How to Self Publish an E-book Online

Do not write to just write. Write about what you love

Writing just for the writing itself doesn’t work. You have to be passionate about the subject. You have to write about what you love because the reader of your book will tell from your writing style that you are reading a lot about the subject yourself and that you are really interested in the subject. It’s a lot more fun to read a book from a writer that writes about his passion instead of someone that is only interested to make money.

If you write a book you have the opportunity to share your knowledge with the rest of the world. And if you do so you should offer the best quality available.

You can publish an e-book all by yourself at no cost at all if you already know how to edit a text and how to create a professional cover. But you can also use the services of the publish company you choose if you need any assistance.

You must focus on a certain subject on many subjects. If you have a lot of ideas, do not use them in one book. Use one idea in one book and write anything there is to know that subject, and keep the other ideas for a new book. Chances are you want to write more than just on e-book.

You do not have to use the paid services of a publisher because there are many online companies that can create an e-book or cover for you. And there is also software which allows you to create e-book covers. You have to research which option is the best for your own situation. If you are not familiar yet with creating your own cover it is a good idea to hire a professional to create a cover for you. You want an e-book that doesn’t look like it’s made by some who created an e-book for the first time.

After all a cover does also in a major way sell your e-book. How many times did you look at e-books online and did not even read the summary of the content because you did not like the e-book cover? With that critical eye you should look at your own cover.

If you want to write a book you need to start with making a structure of your book.

You have to start with a brainstorm of what kind of content you want in each chapter and each paragraph.

These are examples of questions you could ask yourself while you are writing:

• What are you writing about? Pick the topic you are writing about.
• Do you know everything about the subject or should you study books and use them as a reference?
• Should you add anything else besides text in the book? For example photos on the subject from which I have the copyright, Interviews with people that want to contribute in the book, and so on.
• How can you split the subject in the chapter in several structured paragraphs?
• How can you tell others step by step how they can use certain software?

After you have in mind what kind of structure your book should have you can start writing. Do not worry if you start writing the fourth chapter first. Even though you have a structure in mind for your book it doesn’t mean you will write the book in the same structure as the finished product will be. You will always edit your content, delete things add things or move information to a different chapter.

Why would it be hard to find a publisher?

For a writer it used to be hard to find a publisher for a book. But it doesn't have to be. If you are convinced that you have written a book that everyone should read, why would you let a publisher reject you? Why would you let a publisher take a part of the money that you can keep?

That said, why should not your self-publish your e-book?

The only reason why you should not self publish an e-book is probable because a publisher also rejects an e-book that he doesn’t think he can make money with.Or he rejects the e-book because it doesn’t offer the quality or content his readers are looking for (that’s why there are so many bad self published e-books).

But publishers can also look for certain niches to publish. And if your manuscript is not in that niche it will get rejected. Which doesn’t mean your manuscript is not good, it just means this publisher is not the right publisher to publish your book.If you self-publish an e-book you pick the market, the price and the medium. You can create and sell an e-book at no cost for you at all. But you can choose from a wide-range of services if you need help with publishing your e-book.

If you want to write a good e-book you should start with a market research. If you want to publish your e-book on Amazon look at the e-books that are currently on the Amazon Kindle marketplace in the same niche as your (potential) e-book. But do not pick your e-book just because the niche is popular on Amazon. You should write an e-book about something you know a lot about, and you should be certain your readers want this type of e-book.

It’s also important to not set the price of your book to high, you do want to make sales. Investigate what the average price is of a book in the same genre that you have written (or still are writing). And keep that in mind if you are looking for a price that you should ask for your own e-book. You do not want to exclude readers that hardly can afford to buy an e-book, if they choose to buy yours they will be happy that you ask an affordable price for your e-book. 

You should also look at the e-books reviews. If an e-book (or book) receives bad reviews: Why does the book receive bad reviews? You can learn from the mistakes of others.Some writers for example just write to general e-books. Or books with information a lot of people already know. Learn from the mistake of others and avoid making these mistakes. Make sure you make a (very good attempt of writing) the best book on that subject.  

