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Creating An E-Book!

Why you will want to do this.

By WendyPublished 4 years ago 10 min read
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Photo by Aliis Sinisalu on Unsplash

There are several reasons why you would want to write an e-book. They have their advantages and they are easy to create. They can be about anything and any size. You can price it at any amount from 99¢ and up. Although, you don't want it to be so much that no one will want to buy it.

1. Reasons and advantages for creating your e-book

  • There are many different reasons people create e-books. Here is a list of some of them. Some of them are the same as why you want to write one too. Or there are a few different reasons. That's OK. I am considering a couple of these reasons myself.
  • You're a travel writer and want to write a complete travel guide to each place you visit. These are packed with valuable information. People will want to have this when they visit the place covered in the book.
  • To have a free product as a giveaway for email list signup. Your in list building mode and need a free give-a-way. These are perfect. Or you can write a report and use your e-book as a bonus up-sale.
  • To teach a course on something you're knowledgeable about and others want to learn. Helping others solve a problem with your e-book is a rewarding experience.
  • As a complete resource guide. You know of several resources that will help someone is in a specific job. Or they have a specific hobby they love to do. You can write an e-book about these resources.
  • To have a product to sell. You want to create an income stream that makes you money. Writing e-books will help you do that. You can make different ones about a particular niche.

2. Disadvantages of writing one.

  • There are a few disadvantages to writing an e-book. Because let's face it not everything is roses. If theres advantages there will always be a disadvantage. It's a yin/yang kind of thing.
  • It can be time-consuming. Writing an e-book takes some time. It can take as little as a couple of days to a couple of months.
  • It ends up not selling because no one wants to read it. This is a problem people face when they write one. They can't get anyone to buy it or sign up for your list. You have to do your research to see if there is a need for that topic.
  • It ends up not selling because no one knows about it. You have to market your book. If no one knows about it how can you make money or build your list?
  • You might not be a good writer. If you are not a good writer then creating an e-book is challenging to do. But not to worry. This is not impossible to do. Go on a place like upwork or Fiverr and hire someone to ghostwrite it for you. Another option is to buy some PLR e-books.
  • PLR means private label rights. This is where you buy an e-book or reports on your topic. You can add to them, delete information from them, change anything or leave it the same. You put your name as author and can do anything you want with it. It becomes yours. This is all legal to do.

    • You don't know how to market your book. This is hard if you don't know how to do it. Not everyone is good at marketing. Unfortunately, it is necessary to do it. So, suck it up buttercup! If you follow me on patreon you can get weekly marketing tips. You will also receive other valuable information.

    3. Choosing the size you want it

    The nice thing about e-books is they don't have to be big. They can be any size. If you write one that's between 25–50 pages that are ok. You can even make it longer too if you want. I would think though anything less than 25 pages would be considered as a report, not an e-book.

    4. Pick your topic

    There are 2 things you need. The first is a niche. Once you have your niche you can brake it down to a particular topic in your niche.

    For instance, say your niche was "parenting." our topic could be "parenting skills for parents with children who have ADHD."

    With a niche like this, you could write many e-books. This is a popular subject.

    5. Coming up with content for your book

    There are 3 ways to coming up with content for your book.

    • You don't know how to market your book. This is hard if you don't know how to do it. Not everyone is good at marketing. Unfortunately, it is necessary to do it. So, suck it up buttercup! If you follow me on patreon you can get weekly marketing tips. You will also receive other valuable information.
    • Take blog posts that you have written on this topic and put them into a book. You have several blog articles that you have already written on this topic. Great! All you need to do is:
  • Create an introduction chapter.
  • Plan your table of contents. Use 1 article as a chapter. If you have 20 articles you will have 20 chapters plus your introduction.
  • Write your conclusion chapter.
  • Create your metadata (more on that later).
  • Edit your book (More on that later).
    • Use PLR e-books as mentioned above. This is the easiest to do because it's done for you. All you have to do is edit it how you want and put your name on it. Then you are able to publish i

    6. Research your topic.

    If you write your book from scratch you will need to research some or all the information. How long this will take depends on how much you need to research. be careful not to fall into the rabbit hole.

    7. Writing your topic

    You are ready to begin the writing process after you have planned it out and researched the topic. This can take a few hours or a few days. It all depends on how much information you're putting into your book.

    8. Editing your topic

    Now is the editing phase. There are a couple of ways you can go.

