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Posts tagged ebooks
DT – A good book without a reader is just a waste of bookshelf space.
01 week ago
by Glen
in Daily Tweets
As a writer your job is to communicate your opinions to your readers. But communications requires two agents: yourself as writer and your reader. It all happens in the interaction between the two of you. If either is missing, there is no communication. You’re just shouting into the night. Besides, it’s hard to put that much energy into something with no return.
Like this tweet? Get the complete collection from Amazon “101 Writing Tweets: 101 Tips and Tweets about Writing How-To Books for the Kindle” by Glen Ford
DT – An efficient writer’s motto: write first, write fast, edit later
01 week ago
One of the biggest problems that writers face is the MS Word automatic spelling checker. It sounds strange but that particular product encourages a major mistake in writing. The whole process of writing includes many modes of thought. Unfortunately, our brains are not wired for multiprocessing. Every time we change modes we need to stop and then switch. The result is a delay, slower completion times, and higher energy use.
In order to be efficient as a writer, you need to let the words flow quickly. If you are trying to compose, write, and revise all at the same time you are going to exhaust yourself very quickly. And your writing will show the effects. That’s why you need to design your book before you begin to write. You want to feed the subject of each paragraph to yourself as you prepare to write each paragraph. However, that still leaves the revision process being included with the writing which will also slow your overall progress. The solution then is to avoid designing while writing, write as fast as you can, and don’t try to revise. Instead return later to do any necessary revisions. You’ll find your speed and energy levels improve. And by giving yourself a day between writing and revising, you’ll find that your revisions will actually improve your writing rather than simply being another way to say the same thing.
Like this tweet? Get the complete collection from Amazon “101 Writing Tweets: 101 Tips and Tweets about Writing How-To Books for the Kindle” by Glen Ford
DT – There’s no getting around it. Writing is work no matter how much fun it is. So make it as easy as you can.
02 weeks ago
by Glen
in Daily Tweets
There seems to be a myth that writing books (including ebooks) is romantic and easy to do. The truth is an overripe egg to the myth’s caviar. Ask any writer and they’ll tell you that writing is work. And it needs to be treated as such. Yes, it is fun. Yes, they wouldn’t do anything else. But it is hard work. In fact, the difficulty of that work is one of the main reasons amateur writers face writer’s block.
Like any business, work is the great enemy. The harder it is to produce one’s product, the less likely one will be successful with the business. The big gun you’ll bring to bear on the problem is the system you use to do the work. By having a formal system — process, data, product, and people — you can constantly improve the process until it is as easy to do as possible. In fact, you can never stop looking for ways to make the system easier and more efficient. This applies to writing as much as it does to any system you use in your business.
Like this tweet? Get the complete collection from Amazon “101 Writing Tweets: 101 Tips and Tweets about Writing How-To Books for the Kindle” by Glen Ford
DT – Writing is a business. Treat your writing like a business not a hobby.
02 weeks ago
by Glen
in Daily Tweets
What’s the difference between treating writing eBooks and Books as a business and treating it like a hobby?
In business you need to begin every project with three things:
- A clear idea of where the income is coming from
- Discipline
- Three written plans: marketing, fulfillment, administration
With a hobby, none of these is strictly necessary. After all, you are expecting to pay for your hobbies out of your regular earnings. If they happen to be able to pay for themselves — that’s great but not necessary.
Writing is a business and if you are going to write you need to realize that you are now an entrepreneur. A poorly paid one but an entrepreneur regardless. Of course, many businesses are run as if they are hobbies but that’s not a good thing.
You need to write with discipline. That means you need a reproducible process for writing. And you need to follow that process. You also need to write regularly. Procrastination will kill your writing business.
You also need a clear idea of where the money is going to come from. You must make a profit to remain in business. While a writer lives on dreams, your creditors do not. So if you want to eat you’ll need to create a business model and plan that clearly identifies where the money is going to come from.