Common mistakes of e-book / book writers: 

Start to write your e-book right away without having a real plan

Stop! You should make a plan, and a structure. Otherwise you will write double content, without a structure a reader might also get lost in your book. He will think this is just another e-book with much of blabla with no beginning and no real ending in it.

Just look for typos

If you are to focused on the typos you might not see any other mistakes you have made in the e-book. For example a paragraph or chapter that is to short or perhaps that a certain chapter could easily be a part of another chapter, and should not be a standalone chapter.

Telling yourself you do not need an editor

If you have been writing an e-book for a long time, it might be hard actually to see the errors in your book. An editor looks in your document for the first time, with a fresh look and is experienced in reading and correcting books.

Write about a niche that is popular on Amazon.

Your purpose of writing an e-book is probable to make money. In order to do that you think you should pick a popular niche on Amazon. But what if you do not know anything about that certain niche or genre? It will be very hard to fill an entire e-book about a subject you hardly know anything about. You will have to do a lot of research, and probably will not finish your e-book because you will get bored in between writing your e-book. Because you are not really have been interested in the subject yourself in your life before, because that is why your hardly know anything about the subject. Besides that you have to invest a much time in doing research, do interviews with experts and probable have to invest many money also to be able to talk to those experts. Money you have to earn back first, before you make a profit with your e-book. 

Just a write the e-book and do not think about anything else

You have to think ahead when you write an e-book. Your book should have a cover that sells the content and you should write a sales page that shortly tells the content of your e-book in which sells your e-book in attractive and makes it sound usefull.

You should start with writing the chapters of your book first though before you can make a good sales / introduction page for your website. If you already have some raw content it’s easier to make a sale page for it. This page must not be very long it should be a short introduction that tells your potential reader why he should read your e-book. If you are reading an e-book however you visit the chapters right away and you will not spend a lot of time reading the introduction. You should also think where you want to publish your e-book and what you are going to do to promote your e-book on the internet.

Fast written books full of bad quality content

Write books quickly to make some quick money. You should not sell a lot of bad e-books, you should choose quality over quantity. You want books that make sales for a longer period of time.

If you want to make a lot of sales on each of your books you have to offer the readers of your books the quality they are looking for. You need to built a good reputation. If someone has read your book he is already curious to read more books and articles from you. That is why you should keep on writing everywhere to improve your writing. The more you write the better your writing can and will become. Lots of practice will make the expert on the end.

Bad e-book cover, because you think you can make one yourself

Badly made covers, that jump out, because the cover looks bad. It’s not just the content the potential buyer of your e-book looks at. If your e-book has a bad looking cover it looks like you have not put any effort in creating a professional looking cover. A good cover can push the potential reader of your e-book into buying your e-book. If you put effort in making a professional content the buyer of your book will think your content is worth reading as well. 

If you want to publish an e-book you have to start by writing quality content. You cannot fill a whole book with information if you have not written a good quality article of at least 3000 words first.
Writing takes practice. Just write a lot of articles first and make your own blog on your website. If you do have a website already with your own blog on it you can promote your e-book on your website in your articles.

 If you start writing your book, start with brainstorming: 

• What is the main subject of the book.

• What is the target audience of your book? (beginner, expert, everyone?).

• What kind of structure should your book have?

• Do you know people that you can talk with and add as a reference in your book. As being contributors to your book. It can be a good idea to add contributions of people that the public already know. That will probably make the potential reader curious on what this already known person has to say about the subject. Just the contributions can partly sell your book.

If you are writing a book you should be aware of the following aspects: 

The writing style should be consistent. Usually a publisher will have a guide on their website. In this guide you learn in which font you should write your e-book and details like which tools you can use from the publisher to create a cover. You can do everything on your own, but you can also get guidance from the publisher – as much as you want – as long as you pay for it. 

Things you should be aware of when you write a book::

• Your writing style needs to be consistent; 

• You should not write a book because you think the potential readers need this book. You should know for sure that your potential readers want this book.

