Fortunes and reputations are being forged right now on the blazing hot Amazon Kindle e-reader.

Every single day, thousands of ebooks are being purchased and downloaded with the push of a button. In fact, Amazon.com now sells more ebooks than physical books – this is a tectonic shift in the landscape of the book publishing world. And, the beautiful thing is.

… Amazon makes it drop-dead easy to jump on the Kindle Publishing bandwagon.

Publishing Information With Amazon

Amazon actually wants you to create products to sell through their online stores (special ones requiring no inventory or profit splits with publishing houses.) It is not just e-books they will help you to create and sell. Amazon has spent years building publishing platforms for physical products like books, CDs, and DVDs (that service is called CreateSpace) and the digital publishing platform for Kindle called Kindle Direct Publishing.

Taking advantage of the Kindle Direct Publishing tools gives you fast and easy access to one of the worlds biggest (and most trusted) online sales platforms.

Check out Amazon’s CreateSpace publishing service for more details on how you can publish your information products in physical formats.

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Process

The process of marketing ebooks on the Kindle is not dramatically different than publishing in any other digital format. You still need to do good research (the Amazon Bestseller lists are excellent resources here) and plan and write a good product. You still need to create a salespage style website and write some compelling sales copy. And you need to get out and drive traffic to your offer.

The big difference for publishing on the Kindle is that you will need to format your book properly and use the Kindle Digital Publishing tools to upload, proofread, and publish your ebook on the Amazon website.

The process is NOT hard…

The Kindle ebook format is not much more than a stripped-down version of HTML with a couple of custom tags to help you establish chapter breaks, etc. A full set of instructions (and a publisher’s discussion forum) are available on the KDP site.

There are a number of resources and services available to do the conversion work if you’d rather pay someone else and avoid the learning curve.  This is a useful Amazon Kindle ebook template for Microsoft Word that can help you bypass the learning curve.

Conclusion

The process of publishing your digital content on the Kindle is both cheap and easy. I’ve done it myself and recommend you give it a try. Millions of Kindle owners are out there waiting for you!

Publishing a ebook seems like such a simple process (the mechanics are not that complicated) and they are blinded by dollar signs as they fantasize about how they will spend all the money that they earn from selling their ebook.

Within minutes of deciding to publishing an ebook, wannabe digital authors are busy writing about their favorite hobby or whatever great idea they dream up that they’re convinced will be the ticket to easy street.

After weeks of work preparing the ebook and learning how to create a website to offer it for sale, they sit back and wait for the money to star rolling in.

And they wait, and wait, and wait!

Very often nothing happens at all and they quit in disgust and claim that “the ebook publishing business is a scam and it doesn’t really work.” Or, they earn a few dollars, but not nearly enough to be worth all the effort.

You and I know that the reality is that those wannabes don’t understand who buys ebooks, why they buy them, or what makes them willing to pay top dollar for an ebook. In short, they haven’t done their homework first and researched the marketplace.

There is a wide range of information that sells well on the Internet and some very simple ways to do research to determine niche markets were strong potential exists. But, there’s one specific style of the book that sells well all the time and commands high prices.

9-1-1 ebooks

When we stop and think about it, the primary benefits of buying ebooks online is immediate access to useful and well researched information. People in the middle of an emergency need to instantly solve their problem.

9-1-1 ebooks solve the kinds of emergency problems that people desperately need help with. Tony Shepherd and Alexis Dawes both write extensively in their own ebook products about how to quickly identify 9-1-1 problems that can be solved with simple ebooks.

There isn’t room in this article to explain the full process of identifying topics, researching, writing, and formatting ebooks, and marketing and selling them (Tony and Alexis both do a phenomenal job of that in their ebooks.) But I will steer you in the right direction. There are also other articles that cover those subjects on this site, so look through the article list in the side navigation.

To identify a profitable topic, look and see what kinds of problems people around you are struggling with. Soothing colicky babies, repairing holes in drywall, stopping a leaky sink, resolving a credit card dispute, avoiding foreclosure, the list goes on.

