Before You Write Your First E-Book

This is a partnered post

They say that we all have a book in us. However, as it turns out, in the age of the internet, we all have a lot of eBooks too. But what happens if you don’t know where to start or what you can do to make your dreams of writing an eBook. Well, in this article, we will take a look at how you can prepare and start your eBook.

Ideas

Write down as many ideas as possible. Some won’t work out, the others will be plucked from thin air. Eventually, though you will settle on the perfect one for you to start. It might be tempting to follow the money and jump on the bandwagon of what other people are doing, but that is not an eBook born from passion but rather ‘just because’.

Think about what you read. What kind of blogs, what podcasts do you listen to – what do you find interesting? How do they manage to keep you interested and what could you implement in your own eBook to make people enjoy reading it? 

Research

Before you write anything, you should make sure that any advice, information, or facts that you are sharing, you can back up with some links and references. It makes what your saying appear much more professional and in the ‘expert’ remit.

Spend as much time as you can read eBooks that are in the same field as the one you intend to write. You aren’t looking to steal ideas here. Instead, you are looking at how they have been presented, where you can improve, and where you might fit in the current climate. 

It is vital that if you are writing from the point of view of a person of a different background, or ethnicity than you – that you spend a lot of time verifying what you think against reality. 

Software

Decide what software you’d like to write to you eBook on. Many computers come with programs that will work perfectly well for what you need. But, you might still need to do some research as to what is best. Publisher is a really common starter program, but if you have a Mac, you might need to read https://setapp.com/how-to/alternatives-to-microsoft-publisher-for-mac to get you on the way. 

Before you start writing, make sure that you are able to move your work, and to save it in different file types. This will matter when it comes to publishing time. 

Source

You will probably want to accompany what you write with a range of images. You can take your own, hire a photographer to capture what you are looking for, or use a website that offers images with a CC0 license (meaning you can use them for whatever you want, including publishing). 

Publishing Options

You are probably going to be self-publishing. Which means that you should look into how much each platform will charge for the sale of each book, test out their uploading system, and ask as many questions as you can from the writing community. 

Take your time. Although they say that if the first thing you released was perfect, you released it too late – the truth is, publishing anything is daunting and sometimes you need that time.