Due to the intense amount of interest in the eBook I created in celebration of being chosen as a "Featured Blogger" on TheSITSGirls.com website, Twenty-Five SITS Girls Killer Wicked-Cool Party Moves (available below), I decided to share "how-to" information with you about how easy it is to create and publish an eBook. I hope you'll be inspired!
I'm a caterer and event planner, so you might be surprised to find out that I found traffic success when I created and gave away an ebook, but I did. Originally featured as a "Thank You for Stopping By My Blog and Commenting" gift, the ebook I created was a great way for me to express what I wanted to convey to the SITS Girls who stopped by my blog and it was a lot easier to create than you might think. What's the trick to easy ebook creation? Just make up your mind to do it. It's really just that simple!
When you've always wanted to make your own family cookbook, or need to start looking into a type of inexpensive holiday season gift to give, self-publishing an ebook is the perfect answer.
I simply took two things that I feel passionate about, parties and the SITS Girls -- put them together and voila!... in a span of twenty to thirty minutes I came up with a concept for my gift ebook giveaway, "Twenty-Five SITS Girls Killer Wicked-Cool Party Moves".
And if I can do it, you can do it too.
Your eBook Advantages
You may not have thought about it this way. Every time you write a blog post, post something on Google+, Twitter or Facebook, you're self-publishing. So you should have nothing to fear. Because when you're considering self-publishing an ebook, whether you're self publishing ebooks for free giveaways on your website or blog, or self publishing ebooks on Amazon (using Kindle Direct Publishing for profit in literally, "just a few hours" -- where some people are doing quite well, receiving 70% in royalties from the sale of their books)... it's essentially very much the same. The truth is that you are already, in fact, a self publisher.
Ebooks Haven't Even Tipped Their Scale of Popularity
Trends come and go. eBooks last forever. They build character. They surpass corporate thinking. They transmit storytelling. They encourage robust thinking. They campaign and champion knowledge. They increase syndication. They embrace the internal, making it external. They measure and monitor metrics.
Ebooks offer exciting new opportunities to spread your message and get your voice heard. Case in point... eBook sales topped paperback book sales for the first time in February 2011, reported CNN Money.
How To Write An ebook
Electronic books make it possible for anyone to self-publish a cookbook, a family photo journal, an ebook tracking your son or daughter's life growth, or to commemorate an annual vacation that you take with friends.
- First, set the goal to do it.
- Next answer the question: what do you want your book to accomplish for you and provide for others?
- And so, what's it all about? What's your subject matter?
Most people think that to write any type of book is to start at the beginning, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. You want people to read it, so it needs to be clear with content as compelling as you can possibly make it.
How will I know when I've found clarity? When you can explain it in one sentence, maybe two. For example, “how to take photographs that tell a great story". Whether it’s “How to Shoot Great Pictures,” “How to Create Drama Like a Hollywood Reality Star” or “How to Tweet Your Way to Fame and Fortune,” the topic tells us why you’re writing the book and why you want us to read it.
When your goal is to profit from your ebook, choose a topic that's sustainable for 20, 30, or 40 pages. One of my eBooklets, “4 Things You Should Have Asked Your Planner By Now,” for example, makes for a great, 500-word blog post and a heck of a short ebook, but it will be impossible to effectively carry that topic along for 5,000 words (a typical, mid-range length
ebook).
To figure out if you've got full on ebook or shorter ebooklet possibility on the horizon, your next step is to create an outline. After that, choose a topic that you're extremely passionate about or that has staying power. Publishing an ebook is like running a marathon. You want to get as much mileage out of it as possible.
Choose a topic that you've been dying to share with your family, or an issue that has long plagued your customers or is one of their important concerns, and you're on your way.
Next, jot down the main points you'll want to make, one idea at a time. To make it a little easier to understand, think of each of these points as the foundation for a book chapter. Think of these chapters as mini-topics and make sure they're to the point and can be clearly explained in a sentence or two.
Build your ebook, one chapter at a time, creating each sub-topic with a sentence or two to help you when it comes time to write the chapter. You start with an idea and a blank page, then you just do it. Begin to write, starting with the chapter you feel most comfortable with, and continue writing from there. You’ll go back later and trim away the excess, so for now, dump all of your thoughts out -- just to get used to writing.
Each chapter you write will be a complete mini-topic unto itself (kind of like a blog post) with the bullet points you identified during your planning phase as your guide. Now, take those bullet points and expound on them, fleshing out each one into one, or several, paragraphs. Be sure to avoid long sentences and long, wordy paragraphs. When a paragraph starts to become too long, running 10, 12 lines or more, find a natural break point and split it in two. Readers can become discouraged when they face a half a page or more of content to read, and you don't want to turn them off.
When your topic renders itself to have supporting data (and most topics do), include it. Nothing will give you more credibility than adding in supporting facts—from reputable sources—to back up what you have to say. The great thing about ebooks, like blog posts, is that they allow you to insert hyperlinks into the text so your readers can click on the links to read your substantiating facts. But don’t overdo hyperlinks. You want readers to be reading your ebook, not become sidetracked. The good thing about hyperlinking is, when the link can provide valuable information to a reader that’s too long or too complex to explain in your ebook, you can give it to them. Sharing that information is a wise decision.
