According to Statista, the eBook market is valued at over a billion dollars.
There are some big bucks to be made with eBooks.
No wonder why we're often asked, how do you create an eBook? What are the best steps to follow when creating an eBook for free?
In this article we’ve got all the answers for you.
Grab a notepad, some coffee, and put on your creative hat.
We’re about to show you how to create your first eBook.
Create an eBook for free
Creating an eBook is a straightforward process, but it's easy to over-complicate it.
To help you avoid common pitfalls, we’ve simplified the process into an easy-to-follow 8-step program.
Even if you aren’t the best eBook content writer, you can still launch a successful eBook by following our tried-and-tested advice.
Our unique 8-step eBook creation program looks as follows:
- Write your eBook
- Organize the content
- Follow a style guide
- Add visuals and images
- Use the correct eBook software
- Design your eBook
- Publish and share your eBook
- Market and promote
If you are ready, let’s dive into the first step and start creating an eBook.
Step 1: Write Your eBook
Yes, an eBook is nothing without content.
So, our first step is to write content for our eBook.
Yes, I know it's obvious, but if you get the writing wrong, you're eBook is dead in the water.
We’ve written a pretty handy guide on how to write an eBook.
However, some advice is worth repeating.
Know thy audience
The most important aspect of writing an eBook is knowing your audience.
Successful eBook authors cater and craft their eBook to fit the audience.
If you are writing for marketing executives that need to learn about the best SEO practices, your eBook needs to address them personally.
Tell your audience that you understand their pain points. Entice them with the promises of a solution or an answer to their problems.
What's in it for them
Remember that it all boils down to that final message, the final takeaway.
It may be a simple insight, but everything in your eBook should lead to a valuable solution or conclusion.
In short, you are taking your audience from a problematic state to one where they experience a solution, happiness, and fulfilment.
Doing this is the secret to creating a good eBook.
Step 2: Organize The Content
No matter how awesome and inspiring your content is, it means nothing if it’s not organized properly.
Unorganized content makes your message weaker, and you risk losing readers.
Well organized content includes the following:
- Keep your chapters all equal length. By doing this, you make all the sections equally important.
- Bullet points are great for insight and advice that readers need to remember.
- Headings should be clear and concise, and sound as if you’re speaking to a person.
- Don't use clumsy or overly technical terms.
- Always check your grammar and spelling.
Before you decide on the layout of your eBook, it’s worth considering the specific style guide that you’ll be using.
Step 3: Follow A Style Guide
You may need to create an eBook for a client.
Or perhaps you’re writing for your own freelance business.
No matter the case, your eBook needs to reflect the same tone, voice, and styling as your company or brand.
If you or your client doesn’t have a brand guideline, you can use any of the following tips to create a unique style for your eBook.
- Select a color scheme that fits with the tone and content of your eBook.
- Select no more than two fonts to use. One for headings and another for text.
- Brainstorm some stylized textures and shapes that you can add to your pages.
Once you’ve figured out the style guide for your eBook, it’ll be much easier to design.
Step 4: Add Visuals and Images
No matter what type of eBook you’re writing, it’s going to need visuals.
In this case, visuals may be exciting pie charts, infographics, or beautiful photos and images.
However, unless you’re writing a photography or fine art eBook, you’ll have to maintain a delicate balance between your content and the visuals or photos.
Generally, the rule is 30% visuals and images and 70% content.
You shouldn’t slap photos in, left and right, simply for the sake of adding visuals, though.
The best eBooks have images that complement their style guide.
If your dominant color is purple, images with a calm, purple tone will help emphasize the brand.
You could also use contrasting colors, such as an orange pie chart, to help highlight specific crucial visuals.
Visuals and images can also add a perfect break between content. They help create a tempo or pacing that will make your eBook easier to read.
Step 5: Use The Correct eBook Software
There are various platforms that all promise the moon and the stars to new eBook authors.