Finally, no business exists in part. Most entrepreneurs start by focusing on fulfillment. After all, producing the product is probably why they are in business at all. That is a mistake. Without being able to sell your product, your business won’t last very long. And if the paperwork isn’t done, your suppliers will cut you off and the government will close your down.
Like this tweet? Get the complete collection from Amazon “101 Writing Tweets: 101 Tips and Tweets about Writing How-To Books for the Kindle” by Glen Ford
Free Kindle Ebook Promotion — The Autopsy of a Marketing Event
08 months ago
I don’t claim to be a marketer. I’m a learning content creator aka course designer and presenter and a book author. That’s why you don’t see me jumping on the latest “How to sell on Amazon Kindle without being able to spell or string a sentence together” craze. However, I do write for the Kindle on several different topics. So I need to market my books. And I do listen to the marketers who have jumped on the “How to sell on Amazon Kindle …” craze. So naturally, I decided to try those techniques for myself.
Now my free Kindle book promotion is over and done. At least the one for “How to Blog for Money: 9 Strategies to Get Your Blog Earning Money Online and Off”. Now it’s time for lessons learned, evaluation and crying into my beer.
So what happened?
In point form the results were:
- Project run time — 1 week (decision to promotion) plus promotion 5 days.
- Released – Friday 2012.08.30 12:01am PST (day before labour day holiday)
- End date - Tuesday 2012.09.04 11:59 pm PST (day after labour day holiday)
- Marketing – 1 Twitter feed on time, 5 on Saturday/Sunday including websites all free Kindle book related
- Marketing – Tweets 3 times/day average plus auto feeds
- Marketing – Emails to my lists – Monday (different reason), Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday
- Marketing – Emails to my lists – 2 spam complaints, 2 unsubscribes, 10? subscribes (estimates)
- Amazon did not link print version and Kindle version
- Total books given away - 209 on Friday, 351- Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues. Total 560.
- Total reviews: 1 on Friday, 1 on Saturday, 1 on Tuesday. All 5 star. by end of week.
- High position: 915 2 in Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home Based
- Low position 1319 5 in Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Home Based
- Same position in Business & Investing > Small Business & Entrepreneurship
- Final position 8 (quick drop)
- Constant position 21 in Business & Investing with lowest at 41 (final)
- Position after promotion — not ranked (#395,391 at 11:00 am) 1 week later #263,652 (not ranked)
- Post Book Sales 2 (1st day) 3 sales 1 select (1st Week)
- Other book sales increased
Other observations:
- This was not a brand new book it had 2 sales between 2012.06.20 and 08.30 but had not been promoted and wasn’t performing to the level I expected.
- This book had a list of my other books with links (last page)
- One of the books that kept degrading my rank was on how to find a job (Home based business — Job ???? Huh???)
- 90+% of competing books were 0.99, 1.99 or 2.99 (several appear to be permanently free)
- Many of the books were of (let’s be gentle) inferior quality (i.e. starts with s and ends with t). (i.e. below Clicbank quality … ie I-regularly-delete-these-when-I-get-them-free type quality)
- Many of the books were meant to be traffic generators. (wouldn’t even qualify as Free giveaways)
- Data disappears when flipping between free and paid so you need to capture before changing. (Specifically sales rank in AuthorCentral )
- I kept finding and buying free books (i.e. competition) This boosted my competition and negatively impacted my book (New Toy?)
Conclusions:
This was a book that wasn’t doing anything so I wasn’t going to lose anything by promoting it. Admittedly I did not promote this as hard as I should have but I did manage to promote it reasonably well. It had a good number of free downloads and produced 4 reviews which I wouldn’t have had otherwise. (Like most people, unless I chase reviews I don’t get them. This is why the paid review market has arisen.)
I believe that my promotion faced four major hurdles.
