have I missed? If you have made an eBook before and have some tips to share please leave a comment below and let me know. I would really like to make this post a nice little resource for people starting out on the eBook creation road. Similarly, if you have any questions for me drop a comment and I will do my best to answer them. Hi, First of all, well done. You’ve given people the main stuff they need to know as promised. One particularly good point is the one about editing. Not too long ago, many info-marketers seemed to have the idea that digital wasn’t expected to be the same as print as far as quality and there were some really poor products/ebooks out there. That simply isn’t the case. No matter what the format, print or digital, your work reflects you and your business, so unless you want to be perceived as sloppy, make sure it is edited well. As far as what could be added to your list, I may get some disagreement here, but I say do not to try to call something of 10-20 pages an ebook as has also been done repeatedly over the years in internet marketing. With the advent of Kindle etc. And the explosion of novels and other “traditional” books going digital, more and more people are familiar with the term ebook. With that come the general perceptions of document length. Generally, 35+ pages gets into short book territory (think kids’ books), something shorter than that is a report (think of offline biz documents). There’s a lot of confusion in the realm of books and publishing these days and in what a book’s value is. My belief is why add to all that noise if it’s possible to avoid it? Ebooks are definitely a great tool in the marketing toolbox, let’s all work to make sure they hold their value. I agree that results are key, however, identifying appropriately I think ties into the trust factor and that’s important too. Even if I love the results of a 10 page document, I’d still wonder why it was called a book if I envision a book to be something longer. Along the same line, if a book was promised and I didn’t get it (got what I feel is a report instead), I’d have questions as to why not. For example, if that promise wasn’t fulfilled, what else won’t be if I continue to do business with this person? If the request for an ebook is after an initial visit to a site/to entice for a sign up, I think we need to be very careful with that first impression. Something as simple as knowing what people expect and then delivering or over delivering, goes a long way in making it a good one. I kind of thought you dropped off the earth for a bit. Long time no update! I have to share my own experience. My ebook is VERY simple. It’s intentionally simple and bare bones because I want my readers to be able to print the document as a how to guide. So I made my ebook and just kind of let it sit there. It was working for me, but not making magic. Then when I was going through the process of my re-design, my designer mentioned that we needed to make my ebook pop more and make it more of a selling point. I don’t know, I guess it took HER believing in it for me to believe in it? So we created a little sidebar graphic and sign up form and OMGin less then a month I increased my subscribers by several thousand. Now I can’t credit that ALL to my ebook, because I have been running weekly subscription giveaways. But I do credit a lot of it to my ebook. Making it pretty and prominent made a huge difference. The feedback on the book itself (mine is just a PDF in Google Doc format that I made in Open Office) has been amazing. People email me almost daily telling me how much money I’ve saved them. So yeah, I am a HUGE fan of prettying up your ebooks and marketing them. Thanks for sharing this article BT! Parley Well, aside from my online dreams of money blogging, I’m also a CPA with a lot of QuickBooks experience. My thought for the blog was to scour the internet (google, bing, yahoo) for unanswered QuickBooks questions. Then, create a series of 5 min video tutorials with accompanying step by step text instructions. If I take your suggestion, then a micro-niche could be: Getting your QuickBooks Mobile for the book. I don’t have a lot of experience in that specific arena, but I can certainly handle the research. The money portion would probably be easiest as either remote QuickBooks support or leveraging the blog along with my QuickBooks affiliate account. I’m kind of thinking out loud here, so if it seems like I’m rambling, I really am. So here’s my only hesitation in giving away a free ebook or any other type of thing like that in exchange for an email subscriber. I really want an email list of people who are totally all about my topic (photography business tips). I worry that people will sign up for the free cookie and then not ever open anything ever again. While I’m sure you’ll retain some of them, especially since the blog topic will be related to the cookie (or that’s how I’d do it), I would think that’d you’d get a lot more less-loyal followers. I guess I’d rather have 200 followers who are loyal and LOVE everything we put out vs. 1000 followers who are marginally interested and might mark us as spam in the future (or something like that). At least one blog I’ve signed up for later sent me an inactivity notice when so long had gone by without my opening any of her posts. It gave me the option to let myself become unsubscribed or to click a link to keep my subscription active. Haven’t looked much into it yet, but my guess is that it’s an option through Aweber. You might try creating a series of autoresponders designed to engage new subscribers within the first few weeks/months of their subscription so they’re more likely to open content as it lands in their inbox. Maybe something to gently transition them from the subject of the ebook to the regular blog posts they receive. I see your logic and there are many ways of looking at it. Here’s my experience, though (and no not all my ebooks are free giveaways). The time when someone is most likely to really want to hear from you is immediately after they give you their email address. So look at it like this They might find your site through Google. Then perhaps a headline of yours catches their attention so they check out your blog. If your blog gets them to move from that “attention” point to “I want more” point (aka interest), then hopefully they will give you their email address in exchange for the extra juice offer you have on the side. This is the point where you have their MOST attention and can ask them to do something. They will be looking for that email coming to them. Now it’s your job as a blogger, internet marketer, web publisher, or whatever you call yourself, to blow their minds. You see, what you’re talking about here is that you’d rather have a small list of avid followers rather than a big list of so-so’s. You have to give yourself the chance to convert them from so-so’s to avid followers and the best time to do that is immediately after you did something to cause them to take action Like giving you their email address. And then if they drop off your list because it turns out they aren’t interested in you, then so be it, they probably wouldn’t have bought from you then anyway. But again, this doesn’t mean you