Writing an ebook can be a life-changing experience. It helps you take a big step in your writing career and also offers you a steady income stream. Tons of writers recognize that it’s a great place to begin but they are unsure of the path to pursue in this direction. Perhaps you are also an aspiring writer and are equally confused.
If you are in the same dilemma, you’re in the right place. As an expert book editing service, we have crafted a list of all the essentials that will help you embark on your journey. These tips will offer you great solutions and help you bring your ebook to see the light of the day.
List Of All The Essentials That Will Help You Embark On Your Journey
1. Choose Your Topic
First things first: before you begin your draft, you need to research your topic thoroughly. Certain topics sound great but don’t have marketing potential. Still, don’t write a typical book just because you think it will make good money. Your book should have new ideas while being attractive enough to captivate your audience.
Choose a topic that you have ample knowledge of and will enjoy writing about. Having background knowledge will save you a lot of time and speed up your writing process. It will also increase the chances of actually finishing the book. So put good thought into your topic and don’t dive into something impulsively. Do good research, evaluate its potential, and only then finalize it.
2. Identify your expertise
Knowing your area of expertise is the first step toward success. When you write on a topic you already have ample knowledge about, you cut down on a lot of time spent on research. You will have a lot of information that will give you a kickstart. Although if you aren’t sure about your expertise, take a look at some ebooks and surf through the web. The more research you do, the better will be your chances of coming across a topic that you excel at. Once you decide on the topic, dig deeper. Remember that when you are writing, research is your best friend; the more you research, the more ideas will spark in you, and you will find several new ideas to incorporate into your ebook.
3. Know Your Audience
Many writers make the mistake of not knowing their target audience, which has its effects in the long run. When you are writing, you are writing for an audience rather than yourself. Your ebook is not your personal diary. Therefore, it’s more about the readers than it is about yourself. When you begin writing, you should have a clear picture of your audience. If you begin writing aimlessly without having a target audience in your mind, it won’t get you anywhere. Therefore, you need to know who you are writing for and what kind of content they are expecting from your end.
Aspiring ebook writers that have a blog or an email newsletter are a step ahead in the ebook game. You have a ready-made audience waiting for your work and also an opportunity to generate new ideas. You can decide on a couple of topics and ask your audience through a poll which one they would prefer more. The one with the most votes wins. Another great idea is to go through the comment section of your blog. Check out the recurring questions and write a book answering those questions. If you don’t have a blog, you can research the most asked questions and choose the one that falls into your area of expertise. Giving your audience a solution to their problems might just be the most viable way of writing a successful ebook.
4. Take Your Research VERY Seriously
If you don’t allocate time to research in the beginning, you are bound to get stuck somewhere in between. Therefore, it’s better to take your journey slow at the beginning rather than coming across a halt midway through. When we talk about allocating time for research, we mean a specific amount of time. In today’s era, the internet has an infinite amount of information available. If you aim to cover everything regarding your topic, you might never get the opportunity to actually begin writing.
Therefore, research smartly. Allocate a specific amount of time and set a goal. Tell yourself that you need to get this much research done in this much amount of time. Once you have enough ideas and material, it’s your cue to pause researching and begin writing. Once you have your first draft, then you can continue researching to spark newer ideas.
5. Read Similar Content
Did you know that our brain is designed in a way that when it gets a constant supply of something, it programs itself to think accordingly? For instance, if you surround yourself with junk food, you’ll always want to bing-eat. If you surround yourself with positive people, you’ll stay positive. Similarly, if you read a specific type of content, your brain will generate similar ideas, which will significantly impact your writing process.
Reading books, articles, or magazines of a similar genre as your topic will boost your creativity and make it easier for you to think of new ideas. If you think that you don’t have sufficient time to go through tons of books, just try to read their synopsis or go through the table of contents. This practice will help you find relevant information and offer you innovative ideas that you might not have considered previously.
6. Ensure Maximum Accuracy
Unless your ebook is pure fiction, no one would be interested to read it if it doesn’t contain accurate facts and figures. You need concrete elements to back your words by citing credible sources and ensuring their authenticity. If your topic does not have many factual details, you will be tempted to repeat similar ones over and over again – don’t do that.