The first is that it ran too long. 2 days would appear to have been the proper length of time. That would have also left me with a few days to use over the next 90. Many of my “free kindle book” promoters tweeted and otherwise promoted my book — but only for the first day or two. By day 3, I was looking for new places to promote the book.
Second and more importantly that my book had been on the market too long before I gave it away. This technique is based on the gambit that you can get a carry over from the free to the paid. This carryover would be sufficient to drive your book up the rankings to the point that Amazon places you highly in their search results (and the top 100 and featured items etc.) The higher the position the more likely you are to be able to sell enough to retain your position (thems whats gots keeps, as it were).
The problem is that the ranking system is based on the number of sales over the number of days that the book has been available — in other words the average. So let’s say you have 15 sales in one day. If your book is only a day old, that would give you 5 sales per day. The result would be a placement of say #1 in your category. (And between 3600 – 7000 overall — a very good ranking) But let’s say you waited 15 days before you sold those 15 sales. The result would be 1 sale per day. And that would more likely put you on the second page. Or even further down. (Estimated position somewhere over #50,000). There’s a big difference between 15 sales and 1 sale. In many categories, it’s enough to dump you right out of the rankings.
The third hurdle is related to both Amazon and time. You do need to allow enough time to find the promotion sites, connect with them and then get your book into their stream. For most of the Kindle people, that means at least one week. For Goodreads, that’s somewhere in the 3 month range — but they aren’t interested in Kindle anyway. The next issue is that you need to give Amazon enough time to fix its listings. Its two weeks after the publication of the print version of my book and they still haven’t linked the two editions. Of course, if you don’t publish both a physical and electronic version then you don’t have a problem. You also won’t have one version supporting the sale of the other.
The fourth hurdle had to do with the competition and Amazon. And frankly, there is no way to prevent it as an author. If you are producing a quality book, much of the competition that you are going up against will be at the other end of the spectrum. They are simply there to scam the system. You should not find them to be any form of competition at all. However, Amazon does not distinguish between promotion books and price matched books. It also doesn’t give the reader any way to judge the quality of new releases. The result is that the reader isn’t going to know that your book is high quality while the book beside yours is a piece of post-ingested foodstuff. Making matters worse is that the category system is open to misuse — and the category system is critical to your success.
Many of the books you will be competing against are freemiums. That is they are intended to drive traffic to higher priced items. I strongly recommend that you include links in the books you use for this promotion. In this way, you will get subsequent sales even if this book doesn’t sell as well as you wish.
So will I try this again? Yes — but with a new book and for a shorter period. (I may also try it with an old book that isn’t selling but also for a shorter period).
And as usual, I will share my successes and failures with you.
(P.S. This article was typed directly into WordPress in fits, starts and pieces without proper editing. So if you find a grammatical or spelling error — Sorry but I’m not at all surprised).
Publishing on the Amazon Kindle: Some Good Ideas
29 months ago
I am not the world’s best marketer. I admit that. I am a writer and a trainer. That’s what I teach. How to write training materials in book, video or audio form (or any other media for that matter). I am good at what I do. But marketing? Let’s say that I don’t teach it and leave it at that.
However, for some time now, I’ve been busy writing books and publishing them on the Amazon Kindle (eBook) and Amazon Createspace (print) platforms. For a look at all the books I’ve written and/or published check out the list of our books and eBooks.
And that means I have had to learn how to market my books. It has been a bit of an adventure — not the least because I picked a cusp to begin learning to market my own books.
As I’ve been publishing I’ve learned a number of things about marketing and publishing. And quite frankly, I recently read a blog from an internet marketer that listed some of his ideas (you can find the article here). Some of which were great ideas and some of which … well, not so much. However, to each his own.
In any case, I wanted to capture some of the ideas and make sure that I don’t forget them. And the easiest way is to share those ideas.
So in no particular order:
- If you write multiple books, put links inside each book that link to the other books. Someone buying one book may enjoy it and buy all the rest.
