Ebook that had high waves on it’s way to completion
Have you ever wanted to do an eBook? Or maybe you have. If you have, I really appreciate all the work and time that it takes. I thought the writing would be hard. What was harder was the formatting and knowing what you need to do before you submit your eBook. That was a long and rough ride for me. I had to overcome the high waves.
Why an eBook?
I loved the challenge of coming up with a product for this blog. Traffic was increasing and I wanted to offer something to my loyal readers and help to teach others how to tweet. I ‘d been to networking events locally and many people were on Facebook but not Twitter. A few signed up for Twitter because of my recommendation but then were confused on how to tweet. So thanks to them for inspiring me to write my first eBook.
The Birth of an eBook
For the past year I had the eBook in my head. What really got me going was a post by Adrienne Smith on How to Be Productive So You Can Achieve the Internet Lifestyle where she introduced me to Steve Scott’s eBook. It was all about learning to productive with your online business. As Steve put it “Master Time, Increase Profits, Enjoy Life”. I love how he said most of us were an army of one. I could relate! I bet you could too. He is also a big fan of the old 80/20 rule as I am. I started with his daily action plan and began writing the book, little by little. You can check out Steve’s book here. I have it dowloaded on my Droid and my Galaxy pad. If I had not done it little by little I may not have ever started. Thank you to Adrienne and Steve for getting me into action!
The Writing of an eBook
The writing of an eBook was getting easier as I went along but time consuming. I had many old posts that I incorporated with more details and updated as I went along. I also did a little more research. I had written for the RISBJ (Rhode Island Small Business Journal) and I used some of the info I had researched for those articles. There was plenty of materials I had compiled but I wanted to keep it simple. (That was the uniqueness I wanted with this eBbook, simple!) I wanted newbies to be able to follow and not be overhwhelmed. I included what has worked well for me on Twitter. I had planned to be done in January but my arm would not let me. The piched nerve slowed me down that month.
The Writing is Done, Now What?
This is where the ride got rough. I wanted to sell this eBook outside of my loyal readers here. I had read how to format it for Amazon and Kindle. So I did. And then I went to submit and realized I need an ISBN which cost at least $100+. Now I knew I could not spend that much for this eBook. I turned to Twitter and learned about Smashwords.
Why Smashwords?
There are many reasons I choose Smashwords. They are an eBook distributor. They make it fast and easy for people to publish eBooks. Perfect! They make money by selling your eBooks to readers. The first reasons I choose them was I could get an ISBN # for FREE. Free was for me. They also offered the eBook on many formats and platforms. Loved that! They take a percentage of comission on sales. Since they make it easy and help promote, why not? They have recommendatons of people to help you with formatting and covers ( for a cost of course). After playing with the formatting and then submitting to learn it was wrong, I decided to hire one of their recommended people. Why spend hours when $15 would do it within 24 and I could work on my retail sites? Smashwords also has an affiliate program where all of the books there are automatically entered into. Very nice! You can at anytime re-load your eBook if you find errors. Another great feature! Smashwords starts to send you money (Paypal being the easiest route) once you accrue $10 in sales. They do it quarterly. You then have to fill out a form and they will send you out via snailmail a form for tax purposes. We can’t forget the tax man when we earn money online. The next step is to get your e-Book into the premium catalog where it will distribute them via Apple, Barnes & Nobles, Sony and more. Mine is in the review stage. Amazon distribution comes after $2,000 of sales of your eBook. (I would need to sell 667 eBooks for that at full price) .
Will There Be Another eBook?
I do have one in mind again with a cover set in my head. But I need a break. It was more time consuming than I first though. It was very satisfying to have completed it though. Maybe I’ll begin next month starting the next one, stay tuned!
Have you ever created an eBook or will you do one in the future?
Have you used Smashwords for producing or purchasing an eBook?
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