Repetitive content is not promising, and sooner or later, the reader is bound to get bored. Hence, you need new facts. If you cannot find many facts and figures, not adding any is still better than repeating the older ones or being redundant. Stay to the point and always double-check your facts from a couple of sources to ensure their authenticity. Another tip is to dig deep and find the root source of the fact and cite it rather than citing articles or magazines. Use reputable sources such as original studies and government publications rather than relying on made-up stats and facts.
7. Create an Outline
Have you ever made a to-do list and noticed that it helped you get your chores done much more quickly? It proves that staying systematic and organized always helps you achieve your milestones faster. Similarly, an outline for the ebook will act as your to-do list and help you get it done faster. It will also help you stay on track and work in an organized manner rather than scattered work. Without an outline, it’s likely you will get stuck once you are a couple of chapters into your book.
Break down your ebook into chapters and choose a title or at least the gist for each chapter. However, do not spend too long coming up with titles and exact wording. Choosing the title before writing your content is never a wise move. While you are splitting the book into chapters, keep in mind that having 10 short chapters is better than 5 long chapters. If you are covering a diverse set of topics and broader ideas, you might even want to split them into sections.
If you want to take it up a notch further, deciding a rough outline for each chapter is an even better idea. You could brainstorm or create a mind map that will help you come up with newer ideas through your journey and help you link them all together creatively.
8. Design a Captivating Cover
We all know that judging a book by its cover is not the smartest choice but it’s always the cover that catches the eye first. So, if you instantly want to captivate your potential readers, make sure your cover is as enticing as the content inside. Readers scroll through plenty of ebooks on a daily basis so you need to give them something that will make them stop scrolling and click on your ebook.
While you are designing your cover, make sure it reflects the theme of the book. Do not be so absorbed by the idea of making it catchy that you fail to build a connection between the book and the content. If a reader chooses your book based on the cover and the story does not depict the cover in any way, the reader will be disappointed and is less likely to read your ebooks again. Simply put, your cover page has the potential to make or break your ebook so give enough attention to the cover design.
9. Choose a Suitable Format
Choosing the right format for your ebook can be a tricky choice. You should remember that your format choice depends on your content type and particularly the platform where you plan to sell your book once it is finished.
- Reflowable ebooks – If your genre is novels or other text-based books, you should follow a reflowable format. It will allow your text to be resized and scaled for better readability and can easily flow from one page to another. Ebooks in a reflowable format can be set up for sale on Apple iBooks and Amazon Kindle.
- Fixed layout ebooks – This is the best option if your book contains multimedia or illustrations. A fixed layout ensures that all the content is locked into the page and preserves your designs. If you choose this format, you can sell your book on Blurb Bookstore, Apple iBooks, and Amazon.
- PDF ebooks – This one is perfect for sharing and sending. PDF format files can be viewed on all sorts of devices so an extensive audience can access your ebook. The only downside is that it does not support multimedia and the file size is pretty large, occupying significant space on the gadgets. You can set it up on Blurb Bookstore.
10. Your Visibility With Metadata
Metadata refers to the use of words and phrases that can help you describe your book. This includes the title, author’s name and short bio, and the description of the book. It helps potential readers find your book, catch their eye, and entice them to purchase it.
This metadata plays a vital role in your publicity as internet search results and retailers like Amazon use these words and phrases to describe your ebook. It connects them to potential customers who have a history of viewing similar content. As a result, relevant metadata helps you promote visibility. Therefore, you must incorporate these keywords.
The easiest way to come up with metadata is brainstorming. Think of all the words or phrases that you would like to be associated with your book. This will help you come up with a gazillion of ideas. Once that happens, you can narrow your list to a limited number of phrases. You can also test the relevance by looking up these terms on Amazon. If this search produces results similar to your book, you did a great job. If not, you might want to think of better ideas.
After you have finalized the keywords, try integrating them into your bio, book description, and if possible, the book’s title or sub-title for the best results.
Conclusive Thoughts
Taking care of all these essentials means that your book is finally ready to be published. Before you launch, you can also market your book on your blog, website, or social media accounts to intrigue your potential readers. When the big day arrives, you will know that you have put in all your efforts and you are well prepared for a successful launch. Publish your book on your choice of store and send out an announcement to your mailing list. You can also host a webinar, a Q&A session on Instagram or Facebook live, and have fun celebrating your ebook’s successful launch!
Also Read: How to Get Book Editing
