An eBook is just the digital form of a book that can fit in your reader’s pocket, and comes with extra features that a conventional book will fail to offer, thanks to technology. For example, embedded links, ease of lookup for specific words in the text, highlighting and note-taking without having to carry any accessories, never having to worry about enough lighting, customizable font size according to the reader’s wish, accessible from multiple devices, no physical space required or weight to be carried etc; and even then if a reader prefers reading a physical book, they can always print it.
eBooks are usually used to add value to the digital footprint of a brand or business. However, you should not be limited in your ideas. eBooks are more than just extensions of blogs. As opposed to a blog, which is written to be concise, focused, and alluring to clicks, an ebook captivates the reader with the knowledge that it provides.
So how should you go about writing an ebook? Here’s a basic guide to get you started instantly.
Decide on a Book Topic
Before you begin your journey of becoming an eBook author, you need to decide where you want to begin. The number one mistake that rookie writers make is being rigid in their decision-making process. You need to aim for the sweet spot between your own niche and what the market demands. Writing on a topic that you may love but has no audience out there is as futile as jumping on a bandwagon you have no clue of. Here is how you can choose a book topic
Book Research
It is important to grind your axe before you start cutting the tree.
The funny thing about research is that you can never do enough of it. We live in an era of information available abundantly at the tips of our fingers, literally.
That being said, you should not be discouraged by the daunting task, and just start somewhere. A good practice is to take a peek into other ebooks related to your topic. This will help get the ball rolling.
Chances are that you probably would’ve already started your research, as you should, when you started exploring your target market to settle on a topic for your ebook. Any and all related information that you find during research may come in handy later. Don’t feel shy to come back to your notes whenever you start running out of ideas.
Sketch a Book Outline
Now that you’ve got a heap of information and ideas, it’s time to draw a map of the journey you want your readers to go on while reading your ebook. This point onwards, it is only going to get more and more literary, so brace yourself.
Using the data from research or the ideas you have in your head from experience, list down as many chapters as you think you need to accomplish the end goal of your ebook. If you’re the kind of person who is not very good at organizing your thoughts, it’s always a good idea to hire a ghostwriter to do it for you.
Populate
Once you have an outline of the book, and a rough image in your head, you are ready to face the main task, which is writing.
Remember, your ebook is your own brainchild, and what it should contain is totally upto you. But being careful about certain things will only do you good later in the process. A handy trick is to look at each chapter as one topic for an article – concise, useful and compelling.
However, as mentioned earlier, don’t be shy to get a quotation from some book writer for hire. Those people are often better than you at converting your own ideas into words for your ebook.
eBook Editing & eBook Proofreading
Penning down the last word in your ebook is not the last bit of writing you’re going to do in this process, because you also need to review what you’ve written. During the writing phase, you’re focused on one chapter at a time at most. This phase is about how your book is going to look like as a whole.
Remove any tangents, extra information that doesn’t fulfill the end purpose, and/or ideas that you’ve explored more than once. You may even have to rearrange your content and move them around between chapters to optimize your content.
For grammar and proofreading, there’s a vast range of tools available online, but you can’t replace the finesse of human touch. We recommend asking people you trust to read and provide constructive criticism which can improve the quality of your ebook significantly, or better yet, get yourself a proofreader to convert your journal of chapters into a full-fledged, professional ebook.
eBook Design & Formatting
A book’s never complete without an intriguing cover. Just as the title represents what’s written in the ebook, the cover design in its raw sense represents the title, and highlights what’s focused on in a way that’s creative, intriguing and representative of the content.
This phase also involves adding illustrations wherever necessary or appropriate.
The theme that is emanated from the cover, title and the structure of the ebook will also set the mood for its format. Now is the time to craft the outlook of your pages, selection of fonts, sizes and colors, and any other patterns to add that you feel sit right at home in your ebook.
Final Touch For an ebook
Review your ebook a jillion times, go through it with a fine-toothed comb, and think ten times about every aspect. Get one hundred percent sure of the final version of the ebook, because once the genie is out of the bottle, you don’t want to have regrets.
Now that you’ve got it figured out, it’s time to become an e-author.