- Offer people a bonus for buying your book. Send them to a squeeze page to get the bonus. When you build a list this way, you can promote future books and similar books to that list. (I’ve used this with the VProz.ca book on Project Management documentation. It works great.)
- As you build that list, ask the subscribers to go back and leave reviews. Reviews spur sales. (yup)
- When you publish a new book send a notice to your existing email list. (Works great)
- Consider offering your existing email list a discount (or better still free) if they write two reviews (one on Amazon and one to be mailed to you).
- Amazon considers reviews on their site to be their property (legally ? but it doesn’t matter) so always get a seperate review sent to you for your site.
- Only use high quality content. Avoid outsourced content from people that don’t speak English as a first language. Never ever EVER use PLR content. This will get you banned from selling Kindle books. (In my how to blog site I talk about the use of subpar quality content (and the other 3 types). Never, ever use subpar content.Never. ever sell anything other than premium quality content. ‘Nuff said. )
- A 40 page minimum book seems to be the sweet spot. Anything shorter seems to die for (Matt Wolfe). ( I always write executive length books — 150 to 200 pages — because I believe in providing value. I’m tempted to try a 50 pager just to see if I’m overdelivering. We shall see. )
- Make the title of the book as descriptive as possible. People don’t want to guess what the books going to be about. (I prefer to start by looking at Google to find out what they are searching for and then building a title around that phrase. I also use Amazon’s search to identify keywords to include in the title. In any case, you want the title to help your book get found and to sell your book.)
- Submit .doc or .docx (better) files to Kindle and .pdf to Createspace.
- Use the slow entry program because it gives you the ability to review your book before submitting it. I still keep finding problems but I’m convinced it has eliminated a number of correction cycles.
- Bullet points and number lists are a problem for the Amazon Kindle. KDP suggests that you avoid them. In fact, you can use them but they will require careful (and special) formatting. If you know Word very well, you can get Word to correctly format lists so they work on the Kindle.
- Inside images are a problem for Word and Kindle publication. The trick is to avoid Word reformating the picture. Unfortunately, Word will resize to an unacceptable DPI. This may mean that your Kindle version needs to have it’s page size adjusted so pictures appear full sized.
- With pictures, remember that most Kindles are black and white only. So always check colour pictures to ensure they work as a black and white picture.
- Your title, your description and your cover are what sells the book. You need to spend time (and/or money) to get them right.
- Take a look at Amazon’s top reviewers list. Send people that have reviewed books in your niche an email and ask for a review. In exchange, “gift” the book to them through Amazon. It will cost you the cost of your book but you’ll get most of that back in royalties and it will help your sales ranking move up.
- Allow enough time. It always takes longer than you think. Many of the marketing sites require 3 months lead time on publication date in order to process your book. This is nuts and shows that they are still thinking old style publication rules. But that’s life. If you want to get the most out of your books, they set the rules for marketing/publicity.
- Look for sites that talk to your audience. Then offer free books on the publication date. Kindle now allows you to do this.
- Keep your Kindle price below $9.95 US … this allows you to get 70% royalty (vs. 35%). If you go above $9.95 you’ll have to charge at least $19.90 to get the same amount. (But keep an eye on non-Amazon sales as the amount through other channels (including Amazon.ca) are at 35%).
- Make use of Kindle Select — their lending library — the payment for a lending is usually around 2.30 per lending — roughly what you would make by selling a $3.30 book. The trick is that many people then turn around and buy the book. Downside is that your book needs to be exclusive to Amazon.
- Consider running a promotion of free books for the first 20 people to order your book on the day of publication. Then step up the price by 1/3 for each of the next 3 days. (e.g. $0, $2.99, $5.99, $8.99). Note that you need to highly publicize this. And you may find that you want to use it for your first few books only.
Okay, I think that’s enough for now. As I think of other things I’ll write another article in this category.
Make Money Quickly By Writing an EBook – Money! Wealth! Fame! – Borsht!
