Writing and publishing your eBook

How to Get Less Poor Slowly

After your traffic has picked up and you have added some good content to your site, you should then use the content, with additional information, to write an eBook. You can sell the eBook from your site for a few dollars and add to your income.

Typically the book will be distributed in Adobe pdf (portable document format) format. This will allow users to download the book onto their computer and read from the computer screen.

Step 1: Writing the book

Writing is a personal matter. Everyone has a different style of work. What is best for me may not be best for you. That said, I recommend writing your book using Microsoft Word or your favorite word processing program. I use the outline function of Word to divide the book into chapters and sections.

There is help on line for those who are not polished writers (and I am one who needs all the help I can get!). There are also many good books on writing as well as short courses offered in most locations to improve your writing skills.

The book should be written for the target audience. That may be people who are very knowledgeable and experienced in the field, but more likely will be for newcomers to the field who need basic information from someone with experience.

The most important part of writing the book is the rewriting, further rewriting, and proofing. If possible, you should get someone else to proof read your work.

Step 2: Converting to ebook format

There are several formats of eBooks designed for specific handheld eBook readers. These devices make reading the book easier than reading from a laptop or desktop computer screen. However, they limit the audience to only those people who own the device.

Some web hosting services, such as Yahoo, provide tools to simplify the building of web pages. The advantage of these services is the simplicity of building the site. The disadvantages are the limitations on what can be done on the site and the fact that you have to be on-line to build the page.

One format that can be used is the Adobe pdf (portable document format). It can be read by an Adobe Acrobat reader, a free program that is distributed with most computers and browsers, and can be download for free from Adobe's web site.

Conversion of a Word (or other word processing) document requires Adobe Acrobat. There are several methods of doing the conversion. You can purchase Acrobat for several hundred dollars. Unless you plan on producing many documents, this is not a cost effective solution.

You can also go to a Kinko's or other center with computers for rent that have Acrobat. If your completed word document is on floppy disk, you rent the computer for a few minutes to make the conversion.

Another method is to use Adobe's web site (http://createpdf.adobe.com )to convert the document online. You are allow five trial document conversion for free. After that, you can subscribe to the Adobe service for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year. For most users this is the most cost efficient method. (For one eBook you should be able to do the conversion for free).

Step 3: Online Sales

Your next task will be to set up a store to sell your book from your web site. Large web sites place software on their server to handle a "shopping cart" and credit card acceptance. However, if you have only one or a few products to sell and your volume is low (which it will be for some time) a better solution is to allow some other site to provide the credit card acceptance.

One such site is Clickbank. You set up an account at Clickbank. You will build one "sales" page with information and text to persuade your site visitor to buy your book. On this site you place a "Buy Now" button (the graphics and html code will be supplied by Clickbank). In addition you provide a page for purchasers to be sent by Clickbank after they have successfully entered their credit card number and confirmed the purchase. On that page you have text to thank the customer for the purchase and a link to the actual .pdf document you have uploaded to your host. The user clicks on that link (which should say something like "Download the eBook" and his browser will allow him to read online or download. You should provide instructions for the user to right click and choose the "Save target as..." link. This will save the eBook file on the users computer.

The user's credit card will be charged the selling price of your eBook. Your Clickbank will be credited with this amount less a service charge. Clickbank operates on a twice monthly accounting period that ends on the first and 16th of each month. You will receive a check for the earnings about two weeks after the end of each period.

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