I’d like to give you a quick rundown on what is offered at Joanna’s website and on signup.

The Creative Penn

Joanna provides in her website, numerous resources for the writer, particularly based around marketing, self-publishing and print-on-demand. The website also sports a good range of interviews with published authors towards their own experiences.

There are a lot of articles provided on various publishing topics, several commercial e-books authored or co-authored by Joanna – including one on writing, and various other resources available as you browse through the site.

Joanna is passionate about writing and publishing, and you can see this in the latest blog posts. This week is Read An Ebook Week also, and in order to propagate some more e-book reading, what better way than to suggest you sign up to Joanna’s site to receive her free e-book (details below) also?

First Time Author Workbook

On signing up at The Creative Penn, you receive access to the free 27 page workbook, First Time Author. Although simplistic in nature, this e-book is not simple by any means.

The e-book first takes the wanna-be author through some motivation and productivity factors in Parts 1 and 2. Part 1 provides a series of questions to survey the motivation behind the reader wanting to write. And then as a natural progression, once we’ve worked out why we have a binding need to write, we are lead through some goal planning and into Part 2 on actually deciding what we will write about, and structuring our book.

In Part 3 we are introduced to some general thoughts towards publication, and led into finding further details in another more detailed e-book written by Joanna Penn entitled From Idea to Book. A further five pages introduce other e-books available for the new author, and a list of resources in an appendix.

As a free e-book, leading to the potential purchase of another (or perhaps three others) to build on the information, I found First Time Author quite conductive and informational in itself. Built as a series of survey questions, I found browsing through the questions triggered some more desires within me to get up and write. It was a good reminder of always keeping one finger on the pulse of why I want to be a writer – what motivates me, and what commitments (time and otherwise) I need to offer to make the dream come true. This is something which this small e-book does well in simply providing those questions in a workbook style.

I will also be interested to see when Joanna’s commercial e-books – particularly the one on marketing in the Web 2.0 environment – come out. For the new author considering writing a book, The Creative Penn website and First Time Author e-book are well worth checking out.

LinkMe : The Creative Penn

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The novel itself is free as a demo for this format, and is readable on any device with a decent web browser. It utilises multiple screens and threads through a large new world.

Getting and Running “Descending Road”, the Novel

I first came across Descending Road from within Second Life, the virtual world which I’m currently exploring. The author has a shop on Second Life’s Book Island, and from there a notecard leads you to his website for downloading the entire book.

Although Second Life itself does have an internal web browser system, you would be best in downloading and reading the novel externally, and with more room to spread out. The author provides the full book from within his website also, and you work through this scene by scene from the website. This is dependent on the speed of your connection, naturally.

Or to have the novel available immediately when you want it, it can be downloaded as a 15mb zipped package. Once you extract it, you will find a folder full of html files, image files, and several PDF files explaining the background behind the project.

You will need to find the “demo.html” file and run this, opening into your web browser to start. Once there, click on the large cover image to open the novel itself – your browser will open two other windows depending on the size of your device. One window will be opened for smaller devices. The author suggests he has successfully run Descending Road on portable Playstations before, presumably on the one window.

Your browser must be setup with javascript capabilities, and optioned to allow the browser to open multiple windows. Behind the scenes, Dana Paxson has developed technology to create the novel in this format, and suggests a patent is pending on this technology. He offers for anyone interested in publishing like this to contact him.

Descending Road Format

Scenes and Threads

What makes ELM fiction so powerful is the ability to hyperlink scenes to multiple other scenes. In this way, a reader can follow a threaded story for one character and arrive at the scene, then deviate onto another character’s viewpoint and follow that character through their own story, to arrive at the scene again (possibly) and see it in a totally different perspective than when first read.

Multiple Windows

Once into the novel, you will find three windows. The central one holds the novel narrative, told scene by scene, for one character point of view. You move onto the next scene with a simple next or previous link. This window also has an option to choose a different character point of view and story thread which leads to this scene, and two vertical bars on either side of the text. These bars will bring the left or right windows on top. Normally the central narrative window will be on top, calling the others when supplementary information is required.

The right-hand window holds glossaries, character appearance indexes, and scene title lists.

The left-hand window holds reference links to several subjects for further reading. Within the story, this left-hand side contains the Tarnus Encyclopedia (Tarnus is the world the stories are set in) and calendars, organisation, language, culture and technology reference notes for the world you are about to read about.

All windows are interlinked. For instance, the narrative text of the stories contain key terms which are linked to open up the glossary in the correct place.