If you can imagine a desperate person searching the Internet for help, you have a potential product.

So, try a 9-1-1 product and see if your ebook business soars.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Desperate Buyers Only, by Alexis Dawes
Double Genius, by Tony Shepherd

There is only one way to climb a mountain: step by step.

Now think of writing your profitable E-Book in the same light. You must create it step by step, and one day, you will take that last step and find yourself standing on the summit with your head in the clouds.

The first thing you have to do, as if you actually were a mountain climber, is to get organized. Instead of climbing gear, however, you must organize your thoughts. There are some steps you should take before you begin. Once you’ve gone through the following list, you will be ready to actually begin writing your E-Book.

Beginning Steps to Writing a Profitable E-Book

First, figure out your E-Book’s working title. Jot down a few different titles, and eventually, you’ll find that one that will grow on you. Titles help you to focus your writing on your topic; they guide you in anticipating and answering your reader’s queries. Many non-fiction books also have subtitles. Aim for clarity in your titles, but cleverness always helps to sell books as long as it’s not too cute.

Next, write out a thesis statement. Your thesis is a sentence or two stating exactly what problem you are addressing and how your book will solve that problem. All chapters spring forth from your thesis statement. Once you’ve got your thesis statement fine-tuned, you’ve built your foundation. From that foundation, your book will grow, chapter by chapter.

Your thesis will keep you focused while you write your E-Book. Remember: all chapters must support your thesis statement. If they don’t, they don’t belong in your book. For example, your thesis statement could read: We’ve all experienced insomnia at times in our lives, but there are twenty proven techniques and methods to give you back a good night’s sleep.

Once you have your thesis, before you start to write, make sure there is a good reason to write your book. Ask yourself some questions:

• Does your book present useful information and is that information currently relevant?

• Will you book positively affect the lives of your readers?

• Is your book dynamic and will it keep the reader’s attention?

• Does you book answer questions that are meaningful and significant?

If you can answer yes to these questions, you can feel confident about the profit potential of your E-Book.

Another important step is to figure out who your target audience is. It is this group of people you will be writing to, and this group will dictate many elements of your book, such as style, tone, diction, and even length. Figure out the age range of your readers, their general gender, what they are most interested in, and even the socio-economic group they primarily come from. Are they people who read fashion magazines or book reviews? Do they write letters in longhand or spend hours every day online. The more you can pin down your target audience, the easier it will be to write your book for them.

Next, make a list of the reasons you are writing your E-Book. Do you want to promote your business? Do you want to bring quality traffic to your website? Do you want to enhance your reputation?

Then write down your goals in terms of publishing. Do you want to sell it as a product on your website and generate huge profits, or do you want to offer it as a free gift for filling out a survey or for ordering a product? Do you want to use the chapters to create an e-course, or use your E-Book to attract affiliates around the world? The more you know upfront, the easier the actual writing will be.

Decide on the format of your chapters. In non-fiction, keep the format from chapter to chapter fairly consistent. Perhaps you plan to use an introduction to your chapter topic, and then divide it into four subhead topics. Or you may plan to divide it into five parts, each one beginning with a relevant anecdote.

How to make your E-Book “user friendly”

You must figure out how to keep your writing engaging. Often anecdotes, testimonials, little stories, photos, graphs, advice, and tips will keep the reader turning the pages. Sidebars are useful for quick, accessible information, and they break up the density of the page.

Write with a casual, conversational tone rather than a formal tone such as textbook diction. Reader’s respond to the feeling that you are having a conversation with them. Break up the length and structure of your sentences so you don’t hypnotize your readers into sleep. Sentences that are all the same length and structure tend to be a good aid for insomnia!

Good writing takes practice. It takes lots and lots of practice. Make a schedule to write at least a page a day. Read books and magazines about the process of writing, and jot down tips that jump out at you. The art of writing is a lifetime process; the more you write (and read), the better your writing will become. The better your writing becomes, the bigger your sales figures.

