Gabriel Harper's Blog

Authoring your own digital book for fun or extra income is easy if you plan ahead. As mentioned in my recent post of ten ways to make money online, ebooks are digital products that almost anybody can create. This is wonderful because it means that somebody with almost zero online experience can make money with their knowledge.

Writing Your eBook

A good eBook can be about almost anything. Have a lifetime of incredible recipes and cooking experience? A background in art? These are valuable skills that someone else can benefit greatly from reading, and will happily spend $10, $20 or $50 to get their hands on.

If you’re a terrible writer, find a friend or partner to help you convert your ideas, knowledge, and experience into a well-formed document. If every writer were a spelling superstar, we wouldn’t need editors. You should always have the final product proofread by all your friends, family members, and hopefully a few good writers before you publish it anyway.

Before you sit down and start writing, create an outline. This is an extremely important step that’s easy to blow off. Don’t blow it off! Creating a rough outline and first draft of your ebook can save you hours of work later on. It also helps you understand your overall message, how the book will be interpreted, and reveal new ways to expand or refine on your ebook.

The easiest way to create your ebook is to write and format it with OpenOffice (free) and then save it as a PDF file. Add your name, email address, copyright info, and Website address if available. An “About The Author” section will help establish your name.

Here are a few more tips to consider when writing your eBook:

1. You aren’t trying to sell your reader – write naturally. If it seems too forced, go back and review your outline to make sure your goals are clear in your mind.
2. Review some other free eBooks out there to get an idea of how they look, but use a style that works for you.
3. Include cropped images and photos to help illustrate your topics.
4. Cite any sources or references you used in writing your ebook (online or offline).

Selling Your eBook

When it’s time to start selling your ebook online, there are many different ways to advertise. Start with a friendly note to friends and family who might be interested (and offer a fair discount!).

Getting your ebook recognized within a community of enthusiasts can go very far toward it’s success. If you wrote an ebook about guitar playing, and you participate in any online guitar forums, there’s an ideal audience! Be very careful of being spammy or soliciting people in the wrong places or you will lose your reputation quickly. There may be an appropriate classifieds forum, or you can offer some of the established members a free copy for their feedback.

The easiest way to start selling your ebook online is to pay for some advertising. eBay can get your product in front of a lot of people quickly. eBay allows certain digital goods, but you may consider packaging your ebook on a CD so you can get in more auctions – and read all of the seller’s guidelines thoroughly.

Creating a Website for your ebook is an important step for taking orders online. You don’t need anything more than a single page with details about the book, the author (you), testimonials, pricing info, and a sample chapter. You can get a free PayPal account set up and easily accept payments on your site. With a Website established you can use a PPC advertising service like AdWords to start buying targetted traffic to your new Web page immediately.

After reading this article you should be well on your way to creating your new ebook. I’m sure you will find many new tricks while working on your book that are not listed here, so have fun and get creative with your new ebook!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 8:39 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.