Writing an eBook may sound like a piece of cake to you — it is not a novel or some long and well-thought-out non-fiction, it is not an award seeking book, so why should you be worried about how to write it at a needed level of quality? Well, first of all, partially we agree that writing an e-book is somewhat easier than writing a novel or even a brief non-fiction book. Most eBooks are written on topics that you are well aware of, related to your work, or hobby, including some instructions and how-to’s. However, writing and publishing an eBook is more challenging than just combining several articles you have already written. You will have to come up with a well-thought-out structure that covers the topic and answers to all major questions your readers may have, you will have to learn and use some design tricks, and combine it all tastefully. Also, readers have certain expectations from eBooks — there should not be too much “water,” long stories about how you came to certain conclusions, abstract ideas. You will have to do serious editing to your thoughts and writing if you want your eBook to receive high ratings.
Top reasons to write and publish an eBook
Why would you invest all that time and effort in writing an eBook? Isn’t it better just to write a blog, gain followers, become popular, sell something? These are all good ideas, but one goal should be solved from different sides. EBooks are often used as an important part of content strategy — when you have a website, social media accounts, blog, and you decide to add some extra promo channel writing a book.
- Ebooks are normally written for business reasons and on business-related topics. Your own business book works as an advertising tool: it helps to attract new leads and increases the company’s profit. With its help, a businessman can make himself known both among specialists in his field and among potential clients. So why are you still missing out on this tool?
- Authors of popular eBooks are some of the most coveted guest speakers. It turns out to be a win-win situation: for the listeners you are a star, for you conferences are an inspiration, an opportunity to learn even more about fresh trends and research in your specialty, as well as new connections and an in-depth understanding of already familiar facts. As a result, you may want to continue your studies or start teaching.
- Authors of popular business eBooks receive business proposals. To do something new in the specialty, open a joint store, course, school, write the next book in co-authorship, comment for the media. And all this leads to an even greater monetization of knowledge.
Writing an eBook and preparing it to publishing
The truth is, you may have a somewhat different path when working on your eBook, because the creative process is very individual. Still, you will have to pass the major stations listed in this paragraph.
-
- Determine the goal: why you are writing an ebook, why do you need it, why do other people need it. It is important to describe it as a product — with all the product properties and work that it does.
- Conduct audience research: for whom you will write the ebook, what pains this audience has, how they think and work with information.
- Describe the concept: an idea of the book, make a plan and determine the structure of each chapter.
- Find energy and time. It seems to us that most people don’t go through this stage quite correctly. At first you may write the book very slowly, but to succeed, you have to make this task a priority — at least locally, within a certain period of time. In our experience, vacations work very well for this. This is also a kind of benchmark – it turned out that people often go on sabbatical. People often say that they couldn’t proceed with writing, but after spending some time offline and away from work, they did half of the writing.
- Finalization stage. At this stage, the editor and the author together check the facts, the structure, and edit the materials. Bad news: the ebook may need to be seriously revised or even rewritten.
- Test-run. Show some chapters to your friends, ask them for feedback.
- Art direction, design, layout. I was lucky: my friend is an excellent art director, he took over this work and the design turned out to be cool.
- Proofreading and publishing. You can use online services for proofreading or hire an editor. Use online services to convert your ebook into different formats.
- Marketing and distribution. Launch a landing page for the book or start a crowdfunding campaign, write articles on topics related to it, tell people offline about it.
Writing and publishing an eBook even faster
Did it become more clear to you what you should do in order to write and publish your ebook fast? There is still a chance that after reading this article you thought “Why the hell should I do all of this myself? I am an expert, I need an eBook for all the rightful reasons you have listed above, but why should I spend so much time on it?” Well, a reasonable point you make. If you feel like it is too much work for you now, then delegate eBook writing to a professional writing service, such as SmartWritingService whose specialists create not only academic essays, but also eBooks of any complexity. Here, you will receive instant writing help and find experts that have enough experience in ebook writing to provide you with a quality written piece that answers both your instructions and your general goals. They can also consult you on structure, on formats, do extra proofreading if you have already written some chapters and unite the latter with the rest of the book.This way, you will be able to finish your ebook before the planned deadline and start marketing it to receive most from this powerful promo tool.