Developed for first time authors, the From Idea to Book e-book is currently available for only US $1, with a paypal payment system. Given the price, I decided to take a look at it, and bought it myself.

From Idea…To Book…

Statistics:

• 106 pages long, including Title cover page, contents and About the Author informational pages
• Table of Contents, Introduction and Appendices
• 3 Sections, and 40 chapters.
• Purchase for $1 (currently)

Contents:

The e-book works on from the First Time Author Workbook, guiding the author through three sections. The first provides some goal setting thoughts on writing a book. Section 2 includes 20 brief chapters on the process of writing. Section 3 provides basics on publishing, self publishing and print-on demand, explaining, amongst other things, how to go about getting an ISBN number.

The basic contents can be found listed on the e-book’s page on the Creative Penn’s website, as below. Full contents are found linked through from the From Idea to Book page also.

• The psychology of writing and tools to help you along the way,
• What should I write about?
• Where do I find inspiration?
• How do I actually get on with writing?
• what is editing and why is it important?
• What about a cover?
• how do I decide on a title?
• What is self-publishing?
• Do I need an agent?
• What is print-on-demand?
• How do I make an ebook?
• How do I get my book on the Kindle or the iPhone?

Working through From Idea…To Book

The Process of Writing

The largest section of this e-book is towards the process of writing. Joanna uses simple text, personal examples from her 11 year writing career, and several graphs and images to help convey her process. She also deals well with the age-old question of finding time for writing, using quotes from other authors in where they found the time to write their own first books. Unusually, the book also deals with the reluctant typer, and gives options for those people who want to dictate their book rather than write it out.

Placed also towards marketing the book in the future, From Idea to Book also includes ideas towards choosing a title which will make marketing easier (such as finding keywords from the start). Those in business will also recognise the author’s use of Top-Down and Bottom-Up principles in structuring their book. In fact, the book even includes a flow chart example of structuring ideas and paths for a book.

Publishing, Self-Publishing and POD

The last section involves some basic but helpful information on going down the self- publishing or e-book route, cover-design, publishing via kindle or the i-phone, or if attempting the normal publishing route, how to go about locating an agent.

This leads on successfully to the next e-book in the series, From Book to Market, which according to From Idea to Book, is available for $9.99, however the website is currently showing only $1 again.

My Verdict

From Idea to Book is an excellent resource for the first time author, including many workable ideas, and basic knowledge which I’ve previously had to search and compile from all across the internet. The writing processes, graphs, author quotes and resource links included will help any person considering writing a book.

At the current $1 this is a bargain, but I expect would remain so at even $10 (which I would suggest is the correct price for the e-book itself). I would thoroughly recommend that any first time authors take a look at From Idea to Book as their first point of reference, and I intend working through some of those structural applications myself, even when writing a fictional work.

LinkMes:

• Purchase From Idea to Book e-book
• First Time Author Workbook review on Juiced on Writing,  and the free workbook which complements From Idea to Book.
• Follow-up e-book From Book to Market (not reviewed here).

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Tom was the first person I know of who discovered myebook.com, and has also used it to build a community for his Unleash the Book Inside You course. His blog post over myebook.com is well worth a read, featured also on the blog for Fuel My Blog late last week.

What’s in WordLube?

You know what? I’m not going to tell you. It’s free to access – although the myebook.com format only allows for in-browser viewing so you can’t take a copy for yourself. Tom has included 5 days worth of exercises to clear your writer’s block, and several mindmaps to help you visualise the mindset.There is even an embedded youtube video on Tony Buzan, and one of Tom’s beautiful mediative audio guides.

If the contents of this free gift for writers is enough to tempt you, take a look at the Bookwright’s Unleash The Book Inside You Home Study Course also.

LinkMe: WordLube (free e-book on Writer’s Block)

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Zaid Ali Alsagoff has published this ebook via the Open Source Books section of the Internet Archive, where you can view the PDF online, or download it. This is a 46MB ebook, full of graphics, so pay attention to your timing on this one, as I struck peak hours on the internet and had a very slow download.

The eBook has also been published via a Slideshare version, and SlideBoom version. The Boom version is available to view onsite at Zaidlearn.

The 60 Page “Amazing Free e-Learning eBooks Collection” features one page per book, with a brief description of the contents of the ebook, a link and covershot”. Zaid has amalgamated an absolutely awesome collection of ebooks which are free to download, and provide a lot of information about e-learning, appropriate to not only educators but anyone interested in providing e-courses and e-content to a virtual audience.

