Welcome to Part 1 of How to Create an eBook.  This is the first of 9 weekly posts designed to get you started creating your very own masterpiece.  By the end of this period you should have all the information that you need to create your own eBook and hopefully be encouraged to take up the challenge and get going.  It’s very easy to do and what’s more, it’s enjoyable and rewarding.

Before we get too involved in the mechanics of actually creating the eBook itself, we will take a step back to one of the very first questions that you should ask yourself before even starting to put pen to paper, or fingers to keys.  This question is not “How to Create an eBook” but rather “Why Create an eBook?”.

Different people will have different reasons for creating an eBook and it would be impractical to cover all of the ideas here and what’s more, I doubt if I know every single situation where a person may decide to create an eBook.  Instead we will take a look at a few of the more common reasons that people decide to write and eBook.  This should get your creative juices flowing in the right direction at least.

To Help Promote your Business

Many people, me included, decide to produce eBooks to market their business.  This is a very good way of giving away high quality information to potential customers.  By communicating what your business can offer, together with your views and some tips and ideas that will give value to others, you will give your readers an insight to what you and your business are all about, pass on some valuable information and can attract the right type of people who are interested in your subject, to your website.

Obviously, the information contained within your e-book will need be relevant to your chosen niche or area of business.  It’s no good producing an e-book about your Fly Fishing interests, when your internet business concentrates on providing information related to computer and Video Gaming.

When you create an eBook to market your business, it is important to bear in mind that the material that you put in your eBook will reflect on you and your business.  Using foul language or consistently running your competitors down would not be a good way to encourage people to read, let alone part with their precious time in order to check out your website.  Create content that will allow others to perceive you as you want to be seen and more importantly, live up to the picture that you create.

Your eBook does not necessarily have to be very long, but it must provide useful information.  A 10-page high quality eBook would be perfectly fine as a marketing tool as long as the information is to the point and of interest to your target market.

An Eye for Quality

There are so many eBooks out there that have just been cobbled together without much thought and look extremely basic indeed.  In my opinion, there is nothing worse than just starting up your word processing application and starting to type using its default settings, without first paying attention to how you want your book to look.

Most of the time it’s because of ignorance that people don’t bother to take the time to plan out the visual appeal of their creation and I don’t mean that in a nasty way.  People just don’t know how to do anything different or choose not to spend the time learning.

These days though, it is very simple to create a good looking publication.  By paying attention to typefaces, by using colour and holding back from putting everything in bold in order to highlight them, it only takes a small amount of time to produce the look that you are trying to achieve.  By spending time looking through other books and magazines, you can very quickly get some ideas that you could use when producing your eBook.

The result is a high quality looking book and more customers being attracted to your site.

Marketing your eBook

Once created, your eBook can then be circulated across the internet in order that people may read it.  In this instance it is probable that you would want to give your book away, as it would be a pointless exercise selling a book in order to market your business.  Your goal should be to get your book circulated as quickly and as easily as possible in order to attract new potential customers to your website.

Maybe instead of sending your new eBook all over the globe, you wish to use it as an incentive for people to sign up to your newsletter and announcements.  This is a very good way of tempting people to part with their precious e-mail addresses and getting them on your mailing list.

Due to the vastness of the entire internet marketing subject, we will address this in a later project and so it will not be covered within this one.  However, if you want to learn more about marketing your eBook, a quick Google search should provide you with some information of how to go about this.

If you haven’t yet signed up to the Internet Business mailing list, do so now and download your free eBook “Internet Business & A Life of Freedom”.  You can then get an idea as to the way that I have chosen to lay it out, give my views and opinions on internet business and why I started Internet Business DiY.  I am sure that you will find it a good read and you may learn a few things that you didn’t know!

To Make Money from Sales

Another reason that you may want to write an eBook is to make money from selling it.  In this case your eBook is likely to be much larger than one that has been created to market your business.  Maybe you wish to write a “How-to” style book instructing people in the dying art of finger painting, or may be a technical book an configuring the newest piece of software.  You could decide to write a course on your chosen subject, or even a novel if that is what you desire to do.

This is exactly the same as the types of books that you see and buy in the book shops and the only difference is that it’s in electronic form.  However, you can still publish your book using self-publishing and can even apply for an ISBN number for it!

The aim at the end of it all though, is to sell your eBook.  It goes without saying then, that the subject you choose to write about needs to be in demand to a certain degree, otherwise you will never attract any buyers and ultimately never make money.

There are a couple of ways that you could choose to sell your eBook; sell it yourself or get others to sell it for you.

To Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Field

This is similar to marketing your business, but in this instance you are effectively marketing yourself.  You may decide that you will write some excellent content and instead of selling your book for a standard price, you will supply the book very cheaply in order to attract buyers.  Once your customers have read one or two of your publications, or maybe a series of them, they will get to see you as an expert in what you talk about.

It may be that you coincide this with the business promotion idea and just give away your eBook to others.  Or maybe you will give away a small portion of it, say one or two chapters, to entice people to buy the full version.

Consistency will be the key and once you have defined yourself as an expert, then people will stay with you for as long as you provide quality information to them.

You Have Always Wanted to Write a Book

This is one of my favourites.  I know a lot of people who have said to me that they have always wanted to write a book, but none of them ever do.  Why not?  “I’ll never be able to get it published”, they say or “It won’t be good enough”.  In this day and age these excuses are rubbish!

It is possible to write your own book, circulate it digitally for people to read, provide it in digital format for those with eBook readers and computers and even self-publish it into a physical product – all for either nothing, or such a small amount of money that it’s not even worth talking about the cost.

The bottom line is, if you want to write a book there is nothing to stop you.  Indeed, this project alone will get you in a position where you can write and produce an entire book on your most passionate subject.  Saying this, I would encourage you to let people know about this particular project, if you know that they have always wanted to write a book and didn’t know where to start, even if they do not have an interest in internet business.

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

You will hopefully have a few ideas buzzing around you head as to why you would want to create an eBook.  Why not surf the internet for a while and see how other people are doing it?  Sign-up to a few websites, download and read their offerings.  You will get some great ideas of why others have produced an eBook.

For me it is two-fold.  To start with I wanted a way that I could market my business and provide a way to let my potential customers know where I am coming from and secondly I have a passion to teach people what I know and help them on their way to success.  For you, it may be completely different.

Coming in Part 2

Next week, in Part 2 of How to Create an eBook, we will look at deciding on what to write about.  This is an area where some people get stuck and the stage where you will need to give some thought as to the overall content of your eBook.

See you then.

Firstly, let me wish all of you a prosperous 2010.

Looking back on the year just gone, isn’t it just amazing how fast the time goes? I cannot believe that it’s been around 2 months since I first put Internet Business DiY up on the Web. I also recognise that I haven’t added any content to it either since then…..so what have I been doing?

Well, after I put the website up I thought that I would start to write some content. I was very attuned to the fact that I did not want to put up rubbish content as I really did not want people reading my words to categorise me that same as I have categorised a lot of other people on the internet that speak about internet business. Most certainly, I did not want my website to look like something that I had just chucked up on the net and hadn’t paid too much attention to. Read more