have to give away every ebook, it’s just something some people do. There are other methods to get that optin as well. Thought I’d expand step 3: Create the ebook. Type up an outline: 1. Intro (your but about your background and the reason you wrote the ebook on the particular topic. Describe the problem you are solving (why it’s a problem, why it’s hard to solve, why solving it is possible). Break down the solution into several sections. (How to do A, how to do B, how to do C.) 4. Show how the sections A/B/C work together to solve problem. Summarize the problem and the solution and give links to added resources. This is a very brief outline. The idea is thisbreak down the ebook into sections that you’d expect to see if you were reading it. Then write those sections. Summarize and give added resources. In most digital mediums, color is tricky. Even if you proof a book digitally, the color on paper will often be slightly different. You basically need to know what device your reader will be using. If it’s PDF for example, I would think there will be variation in color from monitor to monitor. If you want to sell it for other devices, NookColor is one option, many others are B/W only. I know the discussion here is ebooks, but if you are showing a process, maybe a better option for you would be video. Creating video is no longer difficult and creating DVDs can be reasonable as well. I just had a thought. I’ve spent the last several months trying to think of what kind of ebook I could give away on my paranormal/conspiracy theory site and I think I might finally have it. One of my most popular posts is a list of 101 paranormal/metaphysical/conspiracy terms that I’ve defined in a sentence or two. What if I took those same 101 terms and instead wrote a couple of paragraphs about each – still enough to fill out an ebook, but not so complete that it would compete with a full-fledged book on the paranormal when I try to sell it later on. What do you think? Would it work? The idea of taking something you’ve already written, especially if it’s popular, and then building a product around it is solid. I had two posts on my blog which were SO popular I went ahead and designed an entire website around them. It was great because I highlighted those two articles on my site and set up a redirect so that people who found the articles in Google were redirected to that new site I built Can you say instant traffic! But here’s the problem it seems you’re having. It sounds like you have two niches going on and you’re writing to two similar but different groups. You might want to try a test and do something like I did. Then you can create products (or promote affiliate offers) to those highly targeted readers on each site. It does present some challenges though if you decide to take that route. For example, are you going to keep one or two twitter accounts? Facebook accounts? Always evaluate what you’ve got. Maybe you could do something like Tyrant said but put a spin on it for both your readers. “Warning: 10 Paranormal Conspiracy Theories That Will Change the Way You Travel”. Just some food for thought. I agree with John, if you have two distinct topics of interest, even if they are generally related, separating them is probably better. There are many marketers, experts etc. Who work in more than one niche. Yes, it requires multiple sites, but in order to attract a particular customer, you need to speak their language so they relate to you/the product. If you try to mix, you don’t really appeal to anyone enough to make them want to have a relationship with your site/purchase your product. I’ve seen people manage this kind of thing in two ways. If the topics are closely related, a central site like yourname.com is the hub and products etc. Live on separate landing pages. If the topics are unrelated, you can pick the most dominant one, use that identity on major social media, and then promote the other topic in more niche based ways. Then the goal is to make enough at it to hire a VA to keep everything straight:-). Thanks for the feedback y’all, but splitting out my topics to different sites isn’t an option I’m willing to explore. The two topics I mentioned – whether people are willing to admit it or not – are inextricably linked togetheras are the others I talk about on the site. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to maintain a separate site on everything I talk about under the umbrella of dark/weird and I can’t say I have the interest to maintain that many sites even if there were. It’s not a primary website for me, just the one I’ve run the longest. I don’t think I ever expected to make a dime off it, but it doesn’t seem right to leave it there without a free giveaway. One of the best online ebook cover generators I’ve found is. Really easy to use. Also, as far as getting images into your ebook, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using images from Flickr, so long as you give photo credits. Simple and cheap. About marketing the ebook (okay a little off topic from creating one) I like the guest posting idea and it certainly works really well. For my last ebook launch I tried a different method. I flipped the funnel and instead of doing a ton of guest posting and article marketing to drive loads of traffic to my site (just speaking about the launch here), I gave away free copies of my ebook to key individuals who had a following already and asked them to sign up for the affiliate program and write up a quick post or email blast about it. The idea was that instead of “John Hoff” writing a guest post about what my ebook covered, why not have the person who’s blog I was targeting for traffic write up a quick review or note on my book. The reason was that this person has a list of followers who trust them already, not me. For example, I too did a and my optins spiked like crazy. But just imagine if I was able to get Brian to personally mention my book. I bet my optins would have been doubled. I’ve even asked people on my list, “What made you end up getting the ebook?” The most common response was, “Person X said I should check it out.” I guess what I’m saying is a good question to ask yourself before you do that guest post is to ask if it would be better to do the guest post so you can show everyone how you write and that you’re knowledgeable or ask the person instead to write up a post themselves about your product. Both ways have their advantages. Thanks for a great article. This is a great blogpost, and some great comments, there’s just one thing I want to add, as someone who writes these on a regular basis. Chris provided a good outline to use; it’s important to establish your credibility and say why people should listen to you and believe the information your’re giving, but the first section should really be a wiiftr – what’s in it for the reader. You can mix this with information about credentials, say what the information did for you – and then the important part is to say ‘therefore THIS is what the information in this ebook can do for YOU’. I’ve written e-books with and without this, and always found that putting the reason to read right up at the beginning makes a big difference.
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