What is an ELM (Apart from a Tree)?

ELM stands for Electronic Literary Macramé, according to Dana Paxson. It appears to be a term coined by this author for the format he has developed. Electronic novels are not, as we know, totally new to the world. Only recently this blog covered another format in the Wovel (web novel) – a serial format published electronically onto a website, and before that, a format called a Visual Novel, which is a graphical novel including text and graphics, and a partially interactive nature as it has a few threads to choose from.

I’m personally not sure if the “ELM” term will ever catch on, but perhaps novels in an html and scripted format such as Descending Road do have a real future, especially given the additional tools and resources such novels can provide for the storyline itself.

Using html and javascripting, the ELM novel allows for numerous text linking, the inclusion of side glossaries, and images, aside background text, reference links, footnotes and endnotes, and in the case of Descending Road, multiple story threads, led by different characters found in the Descending Road world. For large fictional bodies of work such as an entire new fantastic world, the format could be one solution to providing on-the-hand information when you need it without losing emphasis on the story being read.

Descending Road’s ELM environment is visually quite stark – although you could use such a format to make graphically intensive works – good for educational resources and text books perhaps – the novel in this format is confined to only a couple of colours and this makes the textual centre window a much more immersive environment. You are drawn into reading the narrative text and discovering the plight and fortunes of the characters in this format.

As a format, the ELM Fictional work sits between the linear confined electronic structure of a normal e-book, the threaded graphical visual novel – both of which don’t provide supporting mateiral;  and on the other end -the broad spectrum uncontrolled references found in something like an online encyclopedia. Think of it as something like a combination of all seven Harry Potter books, and the Harry Potter lexicon website, all wound up into the same document. It makes for a rich and huge narrative work.

Descending Road, The Novel

One of the PDF files which comes in the zipped package for Descending Road explains in some part why the ELM format was created. The novel is set in a large fantastic world called Tarnus, a human world displaced in time and space from Earth by an interstellar coldsleep migration and millennia of cyclic history. The story itself centres around several main characters, with the main thread held by Andrew. It contains many adult-themed elements, and browsing through, can still make for some hefty reading.

There are a lot of stories in this 200,000 word novel – some are short, some much longer. Some connect with each other, others do not.

Written as a large multi-threaded novel with all kinds of elements (enough to populate an entire world), the original manuscript was rejected by many publishers and reviewers, as the author suggests -

“In the original novel there were simply too many ideas and people presented to the bewildered reader from the outset; even the most caring, able, and sympathetic of reviewers of the manuscript couldn’t figure out what the hell to do with the thing.”

Over time, the novel was re-written into independent threads of stories, to “strip away some of the complexity” and then developed into the ELM format.

If you enjoy exploring a new speculative world, and many stories set within it, or you are intrigued by this new format, take a look at Dana Paxson’s website (link below) and download Descending Road.

LinkMes:

• Dana Paxson Studios – download Descending Road, and read the website for further explanations.
• Defining : The Wovel (Web Series Novel)
• Visual and Interactive Novels

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Contained in the Ultimate Guide to Free E-Books for New Writers are not 36, but 59 free e-books and reports downloadable from all over the web. I have included a rudimentary screenshot of the cover of each e-book for you also.

Download the guide to all the free ebooks for writers from the Downloads page, or Ultimate Guide Page. On the Ultimate Guide Page you will find further details and screenshots.

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“It would cost the Times about half as much money to send every single one of its subscribers a brand new Amazon Kindle instead of a physical newspaper each day.” Over three months! [SAI]

The original quote, from Silicon Alley Insider deals strictly with the costs of printing nowadays, compared  with that of reading on something like the Amazon Kindle. My own views bring in more than costs – although that has a hefty prioritisation on my feelings.

For a start, here in the U.K. we can’t even get the Amazon Kindle. Although Amazon has recently announced a new version of the Kindle (The Kindle 2 is due out February 9th, sporting new features), there has still been no announcement of when or even if the Kindle will be sold through Europe. Instead, if you do a search for “kindle” through amazon.co.uk you are presented with the competition – primarily the Sony Reader, but there are others retailing at around the £200 range.

The original Kindle went out of stock at Amazon.com in November of last year, with anyone with Christmas orders still awaiting – and supposedly now to get the new version. The Kindle – and that of the Sony Reader and others were perhaps some of the surprise hit gadget purchases for 2008, with many people pooh-poohing the idea of reading electronically taking off, especially given the cost of the e-readers available.