The last twenty pages of this directory does not provide more links to actual ebook downloads, but helpful tips on methods to find our own resources (the first being the expected google search) and links to searchable sites. Zaid also advertises his free ebook inside, which features 69 Learning Adventures in 6 Galaxies. He also have two other learning ebooks coming out soon.

Zaid also provides all of the ebooks and links as a quick link list on his blog, giving readers permission to replicate this list here. As a wonderful marketing device, I would suggest that you do go and get this ebook from Zaid’s site itself (the links are below) to share in the fun cartoons and graphics, and details towards what each ebook contains before you select from the many available. Go and get it (or watch it onsite) at ZaidLearn now.

Links :

• Zaidlearn – Amazing Free e-Learning eBooks
• Ebook Download

Zaid’s Quick Links List:

1. LEARNING 2.0
   
2. Educating the Net Generation
3. Learning Spaces
4. Theory and Practice of Online Learning
5. Open Educational Resources Handbooks: One, Two, Three
6. The Insider’s Guide To Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
7. Top 100 Tools for Learning
8. MASIE’s Free eContent!
9. FREE eBooks from The eLearning Guild
10. e-LearningGuru’s 5-Minute Summaries
11. ICT in Schools: A Handbook for Teachers
12. E-Learning Concepts and Techniques
13. Coming of Age: An Introduction to the New WWW
14. Knowing Knowledge
15. Moodle E-Learning Course Development
16. Using Moodle
17. FREE Guide to Online Education
18. Informal Learning
19. Engaging Interactions For eLearning
20. The Cluetrain Manifesto
21. Stephen Downes Papers, Presentations and Books
22. KINEO Magic!
23. Learning Technologies (250+ Articles!)
24. Horizon Reports
25. Clive’s 33 Columns
26. Creating Learning Communities
27. Digital Education
28. Web-Teaching
29. Brandon Hall Free Resources
30. elearningeuropa Papers
31. Learning Circuits Field Guides
32. eLearn Magazine Articles Archive
33. EDUCAUSE Books
34. Google Book Search
35. Project Gutenberg
36. Scribd
37. LearnOutLoud.com
38. LibriVox
39. Great Books Index
40. CIA World Factbook
41. FreeBookSpot
42. FreeTechBooks.com
43. OnlineComputerBooks
44. Free-eBooks
45. ManyBooks
46. Globusz
47. BookYards
48. The Online Books Page
49. Wikibooks
50. Free eBooks

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But it’s the How to Be Creative report which initially intrigued me, relevant as it is to both my interests in creativity and writing, and in writing eBooks also. The report, written as a free giveaway from an initial blog article on the Gaping Void blog (you can still find this full article in the archives for the blog), is now available (still free) from the wonderful Change This website, where you can find many other manifestos with some quality content, all free, and on a large range of topics.

Here’s my two perspectives on the manifesto :

1. On a creativity / inspiration front – read it.
2. On an eBook perspective, it’s a good example of using a free info product built from a popular blog article to market your blog and work further afield. Read it.

Read : How to Be Creative (Manifesto at Change This)

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Did I mention it’s free? Oh yeah, it is. And at 134 pages of on-the-spot information, there’s no excuses for you not going and getting it. The book is the outcome of a blogging competition between John Cow and Gary Conn. The competition attempts were documented on the blogs, and have since become this eBook, available through JohnCow.com.

From goal setting, to making a commitment to working a blog as a business, the Building a Business NOT a Blog book must go down as a blogger’s bible out there. The book is huge in content, including everything from planning for why you want a business blog, to setting up the correct affiliations, using systems like clickbank, aweber, feedburner, wordpress; and techniques for on-page optimisation, promotion, and of course – the ever-present task of keyword identifications, research and usage on the page. Much is applicable to an eBook writing business also, of course.

As a newbie into all of this from a business sense, this eBook is a fundamental arsenel to my own knowledge and what I need to do here, and it’s also a very good example of the kind of eBook which I would like to be involved in writing in the future myself. The book style is fun, with the expected cartoonish graphics which make the John Cow site itself such a fun visit, and it has a good contents page, and resource links at the back.

And, did I mention – it’s Free!

To get your copy of Building a Business NOT a Blog eBook, go here.

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Written by Leo Babauta, this book is a compilation of his blog series, Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System which featured on his popular blog, Zen Habits. It was my discovery of Leo’s first eBook, Zen to Done which first set me off on wanting to write

my own also. Since then he has also produced another eBook compilation from his site, called The Zen Habits Handbook for Life, which is another good read, and bargain at the price.