01 year ago
I normally try to stay out of the whole traffic and marketing field. Instead, I focus on planning for success in writing books and eBooks. But I answer questions from my clients. (Yes, I really, really do that… me, personally).
And anyone who is writing books or eBooks is going to get into the problem of marketing those books. So I get these questions about how to market ebooks. Sometimes effectively disguised as planning for marketing and sometimes not so effectively disguised.
Today, I got an email from a client in South Africa. (You know who you are and no one else needs to know.) And frankly, it ticked me off. :mad: Not at my customer, but at some of the pseudo-gurus who’ve sold him a bill of goods. You’ve seen these [watch the language - ed.} or at least their headlines ... Make Money Quickly By Writing an Ebook. Books Make Money! Wealth! Fame! 
Borsht! [okay, I'll let that one through, but watch it - ed.]
Can you make money with books and eBooks? Yes, you can. Especially with eBooks, now that Amazon and the Kindle are doing the marketing for you. Pick your keywords right, price your eBooks low (in the 2.99 – 9.99 $US range) and you’ll make some money. How much depends on a number of different factors.
And if you’ve got an existing business, you can use books and eBooks to make even more money. They can help you to sell product or services. In fact, they can create a reputation for you that draws high value to your business, while it’s gaining you new customers. So you end up winning both ways.
There is no question that writing books and eBooks can be the basis of a valuable business.
The problem is the promises that are made around that business. “I can show you how to make $10,000 a month in 30 days”. “I can have you selling $100,000 a year in 2 days” Right, we’ve all heard the claims. And in 30 days, they’ll have shown you how. Or sent you the eBook, which will take you about 2 days to read.
The result is that people like my customer end up putting the comma in the wrong place and end up believing that they can make a living on the internet. Which is fine if you have a job and aren’t looking for a way out of the dole queue.
The thing is you can make a living on the internet by writing books and eBooks. It is possible to build a real business. In fact, there are several ways you can do it. However, building a business on the internet is just like building a business anywhere. It takes time, energy and money. If you don’t have the money, you need to put in the time and energy. If you don’t have the time and energy, you need to spend money.
There is no free lunch.
And unless you’re insanely lucky, and very well connected — as well as talented — it’s going to take time to build your business. It isn’t going to happen overnight. You need to build relationships with your customers. You need to build relationships with your affiliates. And you need to build a relationship with your traffic sources. And building a relationship — any relationship takes time.
And it takes skill and knowledge. You need to know how to go about it. You need to create a system. You need to practice the system. Even if you buy a system for selling ebooks, you’ve written over the internet, you need to make it your own. You need to make your mistakes. Is it hard? No. But it takes time to learn how to write and market eBooks over the internet.
And that takes time, energy, perseverance and money. Not hype.
(I did tell you I was ticked about this … in fact, I’m so ticked I’m going to make my customer’s email the inspiration for this week’s blog posts. More coming soon!)
Writing an eBook: Holiday as Inspiration
21 year ago
Well, today is Good Friday — a day of both joy and great sadness to my Christian customers. And it’s also the start of Passover — a week of celebration and remembering for my Jewish customers. So to both groups, I wish you lots of Chocolate bunnies and bitter herbs (okay, make that latke it tastes better). Later today, I’ll watch Jesus Christ Superstar with my family (a family ritual) and we’ll make prezels. Great, big fat ones that are covered in sea salt. And blow my diet right out the window.
One of the topics I’ve been writing on lately is inspiration. Given today (grrr, yes I’m working) the thought of family time and religious ceremony comes immediately to mind. And one of the best sources of inspiration is the family and times of celebration.
Sharing your family’s traditions can be both profitable and pleasurable.
Pleasurable of course, because you get to remember and relive those traditions as you write about them. Of course, some people will avoid the reliving. There are many, many books and eBooks out there that talk about recipes for Passover and Easter Sunday dinner and Christmas and Ramadan. But the very best of them do so from a personal and sharing stance.