The cost was the primary factor against me even contemplating such a purchase. For the same price, I could buy myself a new cheap laptop or expensive iPhone over here – both giving me many more features. And as a non-commuter, I couldn’t see the need to travel around with a library of books ready for me. And, despite the promise of downloadable newspapers, there still wasn’t a great amount of current books coming out in that electronic format.

However, the newer e-ink technology, and the newer larger flatter e-readers being developed would provide an e-reader which I could happily download a subscription magazine or newspapers to. I still quite fancy that notion, and await the time when that is affordable. Especially for such things as the throwaway newspaper.

But from a mother’s perspective I even worry over this eventuality – our kids still need those physical magazines and papers to cut out clippings from, don’t they? They need to attack an old magazine with bluntened scissors and play with montages and collect photographs of food, or transport or their latest celebrity craze – and printing them out just isn’t the same, is it?

But finally it is the writer side of me which has the biggest misgivings about all of this. I am conflicted somewhat, because I love the e-book format, and download many informational products to my laptop, and must admit I find myself one of the few people I know who doesn’t mind reading from a computer screen, and won’t automatically print out the document. One of the very few, when I ask around. I even write and create e-books because I like this format for informational reports.

But as for fictional works – well, there I currently draw my own line. As a writer of them, and hopeful novelist, I want to see my book actually printed out. I want to see it passed on, leant out as a recommended book from one person to another. I want to see my novel become aged, the pages turning slightly yellow. I want to see the corners of pages dog-earred from bookmarking, and I want to see someone one day curled up on a sofa, reading my book.

That’s how I read novels. That’s how I want to picture my own novels being loved. I just can’t picture the same from somebody reading my story on a little screen. I’m sure there will come a time when this happens, if what they say about printing costs is correct. And as an author, this provides another median for getting our stories out there, and one we should certainly be aware of, because there are opportunities there for many of us. But there are also possible large changes in how we market our books, and how the world in general may operate.

For instance, this may – one day – engineer a complete change to what we see in our local bookstores. Perhaps they will sell electronically. Perhaps those who are truly ahead of the market will see the ability to get rid of all of those highly priced book shelves, and just have large screens to select and download the latest best-seller from.

I think that will be a sad day to see, when you can’t go in and pick up and cradle a book in your hands. I at least hope that I can welcome, eventually, those changes, and become used to them if they happen in my own time.

But for me, currently? I want to feel the novels.

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The marketing eBook is a slightly different beast from other informational eBooks. Marketing eBooks contain text, images, links to web pages and navigation controls. The marketing eBook has become a very important part of marketing on the Internet. Viral marketing – getting the word out via an ebook, linking to your product website, blog, resume – it’s now the biggest thing in internet marketing, and eBooks are right in the middle of that info-age.

With a marketing eBook you are able to present your story in an effective way and include links to your web sales pages. Your E-book may well become your best sales tool in your portfolio.

First, your eBook needs to be interesting and informative. Importantly it also needs to be relevant – to both your own content niche and products and to your readers or customers. There’s no point giving away an eBook on auto-mechanics to your scrapbooking mums audience, for instance. Your eBook will  always have links back to your web site and to your sales page. That’s what you’re creating / publishing it for, right?

Next, make certain that you have a prominent section telling readers that they are free to give your E-book away. Yep, let them give it away – that’s the viral in viral marketing.  Let them know that they can post it onto their web site as a free download, that they can use it as a bonus – for subscribers or with another gift package they are providing, and that they can bundle it with other products. This is the way to create word of mouth marketing for your products or services.

Before you send your eBook out to the world, check spelling and grammar, and be sure that you have tested every link to verify that it goes where it is supposed to go. Ensure that your eBook provides a professional and reputation-building offering for those who do get hold of it.

Create a download page for your eBook – on your own site if you need to. Think about your own promotional strategies for the eBook.

Finally, now that your marketing eBook is ready to launch, start your promotional activities. Offer it from your own website, send it out via a subscriber mailing list, advertise it on relevant forums (in your signature if that’s acceptable). Ask a peer or favourite blogger in your niche to review and promote it for you. And you can post your eBook to some of the E-book directories. Many let you post it free of charge, or will let you post a link on their web site to your E-book.

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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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There are literally pages and pages of giveaway ebooks and internet marketing / blogging gifts in this package, all customisable in some ways with your own affiliate or clickback links. You can offer these as gifts from your own site, for subscribers or as additional bonuses for your own ebook purchases.

