For me writing
has always been a passion so it is easy for me to recommend to anyone if they
want to have a small business or just get a little extra money on the side ---
START WRITING! But I also realize that
for many it may not be that easy. What I
have done in this blog is provide you the complete details for FREE from my
E-Book “How to Write, Price, and
Publish Your E-Book”. Of course,
with any business venture your success can not be guaranteed, but by following
the steps I provide you may find an enjoyable means of gaining additional
financial gains. Give it a try!
How to Write
an E-Book (Part 1)
The only way you
are ever going to get finished with any project is the get started! And with writing your own e-book it is no
different. The hardest part of writing
is the first sentence. When you look at
the whole project, it seems like an impossible task. That's why you have to
break it down into manageable tasks. Think of climbing a mountain.
You are standing
at the foot of the mountain and looking up at its summit vanishing into the
clouds. How can you possibly scale such an immense and dangerous mountain?
There is only one
way to climb a mountain: step by step.
Now think of
writing your e-book in the same light. You must create it step by step, and one
day, you will take that last step and find yourself standing on the summit with
your head in the clouds.
The first thing
you have to do, as if you actually were a mountain climber, is to get
organized. Instead of climbing gear, however, you must organize your thoughts.
There are some steps you should take before you begin. Once you've gone through
the following list, you will be ready to actually begin writing your e book.
Beginning Steps to
Writing an e-book
First, figure out
your e-book's working title. Jot down a few different titles, and eventually,
you'll find that one that
will grow on you. Titles help you to focus your writing on your topic; they
guide you in anticipating and answering your reader's queries. Many non-fiction
books also have subtitles. Aim for clarity in your titles, but cleverness
always helps to sell books, as long as it's not too cute. For example, Remedies
for Insomnia: twenty different ways to count sheep. Or: Get off that couch:
fifteen exercise plans to whip you into shape.
Next, write out a
thesis statement. Your thesis is a sentence or two stating exactly what
problem you are addressing and how your book will solve that problem. All chapters spring forth from your thesis
statement. Once you've got this
statement fine-tuned, you've built your foundation. From that foundation, your
book will grow, chapter by chapter.
Your thesis will
keep you focused while you write your e-book. Remember: all chapters must
support your thesis statement. If they don't, they don't belong in your book.
For example, your thesis statement could read: We've all experienced insomnia
at times in our lives, but there are twenty proven techniques and methods to give
you back a good night's sleep.
Once you have
your thesis, before you start to write, make sure there is a good reason to
write your book.
Ask yourself
some questions:
* Does your book present useful information and is that
information currently relevant?
* Will you book positively affect the lives of your readers?
* Is your book dynamic and will it keep the reader's attention?
* Does you book answer questions that are meaningful and
significant?
If you can answer
yes to these questions, you
can feel confident about the potential of your e-book.
Another important
step is to figure out who your target audience is. It is this group of people
you will be writing to, and this group will dictate many elements of your book,
such as style, tone, diction, and even length. Figure out the age range of your
readers, their general gender, what they are most interested in, and even the
socio-economic group they primarily come from. Are they people who read fashion
magazines or book reviews? Do they write letters in longhand or spend hours
every day online. The more you can pin down your target audience, the easier it
will be to write your book for them.
Next, make a list
of the reasons you are writing your e-book. Do you want to promote your
business? Do you want to bring quality traffic to your website? Do you want to enhance
your reputation?
Then write down your
goals in terms of publishing. Do you want to sell it as a product on your
website, or do you want to offer it as a free gift for filling out a survey or
for ordering a product? Do you want to use the chapters to create an e-course,
or use your e-book to attract affiliates around the world? The more you know
upfront, the easier the actual writing will be.
Decide on the
format of your chapters. In non-fiction, keep the format from chapter to
chapter fairly consistent. Perhaps you plan to use an introduction to your
chapter topic, and then divide it into four subhead topics. Or you may plan to
divide it into five parts, each one beginning with a relevant anecdote.
How to make your e-book
"user friendly"
You must figure out how to keep your writing
engaging. Often anecdotes, testimonials,
little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and tips will keep the reader turning the
pages. Sidebars are useful for quick, accessible information, and they break up
the density of the page.
Write with a
casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction.
Readers respond to the feeling that you are having a conversation with them.
Break up the length and structure of your sentences so you don’t hypnotize your
readers and put them to sleep. Sentences that are all the same length and structure
tend to be a good aid for insomnia!