In an E-Book that is read on the screen, be aware that you must give your reader’s eye a break. You can do this by utilizing white space. In art classes, white space is usually referred to as “negative space.” Reader’s eyes need to rest in the cool white oasis you create on your page. If your page is too dense, your reader will quit out of it as soon as their eyes begin to tear.

Make use of lists, both bulleted and numbered. This makes your information easy to absorb, and gives the reader a mental break from dissecting your paragraphs one after the other.

Finally, decide on an easy-to-read design. Find a font that’s easy on the eyes, and stick to that font family. Using dozens of fonts will only tire your readers out before they’ve gotten past your introduction. Use at least one and a half line spacing, and text large enough to be read easily on the screen, but small enough so that the whole page can be seen on a computer screen. You will have to experiment with this to find the right combination.

Of course, don’t forget to run a spell and grammar check. You are judged by something as minor as correct punctuation, so don’t mess up a great book by tossing out semicolons randomly, or stringing sentences together with commas. (By the way, that’s called a “comma splice.”)

Last of all: create an index and a bibliography. That’s it! You’ve written a book! Now all you have to do is compile and publish your E-Book online, and wait for download request from your website visitors!

You could spend a lot of money buying the software needed to do all the work you need to get done. But, fortunately, there are plenty of free resources out there to help you get the job done.

Here are a few free e-book creation software resources to check out:

Mind Mapping Tools

FreeMind
Bubbl.us – Online mind mapping tool that allows multi-user collaboration.

Word Processors

OpenOffice – This free office suite includes word processor, spreadsheet, database, drawing, and slideshow programs.
Google Docs – This full office suite is completely online, so you don’t need to download any software.

Image Editing

GIMP – GIMP is a full featured image creation and editing software package.
Splashup – Full featured online image editing tool.

PDF Creator

OpenOffice – One of the great things about this free office suite is that it has a built-in PDF conversion tool.
PDF Online – A free online PDF conversion tool
Free PDF Convert – Another free online PDF converter that converts many document types to PDF.

Do you have a favorite free resource you love to use when creating your e-books? Share it by leaving a comment below.

It is difficult sometimes for people to wrap their minds around what a digital product, like an ebook, really is. The best way to help them understand what they are getting is to relate it to something familiar. In this case, a traditional book.

Getting A Cover For Your Ebook

There are 2 basic ways options available to you when it comes to creating covers for your e-books. You can make your own, or you can hire an artist to make one for you.

Your ebook cover is critically important to your success, so don’t mess around if your artistic skills are weak. Spend a few dollars and hire an artist to create a professional looking ecover for you.

Ecover artist Vaughan Davidson at Killer Covers is an excellent resource for getting high quality covers created at a very reasonable price. If you don’t mind putting in a little more effort, you can use sites like 99Designs, Elance, and ODesk to find artists to do the work for you.

If you’ve got some skills in the graphics department, you can make your own covers. Photoshop is the the industry standard software for graphics professionals, but it is entirely possible to learn how to create professional quality virtual covers using nothing but free software.

If you have Photoshop, you should invest a few dollars into a collection of Photoshop Ecover Action Scripts to help speed up the process. They will automate most of the work and allow you to focus on designing the cover instead of converting it into a realistic 3D Cover Graphic.

If you don’t have Photoshop and you don’t want the extra effort required to build an ebook cover using free software tools, make sure to check out this online ebook cover creation tool. You get automated conversion of your design into a variety of virtual product images and lots of other resources.

Get An Ecover For Your Ebook

No matter which option you choose for creating a virtual cover for your ebook, just make sure you get one. Investing a little time and/or money for an ecover graphic will radically improve your chances of ebook marketing success.

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Ebooks are Magic?

Ebooks are a magical invention that lowers the barriers that have historically kept aspiring authors from publishing their work and connecting with an audience. Anyone with access to a computer and some free tools can easily create and distribute (for free or for profit) an ebook of their content. The results may be magical, but the process of making an ebook is not magic.

Creating an ebook is only slightly more involved than producing a document in a word processing program. In fact, your word processor is exactly where the whole process will start.