For me, at this point in time, downloading many of the ebooks in this package allows me to both learn more information and focus on what makes a good ebook in the first place.

Register and Get the Free Ebooks Here.

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Offering the eBook via an RSS subscription means you also encourage subscribers to the blog itself, building that RSS subscriber base, and giving you additional methods to communicate with that subscriber base. This is obviously appealing if you intend to use your blog as your main communication channel for your information products, which might include other eBooks in the future.

Blogclout offers the Feed Footer WordPress plugin which will do this for you. The plugin allows you to add html code to your RSS footers, which can include links, images, and text of course. Not only can you use this plugin to advertise your eBook with links to where this can be downloaded or purchased (monetising your feed, in effect), but the plugin also has many other purposes such as copywriting your feed, or directly communicating with your RSS subscribers where they possibly don’t visit your blog. The plugin also allows for ten different feed footers which can be rotated through your feed posts.

Link : Blogclout’s Feed Footer Plugin for WordPress

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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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I’ve recently read a lot about creating eBooks which sell successfully and profitably for the writer. A key towards all of this – certainly for me, is writing about something you know about, and are therefore enthusiastic about.

Here is a checklist to ensure success in writing and publishing eBooks which have a better and planned opportunity in selling well. I intend following most of these steps myself, and providing detailed information on each area as I progress through on writing each of my own ebooks.

This checklist is referring to eBooks as Informational Products – references and guides of information. The subject of eBooks as fictional works is different matter not dealt with in this checklist. And choosing a niche and topic which will sell well is not dealt with within this checklist either. That’s a very big subject in itself.

41 Point Checklist for Creating eBooks to Sell

What to Write Your eBook About

1. Write about Something You Know About – a special hobby, your day job experience, local organisations you’re involved with, or working knowledge in some area of interest. Your passion and knowledge (even if newly developed) should show for this topic. The key to a successful eBook is in having REAL and QUALITY CONTENT.
2. Write eBooks to Solve Others’ Problems – a little bit of research time (niches, keyword searches, forum and online group reading – called lurking) will pay you dividends in selecting areas where you know you can provide an information product WHICH OTHERS WILL SEEK OUT.
3. Write eBooks to Provide Quick Information – for many topics out there, there are copious physical books written, and available within two-three days from online book retailers. eBooks have an advantage over these, due to the fact that they are available instantly by download and on demand when someone really wants to know something quickly. But to leverage this advantage over a physical reference book, your eBook should provide exactly the information someone would need – and quickly, or information in a format and of a quality which will build the reputation of your own information products.
4. Use What’s Already Available – if you can not come up with a full eBook by writing this yourself, it is quite feasible to compile your eBook using the freely available articles published out there on the web. Compile your eBook using these, remembering to leave as-is the author notes and links, and the written content of each article. Introduce your own comments and thoughts to the composition. Or use excerpts from others with attribution to them (seek permission first).
5. Research the topic thoroughly. Seek out other websites, books, pamphlets and industry experts on the subject. Compile a file of research and thoughts before starting to plan your initial write. You may want to keep this as a physical file, in a dedicated ringbinder or filing system, or in electronic files as you generate ideas. There is nothing to stop you from compiling a growing pile of research material for any eBook you may be thinking about, well in advance of actually starting to write it. Add to this research file as soon as you locate more interesting material as you browse the web or read materials. Use this material as a basis for your own thoughts and ideas – and ultimately your own content.
6. Research the direct competition. If there are other eBooks available on the topic you have set your heart (and expertise) upon, then purchase / download these and take a look at the competition. What aspects of that book don’t work for you? What could you do better? What areas could do with more detailed information for you to fill the gap with? Could similar information be formatted in a more usable or readable way? Ultimately, what information could you provide as a unique selling point (UPS) for your own Ebook?
7. Package from Your Archived Content – This works well if you already have a website or blog with a large amount of content on the subject. Offer your readers an Ebook of a whole year of the content from your site. Quite a few well-read sites offer such eBook packages. Examples can be found on the blog, Zen Habits, and the Top 10 blog, Boing Boing (which offers five years worth of content as a blog birthday-anniversary gift). Magazines often do something similar in producing their own magazine content in a yearly PDF format on CD-Rom. EBooks in this way, are sought after as a means to return to quality information without having to search through a website (or series of articles) trying to find what you are after. Ensure you index and content your eBook archival collection for easy searchability, and consider offering additional special content as an incentive to delve into the eBook itself.