People want to connect with you as a writer. They want to hear you in your writing. They want to know there is a person in there somewhere. That’s what turns a simple problem solving into a can’t put it down book.
So how does one connect on a personal level with a reader?
By sharing a story that truly matters. Tell them why this ritual means something to you. Tell them how your Mother always used to claim that it always rained on Good Friday. Or how your Grandfather would call the family to the Seder meal even when he had that terrible cold. Give them a glimpse of you as a person through a story.
And we all have stories around holidays — even if they are sad.
That’s one reason why people buy books around the holidays. Oh, sure, they always buy books to solve problems. That recipe they can’t remember. The search for something a little different this year. But what turns their purchase into a favourite book is the personal connection they find with the author.
Now, you may have been told to focus on evergreen books — eBooks that sell forever. And books on a single holiday tend to sell right before the holiday. But they are seldom evergreen.
The trick is that books on a year’s worth of holidays sell throughout the year. And because they draw the reader into the author’s life, they tend to be evergreen. They don’t go out of style.
So what traditions can you write about?
Writing a Book – How to Do It In Record Time
01 year ago
by Glen
in Write a "how to" book
Would you like to write a book in record time?
It may sound like a snake-oil pusher’s dream but it isn’t. It actually is possible. Now I’m not going to snow you and pretend that it is easy. But it is possible.
And I’m going to prove it to you by giving you a quick look into one of my typical book writing weeks.
Writing a book is a process. Just like flipping burgers at McDonalds or building a house. We tend to think of it as a magical creative endeavour carried out by little wizened drunks pounding on typewriters in a Paris garret. Sorry, it just ain’t so. I don’t drink anything but tea and coffee, and being wizened is the least of my problems. And the closest I’ve been to a garret in Paris was a hotel on the edge of the student district 35 years ago.
Like any process, writing works best when it has been turned into a system. In this blog entry, I’m going to illustrate a real writing schedule for a real book. But what exactly is a real book? Let’s set the stage here so we know what we’re discussing.
First off, I only write non-fiction books. Fiction books are much harder to write so if you write fiction, your own results will vary.
Secondly, how much you can write in a day varies from person to person. Partially because some people write faster. Partially because some people write using a different schedule. In my case, I’m not a particularly speedy writer. I can only put in about half a day (four hours) before I’m exhausted. In that time, I can usually finish about 5,000 words or about 20 pages.
Third, how long a book takes to write depends on how long the book is. Many eBooks are really only a long report or a white paper. However, I did mention writing a real book. So this book is going to be about 25,000 words long or roughly 100 pages. While this is short, it does fit in the executive length which is common for give-away books and business books. These are sometimes referred to as continentals or airline books. Why? Because you can read them in the time it takes to fly from New York to Los Angeles.
Finally, I always begin by knowing exactly what I am going to write. That’s one very important part of my writing system. I know the reader I am writing my book for. I know what they are worried about. I know how I’m going to solve their problem. I know that there are enough people just like my reader to make the effort worthwhile. I know exactly how long the book will be. I know what style of writing I’m going to use.
The process of writing a book usually begins on the Thursday before. If I really know what I am going to say, I’ll prepare my book design in an hour or so, using a proprietary tool. If I don’t know then it may take an hour spread over several days or it may take an afternoon. To make my editor’s life easier, I’ll usually take another hour or two and write up the design as a traditional outline. I’ll send him the outline to review and comment on.
When I get his comments back, I’m ready to begin the actual writing process. I prefer to have the weekend for my family, so I usually start on the Monday morning. I’ll take my plan and begin writing the second and third chapters. I will keep writing until I finish the two chapters or until I’ve written 5,000 pages. I always stop on a chapter end, so if I go into the fourth chapter, I will try to finish it. As I’m writing, I never look behind me. If I can’t remember a word, I’ll use a marker to identify that I need to look the word up. If I spell a word wrong — too bad. I’ll put a marker there too. The key is to keep writing and get my words onto the paper.