Step 1: Writing Your Ebook

For this article I am going to assume that you have already researched your topic and created an outline for your topic. If you need help with the planning phase of your writing, there are additional resources on this site to help you get going.

Open up your favorite word processor (Open Office, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs all work fine – I generally use Open Office). Paste in your outline and start fleshing out your ideas. If you aren’t already in the habit, start using the styles options in your software to change the look of your paragraph headings instead of manually setting fonts and font styles and sizes. This will greatly speed up the formatting of your ebook later on.

Step 2: Creating a Virtual Cover

One critical factor that many aspiring ebook authors overlook is the need for a virtual cover for their ebook. People are visual by nature and they are used to browsing for books by looking at the covers. Amazon’s online store prominently features cover graphics fro every book (and books that don’t have them look cheap.)

A number of ecover resources are listed on the resources page to help you with this task if you are not a gifted graphic designer. You can also checkout this article on creating killer ebook covers.

Step 3: Format Your Ebook

Formatting your ebook is simply a matter of setting the fonts for your document, adding headers and footers to the pages, adding ‘boilerplate content’ like disclaimers and title pages, and creating a table of contents.

There are several articles on this site that will guide you through the design aspect of creating your ebook. Pick larger fonts without serifs for your main fonts – at least 14 pts. People will be reading your book off a screen and larger fonts reduce eye strain.

If you properly used the style tags in your word processor to set the fonts for your headers and main body text, the process of setting fonts and creating a table of contents can be done very quickly.

Add your cover graphic to the title page.

 Step 4: Exporting Your Ebook

The final phase making your ebook includes creating the final document from your wordprocessor to the appropriate format for delivery to your audience.

Most ebooks will be delivered as PDF (Portable Document Format) files which preserves the look of your original document and can be accessed on most computers and electronic book readers. Nearly all current word processors include an export to PDF option that works perfectly.

Avoid setting security passwords or printing restrictions on your PDF document. Thieves can easily get around them and they only serve to frustrate your valid readers. The only restriction I generally recommend is to prevent changes to the document.

PDF documents will also allow you to set a wide range of meta data about your ebook. You can publish without this information, but it is best to fill out as much detail as you can.

PDF files can be viewed on the Amazon Kindle, but if you want to sell your documents through the Kindle Store,  you will need to go through a few extra steps. Read the article on publishing your ebook on the Amazon Kindle for more details (the process isn’t that hard!)

In the early days of the web people often used ebook compilers to create stand alone executable files that contained their ebook content. This is not recommended anymore. You will radically restrict the audience who can or will view this type of ebook.

Now That Your Ebook Is Made

That’s it. Only 4 steps and the whole thing can be done with little or no investment in new tools (there are open source options for nearly everything – check the resources page.) So, don’t let the process intimidate you. You can do this!

Once you have your ebook complete, it is time to focus on marketing and distribution.

If you have unanswered questions about how to make an ebook, please leave a comment below and include your question. We actively monitor the comments on this site and will get you the answers you need to accomplish your publishing goals.

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Next, using the transcript as a launching point, I revised the content and created an e-book (some people just publish raw transcripts, but I prefer to take the opportunity to revise and expand on the topic.)

After completing the manuscript, I then published a PDF version of the text for the people who signed up to watch the video. Finally, I set out to learn just exactly what you have to do to create a Kindle e-book.

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Process

Preparing your book for Kindle publishing is relatively simple if you are familiar with the basic HTML coding for websites. Amazon has a few Kindle specific tags to add in, and then you can upload the file through their digital publishing platform known as Kindle Digital Publishing.

If the previous paragraph sounded like a foreign language to you, there are many templates available for Microsoft Word that will simplify the process (or you can pay a king’s ransom to someone to ” convert your document” for you.)

Amazon provides an online “virtual Kindle viewer” which allows you to preview your e-book in a Kindle like environment to catch and correct formatting problems before you publish.