Good writing
takes practice. It takes lots and lots of practice. Make a schedule to write at
least one page a day. Read books and magazines about the process of writing,
and jot down tips that jump out at you. The art of writing is a lifetime
process; the more you write (and read), the better your writing will become. The better your writing becomes, the bigger
your sales figures.
In an e-book that
is read on the screen, be aware that you must give your reader's eye a break.
You can do this by utilizing white space. In art classes, white space is
usually referred to as "negative space." Reader's eyes need to rest in the cool white
oasis you create on your page. If your page is too dense, your reader will get
out of it as soon as their eyes begin to tear.
Make use of
lists, both bulleted and numbered. This makes your information easy to absorb,
and gives the reader a mental break from dissecting your paragraphs one after
the other.
Finally, decide
on an easy-to-read design. Find a font that's easy on the eyes, and stick to
that font family. Using dozens of fonts will only tire your readers out before
they've gotten past your introduction. Use at least one and a half line spacing,
and text large enough to be read easily on the screen, but small enough so that
the whole page can be seen on a computer screen. You will have to experiment
with this to find the right combination.
Of course, don't
forget to run a spell and grammar check. And then S-L-O-W-L-Y READ through you e-book for obvious words misspelled that
ARE NOT caught by your spell/grammar check program (and there WILL
be some within your writing!) You are
judged by something as minor as correct punctuation, so don’t mess up a great
book by tossing out semicolons randomly, or stringing sentences together with
commas. (By the way, that's called a "comma splice.")
Last of all you
should create an index and a bibliography.
That's it! You've
written a book!
You've written
and compiled your e-book. If you are going to be charging for this new creation
of yours you have to decide how much!
Finding the right price is essential to the success of your product. If you
charge too little, people will think it's of little value, and they won't
purchase it, or even if they do buy your book, you will have to sell thousands of
copies to get to the point where you can begin to see a profit. If you price it
too high when compared with your competition, you will find yourself steadily lowering
the price, which will cause you all kinds of new problems in the future. For
example, if you sell your e-book at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to $24.95,
don't you think the people who bought it for $39.99 are going to be just a
little bit upset with you!
Choosing the
right price for your e-book is one of the most critical parts of the marketing
process. The first rule of pricing e-books
is to never under price. Determine
the highest price your audience can afford, and then if you find your book isn’t
selling, you can always reduce the price. Before you take that step, make sure
you are promoting your book like crazy on the internet and on your own websites.
The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget
that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your e-book
before they buy it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a
mega-marketing campaign.
Pricing any e-book
is particularly difficult because e-books are a fairly new commodity. Since
they are digital, the value of an e-book is as confusing as the understanding
of what digital actually is to the average layperson. This means that we must
look at e-books in a different light in order to determine their actual worth
in this brave, new cyber world.
Let's look at the
difference between a book in print and an e-book. A printed book is an object
you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next
generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production
costs, and marketing. E-books have
basically NONE of these
factors.
But what unites e-books
and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have
the ability to change, or possibly transform people's lives.
What do you think
an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink? It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you determine the cost
of your e-book.
What should I charge
for my ideas?
There are all
different kinds of formulas and methods for determining the correct price for your
e-book. Let's begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.
Decide if your
goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at
drawing customers to your business or service, or to establishing the credibility
of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price
on the low side. Some authors have even priced their e-books at a profit loss
to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes
your profits and the number of books you sell.
This is an
excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers.
Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you again and again: as
long as the first e-book they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to
the customer.
However, if your
book contains valuable and more importantly NEW information, references, or
techniques then you should aim to price it on the high end.
After you figure
out your goal, you must figure out what your audience's need is for your e-book. For example, does your book solve
a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn't been written
about in one hundred other e-books, you will be able to achieve high sales at a
high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and
unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve
larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question
or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the
majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or
you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a
high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as
soon as they hear about your book.
Keep in mind that
the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell
books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer
your e-book at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing
strategy.
If you want to
see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for
easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at
solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge
more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest
profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.
Marketing Strategies
The key that unlocks the sales
potential of your e-book is to find
a single sentence that becomes your selling
handle. This sentence states what question or problem your book answers and the benefits your e-book can provide. Then be sure to use that
sentence in every piece of sales and
promotional material, and every time
anyone asks you about your e-book.
Besides promoting
your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help
you sell more books.
One is to give
something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or
bundle several e-books under one price, which lowers the price for each e-book
if they were sold separately.
