The steps to publishing and distributing your book are simple, and we make the process even simpler for you. Here are the basics.
Creating Your E-Book
1. Decide on your market. Who do you want to reach for your book. If these are prospective clients or customers, who are they? What is their demographic? Don't just think this book will appeal to everyone. You will do best if you identify a particular niche and direct your marketing campaign to that group.
2. Pick a topic that will appeal to this market. This will have the best chance of contributing to your credibility and generating high sales.
3. Choose a compelling title that will entice buyers to buy. Some powerful pitches include words like: "10 Ways to..." "The Top 5 Secrets of..." or "How to Do..."
4. Plan on 50-100 pages in PDF format -- 8 1/2"x11" is fine for an e-book, or use a common 6"x9" book format. The smaller size is ideal if you want to turn your e-book into a print-on-demand (POD) book, which looks like a normal trade paperback.
5. Divide your book into 6-20 chapters and choose strong titles, since you will be featuring these in your sales copy. Write your book with single spacing using headlines to break up the copy. You can add tables, graphs, and even photos and illustrations (though expect to spend about $2-5 for printing each photo or illustration in a POD format.)
6. Include contact information at the end of your book and any special offers, such as a discount coupon for a workshop or seminar or a discount on your next book.
7. Make sure your book is written well and carefully proofed, so you have no typos or grammatical mistakes, which can deflate your credibility and the value of your book.
8. If necessary, hire an editor or writer to go over your book to give it a professional polish. Or provide a writer with your ideas for the book and let the writer do that. If you don't have anything written, you can talk your ideas into a recording device and then turn the recording into transcripts -- either by a transcriber or a software program like Dragon Speaking. A good professional writer will typically charge about $75-175 an hour, and the cost is usually well-worth it if you consider the time it would take you to write and edit the book yourself. You can also find writers around the world, particularly in Pakistan, India, and Eastern Europe to write the book at a much lower rate. But they may not provide the same high quality as a previously published professional writer.
9. Carefully review your e-book no matter who writes it to check for any last errors -- and check for the flow, as if you are a reader. Should you find any major areas you left out, add them -- or if there are enough of them for a forthcoming book, note that you will cover these topics in your next book -- which can prep current readers for future sales.
Advertising and Promoting Your E-Book
10. You now need to promote your e-book through advertising, publicity, workshops, seminars, or other methods. You can do this yourself -- or we can help you through the process, including doing everything for you.
11. To begin the promotion process you need a Website, or better yet, a landing or "squeeze" page, where you will drive traffic and persuade visitors to buy. This page should point out how valuable your book is, without giving away the essence of the book, so prospects have a reason to buy. The page should highlight the key benefits of your book and what people will lose by not getting it. Use a hosting service to host your domain.
12. Then, create your landing or squeeze page -- and if you don't know how, hire someone. Your landing page should not only have compelling copy, but you should set up an autoresponder to collect e-mails and a payment arrangement through PayPal, Amazon, or other payment service to collect online payments. Once the payment is made, direct the buyer to a place to download the e-book. This way, you don't have to do anything once you set up the system -- just collect your money from each sale. If you need help doing this, our team can design and write your page.
13. Next, set up your marketing program to attract traffic to your site. One way is using a click-through advertising campaign, such as Google AdWords. Another approach is promoting your e-book through the social media, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.
14. You can also put on workshops and seminars or speak on the subject to attract buyers. You can set up the programs yourself, such as by creating a group on a social networking site, like Meetup, and inviting people to attend your program. Or approach organizations and groups that might be interested in your topic to be a featured speaker. Be open to speaking for free or offering the sponsoring organizations and groups a percentage of your sales obtained from new clients obtained at their event, typically around 10%.
15. Use PR techniques to pitch yourself as an expert to the media, targeting the media that would be interested in your subject. Commonly, community and daily newspapers, the Internet media and blogs, and radio will be most receptive to your pitch -- and if you do an interview, you usually don't have to go anywhere. You just follow-up by mail or phone or set up an e-mail or telephone interview.
16. If you've done this right, you'll start selling your e-book and the money will start rolling in. Then you can start thinking about your next e-book, and the next. It is usually better to create a new landing page and campaign for each one, so you don't confuse the buyer with too many choices. But if you have related e-books appealing to a similar market, you can add to your sales by combining the e-books together.