The second major component to publishing on Amazon’s Kindle is creating your sales material. This material includes the publisher’s description of the content and a virtual cover. This is what appears on the item description page and Amazon. [Click here to view the 7 Secrets of Profitable E-books page as an example]

Teaching the process of e-book cover design and advertising copywriting are beyond the scope of this article. If you need help with either, there are many copywriters and graphic designers who can help you. If you want to try doing yourself, I recommend looking at other similar books and modeling your efforts after theirs.

Secret Shortcuts to Publishing Fast

Would you like to avoid the trial and error method of learning to publish on the Amazon Kindle? Well, then you are in luck. These days there are several training resources available that will lead you step-by-step through the process (wish they had been available when I was getting started.) Other than paying someone to do the work for you, this is the fastest way to get your e-book selling on the Kindle marketplace.

Kindle Publishing Made Easy – This is a straight to the point step-by-step guide to preparing your manuscript and publishing it on the Amazon Kindle.

Kindle Revolution – This comprehensive guide shows more than just how to prepare and publish your book on the Kindle. It also teaches strategies to promote your book and maximize sales by using the powerful Amazon search engine to increase exposure for your book.

Kindle Profits Exposed – Comprehensive training course which includes details on picking profitable book topics and how to leverage your work to build a thriving business. Step-by-step videos guide you through all of the technical aspects of the process.

No Reason Not to Try Publishing On Kindle

There is no neat reason not to publish your e-book on the Amazon Kindle. Amazon doesn’t charge anything to listed. It is very possible to do all of the formatting work yourself, and you don’t even need to purchase an ISBN number to register your book.

Just think, in a few days (maybe even hours) you could be an author with a book for sale on Amazon.com.

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So, any strategy or resource that helps the ebook creation process move more smoothly and quickly will help ensure that the project gets completed (the real secret to success is just getting the work done – most people don’t.) One excellent resource that I use for every ebook is…

…a layout and design template!

Ebook templates help you avoid the tedious repetition of setting up the overall design of your ebook (margins, fonts, headers, footers, etc.) and also can include ‘boilerplate content’ like disclaimers, publisher information, about the author pages, and other materials common to all of your ebooks.

Ebook templates are even more important if you are publishing ebooks on the Kindle platform. A good Amazon Kindle ebook template for Microsoft Word will ensure that your ebook looks good when it is uploaded for publication. This simple step can save hours of frustration and help you void the tedious process of trying to track down that one missing format code that is making everything look aweful.

Branding – A Side Benefit of Ebook Templates

Another benefit to using a template for your ebooks is that it will create a consistent brand for your publications. Think of books like the ‘…For Dummies‘ guides. They all follow a consistent design. You can see one from across a room and know what it is. And, a new title with that design instantly sets an expectation in the customer that is based on the previous books they have seen.

If you plan to publish multiple ebooks in one market or genre, take the time to build a template for use in all of the products.

Creating Your Own Ebook Template

Creating your own ebook template is not a complicated process, but there are a number of key things you will need to include for a well rounded design.

Ebook Template Essentials Include:

• Set Page Dimensions
• Set Fonts, Font Sizes, and Font Colors
• Define Heading Tag Fonts and Sizes (H1, H2, H3, H4, etc)
• Define Page Header and Footer (include page numbers – please!)
• Cover Page
• Interior Title Page
• Legal/Disclaimer Page
• Table of Contents (critical for anything longer than a report)
• About the Author Page
• Resources/Index Page

These are the core elements to the template I have created for my own projects. You can add or remove elements that are unique to your needs.

Tips For Designing Professional Looking Ebook Templates

Creating page borders is a nice way to make your ebooks look more ‘polished’. I also recommend using a 14point font for your main text if you expect readers to be using a computer screen to read your book. Smaller fonts are tiring on the eyes.

Keep your fonts simple and restrict colors to black letters on a white page (except for a few design flourishes here and there.) Again, unusual fonts and color combinations generally make a document harder to read.

Add a dividing line between your headers and footer areas and the main text.

Conclusion

Once created, a good ebook design template will allow you to produce highly professional looking ebooks with very little effort. Your customers will recognize your publications, be impressed with the quality of your presentation, and have the confidence to pull out a credit card an place an order!

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