• You should investigate what your readers really want. Make your website has a comment system so that you know what the questions and comments of your readers are. If you have many visitors you could also add a survey system and ask your readers what they are looking for in an e-book.Your document should not contain blurry images. If your document contains images you need to make a few adjustments in order for them to convert properly. 

For example:

If you use LULU the image formats JPG, GIF, PNG are accepted. You should keep your image resolution in between 96 - 150 DPI. You will always have to keep your images size 500 x 5000 pixels or less. 

• Your writing should be like you are an English Native Speaker and not like you have English as a second language or as like you are still in elementary school 

• You writing should not consist grammar mistakes (and yes your computer does have a spell checker, but you still need to check your document carefully )

This also means you check your writing for clumsy or confusing sentences, misspellings and missing words.

•  You should not write about the things you know only, but you should investigate on the subject even more so that the information in the book is actual and contains facts and not (just) your opinion; 

• If you are writing a tutorial your book should not just be telling facts, it should be mainly focused on learning your readers how to and it should be a step by step guide;

It might be hard to read your document and see your own mistakes because you read the document and you have in mind how the document should be like. That is why do not see own mistakes, especially when you have read the document over and over again. You are starting to assume things are written correctly, and you are not reading everything carefully anymore . A good way to prevent reading over your own mistakes is by printing your document. Reading out loud can help you to find your mistakes and missing parts in your texts. And before you publish your document please let someone else – with a honest opinion –read it. Suggestions by other people can help you to improve your document.

Keep in mind that you are the worst proofreader you could hire – because you have read the document so many times.

How to Built a Fanbase as a Writer 

There is absolutely no situation in which having thousands of devoted fans is a bad thing. Those fans will read your book and will wait for new editions and new books you write. They will search for your name and they will follow you and they will tell others about your books. That’s why it’s important to built a fanbase. 

If you want to built a fanbase you have to make sure that your readers will be able to find you online. You should have an online presence. Preferable on your own website combined with the social media. Make it easy for your readers to find you. Add your Facebook, Twitter and website address on the end of each e-book. In this way people can find you and find and buy more of your books. 

If you built a fanbase start to think more serious of your profile photo.

A normal selfie will not do. Make sure that the photo on your profile is a photo from your face and that no other people are visible on your profile photo. 

It might be more fun to do fun stuff on facebook and twitter but it is even more fun to write about your passion and get paid for it. And get devoted fans that tell you how much they love your work. If you are distracted by the internet very quickly it’s a good idea o install software that blocks your internet connection (with a timer) so that you have to stay focused on writing your e-book.

If you want to become a known writer you should make sure you promote yourself. You should not just write e-books or articles in amazon. Or post blogs on your own website. Make sure you become active in the social media but also post articles on other websites. 

I don’t recommend for you to post small things everywhere though, because people like to read quality posts. It’s a much better idea to post good quality blogs on a small amounts of sites instead of having small blogs on many sites just to get the word out that you exist. You want your readers to know that you exist, but you also want them to know that you have something to offer to them. 

There are several sites you can think of to built a fanbase:

Google+ for example is sort of like a club of people in which you could find likeminded people for your niche. It might be harder though to get those people to follow you and to sell your books to them.

Twitter is a good website to promote your blogs, but amongst all those people that send out small messages it might be hard to build a name. 

Promote your e-books online 

If you want to promote one of your e-books (for free or for a discounted price) you could use the following services:

If your readers are used to read your (free) articles and they like what you write, they know you offer them good quality. If you are offering good quality articles your readers will want to read more from you. And your readers can turn into buyers of your (e-)books. 

If you start with writing-books it’s a good idea to start with a free book. If your reader has not read anything from you before buying an e-book from you as an unknown writer might be a big step to take. But if you offer a free book for free your potential readers can read that book and already know what you are like as a writer. If they like your content and the quality that you are offering readers will remember your name positively and they are likely to come back again to read more from you.

E-book publishing Options

This is a list with examples of e-book publishing companies, their services and what you need to pay to use their services.