The ebook’s style, with a simple table of contents image at the bottom is what initially drew me to the book itself – very Zen-like in appearance. The eBook itself contains copious information, requiring perhaps more than one read to take it in. There are grammatical errors I noticed also at the start – but I found Leo’s writing style as skillful as the principles and methods he has developed. The eBook is pure information however – I would have liked perhaps some more graphics to break up the sheer weight of the information, perhaps. However, the text in Zen to Done is broken up with sidebars and quotes rendered in a very appealing style. And despite those minor niggles, I must re-iterate that it was the actual style of the whole eBook which actually drew me to it in the first place.

Then I delved into the contents, which can be summarised as -

1. 1. The key habits needed to be productive, organized, and simplified (10 habits)
   2. How to implement these key habits with tips on forming a habit.
   3. How to organize these habits into a simple system that will keep everything in your life in its place.
   4. How to simplify what you need to do.
   5. Minimal ZTD. Also includes an even simpler version called Minimal ZTD.

The 73 page eBook contains 17 sections plus some checklists and exercises which extend David Allen’s Getting Things Done principles (fundamentally task management for business users) with Stephen Covey’s goal setting and prioritization methods.

That, initially, sounds quite complicated, but Zen to Done provides ten very do-able habits, and even provides a “4-Point” Simple ZTD system called “Minimal ZTD” (located on Page 17) for those who want it. The final product actually simplifies the GTD system for anyone like me who found the GTD system quite overwhelming at first, and gives it structure. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about regarding GTD, then Zen to Done may also be a very good book to get hold of, simply because it makes no prior-knowledge expectations on your own productivity skills.

If you do a search over the web for Zen to Done reviews you will find several sites where the ten habits are listed along with some discussion over these. I won’t be doing that here, because I believe to get the most from the principles, you can at least pay out the small charge for this information, and purchase a Zen to Done copy for yourself. Here are the 10 habits however, to allow you to see the layers of information found within this economical and highly recommended eBook:-

1. 1. Collect.
   2. Process.
   3. Plan.
   4. Do.
   5. Simple trusted system.
   6. Organize.
   7. Review.
   8. Simplify.
   9. Routine.
   10. Find your passion.

Looked at this way, it makes sense. And Leo Babauta’s eBook gives you the processes and habits to be successful in that passion.

Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done system makes a workable solution to our busy personal lives. For the principles and depth of content inside, Leo only charges $9.50 through his site. That’s incredibly reasonable pricing for a system which will easily prompt us all into organising our lives into more productive ways. I actually consult this eBook consistently.

Recommended reading : Zen to Done (5 out of 5)

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It’s not necessarily defined just towards eBooks either – DBO provides equally appropriate information towards a new Blogger looking at niche markets or other info products. It’s a How To Book

for Ebooks, Info Products and Web Businesses. Still, the price seemed a bit daunting for me initially given the page quantity and my own budget. Could it be worth it in content, I wondered?

So, if I were to take this whole thing seriously, and keep away from where many thousands of others have fallen, I knew that I needed to invest in my own education and learning towards the entire ebook industry. So today I found that $77 and downloaded the ebook itself.

Written in 2006 by Alexis Dawes, Desperate Buyers Only contains over 90 pages of sense. There are other websites, blogs, reports, eBooks, mail lists and people saying the same thing, but this ebook is convincing, and rings true to the soul of any wannabe eBook writer like myself who realises just how saturated the internet is with eBooks out there, many on the same few topics. And many not making their writers the riches that the great Ebook Dream told them it would.

The book stopped me at Page 7 with the following -

How to Choose Topics That Attract Buyers Like Bee’s to Honey – (It has NOTHING to
do with “Doing What You Love”)

Online infopreneurs fail for 3 main reasons–

1) They focus on general topics.
2) They focus on so-called ‘hot’ niche topics.
3) They follow the all-time favorite, and frequently quoted, adage, “Do
what you love and the money will follow.

Do I agree whole-heartedly with what Alexis says? Hmm, I’m of the “Do What I Love” school. Being a wannabe writer first and foremost, I want to enjoy what I write about (and possibly live in the distant hope that somebody else might to?). Alexis also maintains an opportunistic slant on choosing topics. She favours writing about anything that has a desperation around it – and not sticking to the one or two niches where you might become an expert at. This initially may grate against those sensitive writers like myself.

But then, I happen to have lived virtually in a hobby community for many years, and in which I could easily write eBooks for, with a lot of love, knowledge and passion. But would I have any hope of selling them to that community? Nope, not on your life! My hobby is full of community boards, women and websites which not only expect to get their information free, but also has hundreds of volunteers across the world working on those boards and blogsites who are giving away that information for free, and who are doing it for no pay also. Now, that’s love, but not exactly a profitable topic for me to spend my time writing for, and expecting a buyer to somehow materialise from the niche when they can find out all they want for free.