On the Tuesday, I’ll begin by reading and revising the first three chapters. Because of the system, I seldom have to rewrite. Typically, I’ll find spelling errors or words that I couldn’t remember. Most have been marked but there’s usually the occasional mistake that got by me. I do put a limit on how much time I can spend editing, although I’ve never actually used the whole time. When I’ve finished rereading Monday’s work, I’ll go on and begin writing the next two chapters (four and five). I typically spend the afternoon working on my business by reading and writing emails, returning phone calls and researching.
Wednesday and Thursday are repeats of Tuesday. I begin by reviewing and repairing the work from the day before and then go on to finish two more chapters.
On Friday, I’ll begin by reviewing and revising Thursdays work on chapters 8 and 9. Then I’ll write chapter 10. The concluding chapter follows this. This chapter is always half the size of the preceding chapters. I will do a very quick review of my feelings about the book to this point, and then write the introduction. Again, the introduction is really only a half the size of the other chapters. At this point, I usually take a break which may last an hour or so or may last for the rest of the day.
Finally, after a reasonable break I’ll review and revise the final two chapters and the introduction. After 24 hours of work, all that’s left is to email off the result to my editor. Oh, and go have a nap with the cat.
Writing an eBook – The 5 Most Important Tips For Newbies
01 year ago
by Glen
in Write a "how to" book
So you’ve decided you want to have a book. Good for you. Books and eBooks are amongst the best tools for marketing. Whether you are intending to sell them to make money, or giving them away to gain customers. Books and eBooks are amongst the best tools that you can get to build your business around.
But then comes the problem.
How do you write an eBook?
There are a number of different methods for writing an eBook or writing a book. Or more correctly for getting a book. Some are good. Some are not so good. However, for this article I’m going to focus on actually writing an eBook yourself.
Writing an eBook or any long work can be difficult. And working one’s way through all of the advice out there can be just as difficult. So in this article, I’m going to give the newbie writer a hand up with five of the most important tips.
1. Always start with the end in mind
Yes, I know I’ve just quoted Stephen Covey. But the advice applies even more to writing a book or eBook. The effort you are about to undertake will vary considerably depending on the nature of the product. Many traditional eBooks were only 20 pages in length. Or even less. And people do continue to create report-sized eBooks despite the influx of longer Book-length versions. What you are going to use the book for will greatly affect the size and style of the book or eBook. It also affects how much, if anything, you are going to charge. Which in turn also has an effect on the size. Even the format (print or electronic) will be affected by what you are going to do with the book.
2. Always write with a system
Writing is a process. And like any other process, there are two major ways to do it. The successful way and the unsuccessful way. Writing a book length piece — regardless of its form — is not a trivial exercise. It’s not like writing an essay or writing an article like this one. You need to follow a system based on the type of book you are writing. An attempt to just sit down and write will almost inevitably lead to failure.
3. Know your reader
Writing a book without a reader is like taking a trip without a destination. It can lead to some glorious surprises — but more likely to a sad conclusion. There is no point in writing an eBook that no one will read. But to be read, a book needs to interest the reader. It needs to draw them into it. To accomplish that, a writer must know before they start what will interest the reader. And then they must write that book. Not the one they started to write.
4. Have a writer’s hole.
Every writer has a set of conditions that help him create. Every writer has a set of conditions that prevent her creating. Most writers have multiple sets depending on the task. You need to have a place for each of the tasks in the process. It’s easiest if they are all the same place, but they key is that you need to be able to start immediately without any inherent delays.
5. Have a set schedule
Motivation is probably the biggest issue that a writer has. With motivation, they will overcome anything in their quest of writing an eBook. However, it is a great deal easier if you have a specific chunk of time allocated for writing. Be firm. No interruptions. No disturbances. No intrusions. This is your writing time and you need to produce.