How To Create An ebook
They say that "content is King" and "design is Queen". Good design and layout should enhance the good content you've come up with. It shouldn’t distract from your content. Good ebook design is not overly fancy and should reinforce your brand through the use of your company colors and fonts, and the overall look-and-feel your brand presents on your website, in your store, on your packaging, wherever your customers come into contact with your brand. I like to choose two fonts and stick with them, making it easy on the eye for the reader.
You can outsource your ebook design to a professional designer, or you can write your eBook in Microsoft Office Word, like I do, and make use of one of the predesigned templates Word offers.
When you click on the Office button at the upper, left corner of a Word document and then click
“New,” you’ll get a dropdown menu of templates. There are all sorts of templates; book templates, booklet templates, and catalog and brochure templates too. Some of the catalog templates fit nicely for an ebook. They’ve got a good cover design with lots of white space, a table of contents, and some sample pages you can modify with your own text and images, whether they are pictures, illustrations, charts, or graphs. So they're great to use when you're first getting started.
I suggest that you use images to help break up line after line of text. Straight text might appeal to people who like to read a lot, but most readers will lose interest if there isn’t something to break up the visual monotony of your copy. Everyone had heard the expression, "A picture is worth a thousand words", so feel free to add images to your ebook. Quite frankly, it's not something that I've done a lot of, but knowing that people like to look at images -- I will add the color and pizzazz to an otherwise plain page to ebooks that I'll create in the future.
Be sure to enhance your content with hyperlinks and calls-to action (CTAs) throughout the body of the book. Don’t overdo it, but include links to landing pages that provide other relevant content
you’ve created. Ebooks, webinars, or whitepapers are great top-of-the-funnel offers. Free product trials, demos, or consultations are ideal middle-of-the-funnel offers. Each of these links and CTAs helps maximize your lead generation.
To reap the most benefit from your content, consider adding tracking tokens. You can create unique tokens that will provide analytics to track specific campaign elements, such as banner ads, newsletters, email blasts, or paid search. The Google URL builder will create the unique URL which defines the campaign, source and name. This can then become your reference destination and is where you will choose the anchor text or image. Use Google Analytics or other online sources of your choice to view and analyze the results.Social networks are probably the most powerful, cost-effective marketing tool you have. Make sure your ebook leverages those networks at every opportunity.
Include social sharing links to let readers “Tweet This” or “Share on Facebook” on every page. Use these links to direct people to the landing page for your ebook to ensure you collect those leads too. Your readers get to easily pass along the value you've created in your content with colleagues and co-workers; you get more free leads to convert.
Once you've written a first draft, when you're editing and proofreading your ebook go through your content and see where you can logically add your most important keywords. Don’t force-fit keywords and don’t overdo them, but when you re-purpose your content in your blog, on your Facebook page, and other online sources, you will already have the keywords you rely on to optimize your search engine results naturally.
I create my ebook covers with what I consider to be the easiest and best software tool available, Box Shot King. After I've created the cover, I upload the image of it to Microsoft Office Publisher to size it to correctly fit the width of my content. Next, I merge the ebook cover and content .pdf files together via FoxyUtils. I upload the file to my website and it's all done. It's just that simple and easy to execute.
Title Your eBook Tips
An eye-catching and unique title will create a surefire way to convey the topic of your book and
its value to your readers, all while cleverly including a keyword or two. Titles that offer “How to” work really well. “Tips,” “Tricks,” and “Secrets to” also do well with readers. After all, who couldn't use a tip or a trick? And everybody wants to know the “secret” to just about anything.
Numbers are always eye-catching, especially when they denote a part of a list, just as the title of my most recent ebook has, “25 SITS Girls Killer Wicked-Cool Party Moves.” The best thing to do is to try to come up with several names for your ebook. Then do a little test marketing with your co-workers, friends, neighbors, and family members to see which one people seem to like the most and why.
Top 6 things to make sure that you do...
- Start with a bang. Your first sentence needs to be a showstopper!
- Write. Then rewrite and rewrite again.
- Schedule time to write... come hell or high water, write at least an hour to 250 words per day.
- Listen to your favorite music as you're writing, or none at all if that helps you to concentrate better.
- Always remember that readers love lists and numbers.
- Excite to ignite... no matter what, don't be boring!
Now is the time to create and self-publish your first online book, if you haven't already done so.
eBooks are still as popular as ever and in fact, they are in hot demand. The world is waiting to hear what you have to say! When you're a blog publisher, you might as well write and self-publish an eBook.
Here's your copy of "Twenty-Five SITS Girls Killer Wicked-Cool Party Moves", a little sump 'em- sump 'em that I put together for you to take a look at; an eBook I created for my SITS Girls "SITStahs".
Just click on the book!
*****
I do this... I write to help to create to opportunities for all of you to pursue your passion to have parties without regard to economic constraints.
I think if we keep talking about the cost of parties (I blog, you write comments), together, maybe we can break down some of the party industry price barriers and shame some of the people who've taken your money and delivered a poor quality product right into growing a conscious and treating you right (nice thought, isn't it?).
Opportunities to be inspired about parties are everywhere. Yet, people looking out for your wallet are few and far between. My goal is to inspire you, causing you to question the way things are that have been the status quo for too long. When we stand together and speak up, we can be a powerful force.
Let's keep the conversation of change going. Because in the sea of everyone talking, one voice is a whisper... several voices are a scream.
Leave a comment and share your thoughts, ideas and suggestions below. Remember to be as specific as possible because what you have to say helps us all.
I really love you guys. There, I said it.
Always... be encouraged and be encouraging to others too,
“Skepticism doesn't help you hear.” - Seth Godin