My example above would have Alexis explaining this as the difference between an interest (or want) and a genuine and desperate need for information. And that’s a difference which will, well, make all the difference in finding the correct topic.

The premise of Desperate Buyers Only is therefore to give anyone who needs to locate a profitable topic for their eBooks the tools to do so. This is obviously centred around locating topics which are so sought after by desperate buyers out there willing to whip out their credit cards as soon as you give them the product. And those buyers know how to find it also. Alexis’ methodology goes roughly like this (for “audience”, you can also substitute “topic”)-

1. Choose an Audience – the section has 13 different types of audience bases listed (and most of them you have probably heard of all over the net).
2. Find the websites for your chosen audience – where do they hang out. DBO suggests methods of how to outsource this. Personally, I’d prefer to know what they’re talking about, so that I do…
3. Study the audience habits and terminology. Steps 2 and 3 are about the Who, What, When, Where and How of your topic.
4. Isolate the audience’s most pressing problems – what questions keep popping up for them.
5. Understand the psychology around those problems – what pains (niches) are they feeling
6. The Dealbreaker – methods to work out if potential buyers are searching for a solution to these problems.This is more than following standard traffic-driving marketing guff, it’s understanding how people go about searching for their own solutions.
7. Assess the competition – this sounds a bit obvious, but Alexis gives us methods to differentiate our product from that of any competitive product.

The Book itself is broken into sections, and I very much enjoyed the writing style within. Alexis writes creatively, and provides some interesting stories and personal examples which personifies the entire thing. She doesn’t pull punches however, including details which makes it obvious that this isn’t a get-rich-quick promise. The eBook acknowledges that choosing the right topic, researching this, and writing it is hard work, as is the marketing needed to allow your targeted audience to find your product. Alexis also gives details on how much marketing money she spends to earn the income she does get from her best-selling reports. And she packages all of this information into a succinct and reasonably small package (at 99 pages) with only four main sections.

The list above comes from the first section on choosing a topic. Other sections are listed in my own words below -

Choosing a Topic
Quick Content Creation – some simple methods for writing short quick reports
Taking on Competitors – an excellent section on how to create great sales letters
Websites – and generating traffic

The Sales letter / copywriting section in Desperate Buyers Only is good enough to have sold me the book in itself. As my own first venture into the thick of internet marketing and into a world with terminology I have little knowledge about, I had a few strange ideas (and abject dislikings) for those sales letter pages I constantly come across on the internet. Alexis’ Five Point Fish Hook, describing in no uncertain terms how to annihilate the competition, began to frighten me – until I saw the same details become an exciting sales letter – and one which would entice me personally (as your pathological reluctant viewer of such webpages).

Each section ends in some defined actions. The book itself would work well as a workbook for students, and gives copious details and methods in everything from the sales letter copywriting I spoke about earlier, to keyword searching, and affiliate marketing. Page 93 is a tabulated checklist which can be printed out when working through the selection of topics for a winning and successful info product. There are plenty of other websites and books out there dealing with the same areas, but having everything so detailed and packaged into common sense means this book is a winner for me.

I will re-read this ebook often, I am sure. Although the whole emphasis on making money from desperate buyers is a little off-putting to my own naive thinkings, I still understand that the information inside contains workable methods for my own writings and marketing. I have a fresh understanding from this eBook over how to find topics (even within my own passionate niches where I would ideally love to write for) and topics which will be profitable for me to spend time and energy within. The author has introduced me to methods which will allow me to get to know my potential customers, and build an expert reputation with them.

For my first Review on a product advising on eBooks, I am surprised to find that I’ve purchased a keeper and one I would definitely recommend to anyone wanting to write and publish eBooks. Desperate Buyers Only gives you the tools to find the topics within the something you love, or other desperate markets, and locate areas where buyers are willing to spend money on your problem-solvers for them.

The book should be read by beginners in the field before they go out and write that eBook (blog, or other information product) they always had in them, then come crashing down because they can’t make money out of it. But it has also received good reviews from experienced infopreneurs and internet marketers out there on the web.

This eBook should be on all of our reference library e-shelves, and is a genuine go-to Report for your collections. Without any doubt I will be referring to Desperate Buyers Only often. It won’t just gather pixel-dust on the hard-drive.

Recommended reading : Desperate Buyers Only (5 out of 5)

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