How to Create and Write Your eBook

1. Plan your eBook –
   1. Outline the subjects and topics for your info product, before writing it. Put together a detailed outline, using the research pile of content ideas you gathered beforehand and continue to build as you write.
   2. Provide a project plan if necessary (this may keep you on target to meet each milestone). Start planning in your ebook format, distribution channels, pricing and marketing / promotional work into the plan.
   3. The outline and other plans can be kept in a file, electronically, or perhaps as a journal.
   4. Use lists and documents, with reminders to keep you on track for the tasks needed.
2. Design your Ebook – from writing topics, to how it will look and feel. What other content will the ebook include? – graphics, videos or other multi-media within or externally, sidebars, hint-sheets, forewords, introductions.
   1. Use images sparingly as this increases the file size of the eBook.
   2. Create a style for your ebook which is clean and simple, with links to the major sections of your ebook.
3. Write your Ebook – draft and redraft. Schedule the writing tasks (and redrafts) into your daily To-Do lists.
4. Have Your Writing Critiqued by Enlisting the Help of Others. Have somebody else critique your eBook for content and writing style (preferably someone with a need or interest in the information- and not a family member unless they are prepared to be honest rather than always kind). At this point have them look for content issues, writing style, grammatical errors, structural errors, but keep away from anything such as design. Firstly, content is king.
5. Decide on your Ebook name or title – you may have decided on this at the start, but sometimes during the writing and designing process, the subject may change, and you may need a different title.
6. Include Meta Data – Authorship contact address / emails, website links, and copywrite / legal details.
7. Include Table of Contents, Index, Glossary, and Additional Content
   such as Directory or Resources Listing.
8. Decide Upon the Security Measures for the Ebook – you don’t want to see the contents of your eBook spread across the web as pirated copies or as somebody else’s work. Various compilers and PDF converters can provide encryption or password protection. However you will also have to consider the distribution method for the eBook itself, and whether you want one overall password, or a password for each individual customer download.
9. Compile as an Exe or Provide as PDF – decide on whether the completed eBook will be compiled as a stand-alone executable, or whether it will be published as a PDF document. Both have their pros and cons.
10. Have your eBook in its final form critiqued or reviewed for content, design, structure, and as a package. If necessary, edit with changes required.

How to Publish and Sell Your Ebook

1. Establish where and how the eBook will be distributed – research the eBook seller websites, pricing, payment methods, setting up your own website or subscription sub-domain. Once decided, add the details to your eBook Plans for distribution.
2. Write a marketing / promotional blurb for your eBook – a simple paragraph introducing the features, benefits and unique selling point of your eBook.
3. Publish your eBook – to relevant ebook sites, or your own site. If this is to be a paid-for eBook then consider providing it from a dedicated and separate section for members-only access from within your website. This could be on a sub-domain from your main one.
4. Establish your own website tactics – Sales Offer Letter pages, Squeeze pages, various marketing opportunities.
5. Establish the Ordering and Payment processes on site (yours or other sites).
6. Using Autoresponders and Email Addresses – for free eBooks in particular, consider gathering email addresses for the provision of your Free eBook link to download. You can then use an autoresponder to continue to send out additional information to those who have given their e-address, and continue to sell to them with other products. Thank them for downloading your eBook product and seek questions or testimonials from your customers.
7. Do Not Underprice your eBook – depending on pages etc, do not be tempted to underprice your ebook for the sake of a quick sale.
8. Implement your eBook Promotional / Marketing Plan – you may be considering giving away your first eBook as a draw for your next, or providing additional info products as sellers. You may want to advertise the eBook availability via your own website or others, ezines, eBook directories, eBook library sites, via forums etc. Do not Over Promote and Spam however. Your eBook should sell itself because it is written on a subject others need and the writing and content is seen as valuable.
9. Viral Distribution – Encourage the Passing On of Your eBook- If your eBook is a free giveaway product for the purposes of promotion, encourage it to be passed on (provided the format isn’t changed). Your reader should be welcome to promote it through their website, give it away as a free gift from there, offer it in newsletters and as additional info products, thus providing more exposure for your other offerings.
10. Encourage Affiliations – If your eBook is successful as a seller, and you want to continue its growth, consider offering an affiliate programme for others to promote the eBook with an affiliation link to your eBook from their own websites. They will make a certain percentage of the purchase cost. Look into how to setup such an affiliate program.

