How to Write an E-Book

Video Transcript

"Writing an E-book is a lot like writing any kind of book, although E-books do tend to be shorter. It's not the process of writing that makes it distinctive; it's the process of deciding why you're doing this and what you're going to do with it. You can't just write an E-book and send it to E-publisher. There basically aren't any E-publishers with significant distribution. You have to do all the work yourself, so you need to find a topic that someone's going to be interested in, and this is the hardest part--a topic that somebody's interested in that isn't already flooded. You can't believe how many E-books there already are about how to write an E-book, for example, or how to do podcasts. You don't want to do that again. Maybe if you have some esoteric, or relatively esoteric, area of expertise... you can train cats for example. No one else is going to be horning in on your market there. So find your subject, or your approach. If your approach to something is significantly distinctive--it won't blend in with all the others--then you can sell on a topic that everyone else has covered. Write it as clearly as possible. Don't try to get fancy. People are going to E-books for instructions, not for great writing. Get it done, make it look as nice as you can, and then find the ways to publicize it. If you have a blog, publicize it on your blog. If you have the cash, advertise on other people's blogs. Advertise on Google, if you've got that kind of money, but the main thing is bring attention to your work so that people will be interested in it. Any kind of website that gets a lot of hits that is on the subject, that takes advertising, is a place where you can go. Maybe you can get yourself interviewed, and if you live in a smaller town, local radio and television are always looking for people to interview, so you can promote--at least locally--that way, and as you get the word of mouth spreading. Go on FaceBook and MySpace, go on any other social networking sites for your area of expertise. Spread the word, and you'll have at least some chance of people shelling out their cash for what you've done."