While some of them do live up to their claims, others sadly disappoint.
Before you even start designing your eBook, it’s essential to do proper research and take a careful look at all the best eBook software platforms.
You don’t want to end up close to the deadline, only to realize that the eBook software platform can’t do something that you desperately need.
Here are some of our favorite free and paid softwares for designing and creating an eBook.
eBook Design Tools
eBook Writing and Editing Tools
Step 6: Time To Design Your eBook
Now we’re getting to the fun part of creating the perfect eBook.
When designing an eBook, we recommend that you develop a couple of template pages.
It’s easier to copy your excellent content and exciting visuals into templates. By doing this, you’ll be streamlining the eBook creation process.
Not only does it become easier to maintain a consistent look and feel throughout the eBook, but templates can also help ghostwriters to add content in precisely the way that you want them to.
If you’ve never designed an eBook before, here are some handy rules and tips to help ensure that you do it properly
- Consistency is key. Use the same font and styling for your content. If your text is 12 points, always keep it at 12 points.
- Don’t change the color of your text randomly. Headings should all be the same color. The text should always be the same color as well.
- Remember to add page numbers. Page numbers help readers bookmark essential sections or interesting facts.
- Don’t forget to add your own About the Author section at the back of the eBook.
- Never-ever place images behind text. This makes reading the text difficult.
- Always use the same styling for your visuals and photos.
As much time as you spend designing the content of your eBook, you need to do twice as much for your cover. Despite the old saying, people do judge a book by its cover.
So, spend a lot of time thinking about your eBook cover. It needs to be exciting and beautiful, able to catch the attention of your specific audience within seconds.
Once you’ve designed the best-looking eBook, it’s finally time for you to introduce your new superstar to the wide world.
Yes, it’s time to publish your eBook.
Step 7: Publish And Share Your eBook
There are as many publishing and sharing methods as there are eBooks.
Some authors and marketers use eBook as a way to get new leads. They offer the eBook as a free download in exchange for an email address by putting it behind an opt-in wall.
There are two ways to do this:
- Use a dedicated landing page on your website
- Use a pop-up on your website
Whichever method you use, remember to always capture an email address in exchange for your free eBook.
Alternatively, if you want to make money selling your eBook, you should convert it into an ePUB format.
Most eReaders, such as the Kindle, use this format.
There are plenty of retailers that allow you to sell your eBook on their platform. Here are some of our favorites:
- Amazon (obviously)
- Apple Books
- eBooks.com
- Smashwords
- Kobo
- Google Play Books
- Harlequin
Step 8: Market And Promote
As much as we wish it to be, simply writing an exceptional eBook isn’t enough.
There will be a lot of hard work to market your eBook after you’ve written and published it.
Using social media is great for letting your audience know that your new, juicy eBook is available.
Another strategy is to dominate a niche with content and thereby refer people to your fantastic eBook.
You could also do Facebook Live streams, interview sessions, and podcasts about your eBook and its phenomenal impact on people or your industry.
At the end of the day, your goal is to grab the reader’s attention. Tell them that you have a solution to their specific problem.
eBook Creation Services
We’re all born with different talents and skills.
You may be a great entrepreneur or a fearless innovator, but perhaps you aren’t a wordsmith. Your tongue twisters are more flop than twist.
If that sounds like you, there’s hope!
Today, plenty of self-published authors use ghostwriters and eBook writing services to create their eBooks.
By doing this, they can claim all the fame without putting a single finger on the keyboard.
There are some other benefits in hiring a professional eBook writing team to create your eBook.
- It saves time so you can focus on your business.
- It frees up resources within your business. Poor Sandra can now finally get back to accounting and stop fretting over writing that inspiring Accounting For Dummies eBook.
- You can publish your eBooks faster and more frequently when you outsource them.
You wouldn’t attempt rocket science if you aren’t a rocket scientist, so why create an eBook when you can hire experts to do it for you?