    • Hire someone else to do it.
    • Or, you can do it yourself. there are steps to the process.
  • Fix all words underlined in red
  • Run your text through the Hemingway editor. Chapter by chapter and fix all the issues. I start at the very beginning and work my way down to the end.
  • Transfer your writing back into your writing app weather it is MS Word or some other app.
  • use Grammarly to finish editing your words in red.
  • Start reading line by line. Fix any capitalization and punctuation mistakes.
  • Reread it again did you think of an extra sentence to it's? you found an incomplete sentence that you need to retype.
  • 9. Creating your metadata and editing it

    Metadata is very important for your book. It's used to help promote other work of yours, let the reader know who you and what you're about. So you want to think long and hard about what you will add to it. Here are some of the things you may want to add into your metadata:

  • This is your about the author
  • Other books for sell on the niche
  • The first few pages of the next book.
  • The resources section
  • Contact me page
  • Email signup form
  • 10. Designing your cover

    Now comes the cover. You want to make sure it is eye-catching and clean and makes the customer want to pick up your book and read it. When it comes to creating a book cover you have a couple of options.

    • You can pay someone to create one for you.
    • You can hire someone on Fiverr.com or on Upworks.com to create your cover for you. You can get one designed pretty inexpensive. Be sure you get what you want when dealing with those sites. There are other sites where you can find people to design a cover for you. But most of them are a little to a lot more expensive to have one made.
    • You can buy one that is pre made. There are websites like 99 designs .com that will help you to design your cover. The problem with this it gets a little expensive for these types of designers. I looked at 99 designs and their packages are between 199- 299. This depends on what type of cover you are looking for. But I will say that the reason for these prices is because they do quality work. I can't say for sure because I have never used their services. If you have the money to try them then go for it. I usually go with the third option because I am on a small limited budget.
    • You can create your own cover yourself. OK, so here is the third option. This is what I do I go to Canva.com and create my book covers here. For photos, I usually go to Pixabay.com. For my Smoothie diet book, I actually purchased a couple of photos from Canva for a couple of dollars. It turned out good. Despite doing it myself.

    11. Pricing your e-book.

    Next, you need to decide on the price of your book. People are starting to get used to paying a small amount for e-books. This is because there are fewer expenses involved in creating them. So people are happy to sell at a lower price point. They make more profit with an e-book than they do with the normal paperback or hardback book. You don't want to price it too high but you don't want to price it too low either. I admit I am not an expert at pricing but as a consumer who buys e-books, this is what I would suggest.

    • 75 pages or less I would not price it over $4.99
    • 80- 175 may be between $5.99–$9.99
    • 200 pages or more anywhere between$12.99–$19.99

    Of course, the price you charge for your book can also depend on your publishing company. Even if you self publishes on amazon you will have to take this into consideration. Most people who buy e-books on amazon don't pay more than $14.99. Usually, if they do pay this much it is because it is a brand new book. These books were published by a traditionally published company. Say that you publish on Amazon with a book that is 200 pages or more. If you put your book at $9.99, you will make the same amount as a book priced at $19.99. Your royalty will be $6.99 per copy. If your price point is between $10.00–$19.00 you will make less than you would if you priced your book at $9.99. Your royalty payments for this price point would be $3.50- $6.65.

    12. Distribution and marketing of your e-book.

    There are several websites you can use to publish your e-book. I am not going to talk about these other sites. If it is your interest to see what other options are out there you can use google to learn about these other sites. But the only one I have ever used it Amazon KDP. Well, I kind of take that back as I published my first book through Createspace. Amazon owned the Createspace site. By the time I got to Publishing my second and third books, Createspace was no longer in use. Amazon switched it over to Amazons KDP site. I use Amason for a lot of things in my life. So you may say I am biased towards Amazon.

    But even with Amazon, you are going to need to market your e-book or e-books. This is where paid ads, social media marketing, and email marketing to your list come in to play. Amazon will only market your book with you if it is selling. The more it sales, the more Amazon helps to get it seen. As with anything you want to sell you will have to go through the marketing stage. If you want to keep selling them you have to keep marketing them. Then they will start to sell through word of mouth. This increases your sales.

    Conclusion:

    In this article, we talked about how to go about creating your e-book and creating your cover. We even talked about your price point and publishing. This was not an all-inclusive guide. But it will get you started on your journey to creating an e-book either to sell or to give away. So if your ready go and create your first e-book today.

    Now go forth and write!

    Hi, I hope you enjoyed this article. To see more articles like this please leave a small tip. It takes time and a lot of work to create these articles for you. When you leave a tip I will donate 25% to some of my favorite children's charities. Like St. Jude Hospital for children, The Shriner's Hospital for children. Thanks again for your support. Happy reading!

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