Follow-On and Enhancing Info Products for Your eBook

1. Enhance your eBook Product – many eBooks also offer audio or video content to the deal, often available on the eBook’s own website. You might consider a newsletter for subscribers also. Or access to a resource directory to enhance the information. Some of this might be freely provided on the website. Some may be …
2. Develop Follow-On Info Products – start developing these as soon as possible after starting writing your first eBook. What additional info products will your eBook buyers / readers seek out? The above example of an enhanced (and maintained) resource directory or subscription service may be one or two ideas for follow-up products. Another might be a Beginner’s eBook with an Advanced eBook as a follow-up. Or a paid-for course on advanced subjects.
   • One point here, however – I’ve personally seen people try to provide follow-on products by simply splitting out a large eBook into say, three smaller eBooks. The first will be free, with the second and third chapters having an expectation that I pay for them. For me, that’s annoying and rarely works – it’s important to not look like you’re just after my money by providing an inferior product at the start which relies on follow-on products to make sense of the whole thing. Don’t treat me as a mug, is all I am saying. I will rarely purchase those follow-on eBooks if the first is unusable as it is.
3. Seek Testimonials for your eBook – as the eBook (and supporting / follow-on products) begins to sell, readers will offer testimonials for your products, hopefully unsolicited. Collect these and ask permission to use in your marketing materials, on your website and possibly add into the eBook on the next edition. If no forthcoming testimonials come unrequested, then send out an email to your customers asking for these.
4. Lace Your Products – as you develop new eBooks, remember to add information about each of these to the back of each eBook (and info product). This will provide additional advertising and revenue for you. Ensure you link to the purchase link for each eBook laced into your products in this way.
5. Offer Co- or Re-Branding – for additional exposure (and possibly revenue), consider allowing others to co-brand or re-brand the eBook with their own logo and URL. Some eBook Compilers allow this as a feature.
6. Offer Advertising within your eBook – if your site is considerably well-trafficked, and the eBook a sales success, then you may be able to accept paid advertising within the eBook itself. Ensure that this doesn’t impact the eBook structure and perceived quality however, and that the advertising is complementary to your information product’s topic and style.

Keeping Ahead of the Game

1. Understand the eBook and Info Product Industry. Hang out at industry blogs and websites. Network. Setup RSS feeds from news from the industry into a Feed Reader (such as Google Reader) and ensure you keep abreast of the changes in the industry to meet changing demands from consumers. Keep a resource list of must-go websites, new sites, and internet marketing sites as a personal resource. There are also a lot of good (and not so good) books available on creating and selling eBooks available through booksellers such as Amazon. One example is eBook Secrets Exposed which is currently being read and will be reviewed on this site. And of course, the Juiced On Ebooks site is intended to provide as much information as possible on this industry, so keep this site bookmarked also.
2. Keep a Watchout for New Info Products and Competition. Many companies and individuals think creating eBooks and other Info Products is a doddl
   e – and easy money resultantly. This is no longer the case, with many eBooks saturating the market. Once again, your eBooks will sell if there is a market need for them, if you promote them successfully so that the market customer can find your book, and if the content is superior to that of your competition. It’s about quality but your competitors can provide a source of additional ideas for you and your own eBooks in the future also. And they’re certainly helpful to allow you to spot other market trends and movements for you to plug a hole in.
3. Understand the Statistics – it has been found that the majority of people who download an eBook rarely read them, or not past the first few pages at least. EBooks litter everyone’s hard-drives. Human beings like to collect and eBooks are easily collectable. This should not be a concern for you, if your eBooks are still selling – but understand these statistics when building plans for new eBooks and seeking testimonials and additional sales from your customer-base.
4. Keep Your Knowledge Up-to-Date. And therefore your eBooks. Something which sold a couple of years ago may have been outdated with movements in the industry. As an expert author, keep your own knowledge up to date, and consider updating the eBook to a newer edition also. Offer this to previous customers (a great promotional exercise).
5. Keep Your Products Technology-Relevant. The choice of whether you provide your eBooks in PDF or compiled exe format should be looked at as technology continues to (as always) develop. Currently there is more and more work being put into eBook reader portable devices such as Amazon’s Kindle or competing products. There are hints of larger format reading devices which will provide commuters with the ability to read downloadable daily newspapers, their fictional novels – and why not a nicely formatted info-product like your offerings? Keep ahead of the game on available technology.
6. Don’t stop. Start your research and ideas pile for new eBooks as soon as possible. Start your planning and outlining, having two ebooks on the go at one time. This gives you variety, often some creative motivation and inspiration, and a continuing and growing set of info products for your eBook writing career.

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