An effective
technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current
customers. If these customers have already bought an e-book from you, ask for
their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new
book, but don't include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to
survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to
your e-book.
Another strategy
is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with
different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on
every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each
page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book.
This will tell you what your optimum price is.
Ultimately, if
you've written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your
book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that
selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the
benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch
your market come to you!
So you’ve got your e-book priced, now what
can you do exactly to get your e-book published?
Steps to Publishing Success (Part 3)
Even if your best
friend owns a top publishing company, giving you an immediate "in,"
this does not guarantee publishing success.
First, you have
to write a quality book that has a clear target audience. And your book must
answer a common problem or need that audience shares. At this point I am going to assume you have
already done that following the information previously given to you in Part 1.
Then you have to
develop a marketing plan, and stick to it for at least two years, determining
the best price level to charge for your e-book.
Again I hope you have followed the suggestions in Part 2.
Let's begin with
the process that should commence before you write your first word. Begin by
reading A LOT. This has been mentioned to you before but deserves repeating because
it is very important. Read both books you
passionately love and books you can't seem to make it past page five. Then
figure out what the author did in the book you loved, and what was wrong with
in the book you couldn't finish.
Write down these
points so they are crystal clear to you. Read other people's books for
inspiration and to discover what you should avoid as a writer.
The next step is
to plan out your book. Narrow down your subject, and then divide it into
chapters. Each chapter should address a specific aspect of the problem your
book is going to solve. In each chapter, break the specific aspect down into
several parts. This will help your readers
take in your information a bit at a time instead of overwhelming them with
every bit of information clogging up the pages until they feel like they're
about to go blind. It's not quite spoon-feeding the information to your
readers, but it is close.
How to turn your e-book
into Profits
E-books are a
revolutionary way to publish your book without incurring the costs of print
production. All you need is a relevant and targeted subject and some inexpensive
software, and you can transform your manuscript into a book.
The problem, in
terms of actually seeing any profits from your e-book, is that the market is
overwhelmed with e-books, and many of them are not worth the time it takes to
download them. Just because the ability exists to easily produce an e-book
doesn't make it good writing or worthy reading!
Make sure your
book does not simply rehash old material. You will injure your credibility as
an author by claiming to offer valuable new insights and disappointing your
audience with material they've read a zillion times before. So spend enough
time writing and revising your book to make sure it's of the highest quality
and presents the most current information. A good book will eventually sell
itself; false claims about your book will make it extremely difficult to sell
any future books you may write.
To attract sales, you will need to develop a promotional
campaign, particularly if you are an unknown author. There are multitudes of books about
self-promotion that will guide you in your efforts. Choose a plan that is both
creative and professional. Learn how to write a catchy yet informative press
release, and send copies of your e-book to sites that specialize in e-book reviews.
Learn how to
write powerful sales copy, or hire someone to write it for you. This is an
essential. You absolutely need excellent sales copy to sell your book. Make
sure the copy includes all the reasons your target audience needs your book,
and the benefits they will derive from buying it.
Use graphics in
your promotional materials. Beautiful graphics have the power to instantly
convey the quality and value of your e-book. Graphics can also convey the
amount of valuable information the book contains, and your careful attention to
detail. Professional graphics sell
professional books. They reassure the customer that the product is what it claims
to be.
Consider
excerpting chapters for articles. You can offer these tidbits for free on your
website as a sort of demo of your book. Include an order form for your e-book
at the end of the excerpted articles.
Finally, when you
set-up your download link, make sure to simplify the process. It's a good idea
to offer a few bonuses that make your book even more enticing to purchase, but
make sure the bonuses are valuable and high quality. Too many bonuses that are
basically a load of useless stuff will compromise the impression your audience
has of your e-book. The goal is to convey to your audience that they are
getting a quality product for a good deal. That means applying restraint,
especially when it comes to adding bonus items. Too much free stuff offered
diminishes your credibility.
Just to review:
Make sure your book is a quality product. Make sure it is relevant and current.
Develop an effective marketing plan that includes excellent sales copy and excerpted
articles. Then offer your book for sale, and wait for your audience to discover
you!
Looking forward
to your future success in the e-book market!
P.S.
I know it’s overwhelming, so I’ve made it a lot easier for you. It may be that you just need some additional training. One of the best and most reasonably priced programs I've found is Freelance Profit Academy Training Webinar. Give them a try and see what you think.
QUOTE TO CONSIDER
THOUGHTFUL GEM
"You know you can't remember everything ---
so try to forget less!"
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