Creating your first e-book can be a very daunting task – and rightly so.
But with a bit of structure and a clear approach it’s not so bad.
I would start off by identifying your purpose. Why are you creating an e-Book?
I decided to create one for two reasons;
1. To inform my readers about blogging from a business standpoint.
2. To create my first information product.
Originally, the content of the e-book was meant to be a series of guest posts on other blogs, but decided package it as my first product. As a result my email subscriber opt-in rate exploded.
The Story
Since the e-book was blogging based, I needed to have a story. People generally relate well to stories and practical examples.
I simply incorporated my interest which was music to the everyday blogging practices. This brought about Build a superstar blog.
The book looks at blogging from a music angle and they are some great analogies in this book – That was my story.
I was not interested in putting out regurgitated stuff. I wanted to do something different.
The Approach
I approached this e-book by jotting down all my ideas on papers. At the end I ended up with a story board that illustrated flow of events.
From this exercise, I drew up chapter titles that relates to the story, action points, backstage access for further learning e.t.c.
Start Writing
They best way to start is in small chucks.
I broke the story down to chapters, so in a given day, I would tackle a chapter.
I used voice recognition software to help transcribe my voice into words, a product called Dragon Naturally Speaking.
In each chapter, I spoke from three different angles, from the bloggers, Musician and a Superstar angle. This meant recording three times.
Since this isn’t a blog post but a takeaway e-book, I adjusted my writing approach slightly.
Although I wanted to maintain a conversational style of writing, I felt it needed to be less chatty and a little bit polished – only slightly.
Flow of events
It’s important to keep the reader interested. I tried to make the chapters interesting and progressive.
I was also keen on keep the book short and to the point. Based on my initial survey a larger majority of readers would be reading from screen – I didn’t want to bore them.
Based on the number of pages I had initially I was quite impressed to have brought it down to 25 pages, there many pages and chapters that I had to sacrifice.
Proof reading
Make sure the material you are putting out is of good quality. It may seem good in your eyes but probably not in the eyes of others.
In my case, I gave it to a few people to proof read – It was the best move ever. They were able to point out things I had missed and gave me new ideas too.
Time taken:
It took just over a month to put together after the idea was given birth to four months prior– procrastination is a killer
The book was in a half complete state for a long time, moving further and further down my priority list.
I finally took action by setting myself a deadline, which I announce publicly on the blog.
I even installed a countdown for all to see and it worked – I got it done
Story and Concept: On going
Book Design: 0.5 days
Writing: 3 weeks
Proof Reading: 5 days
Micro-site and Aweber configuration: 2 days
Tools I used:
Book Design: Adobe InDesign
Transcribers tool: Dragon Naturally speaking
Micro-site Design: Click covers
Google Docs used for proof reading collaboration
