No More Excuses! - Write a Successful E-book Now
Toby A. Welch
Copyright 2012 Toby A. Welch
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover art by LanaLex Andermartin
A year ago I was where you are now -- wavering as to whether I had the gumption to write and publish an e-book. Since I decided to quit pondering it and jumped on the e-book bandwagon, I have published six e-books in less than 10 months. Every second of the journey is a new adventure and it is more exciting than I could have imagined!
No More Excuses will take the guesswork out of e-book writing and publishing for you. It will hold your literal hand from pinning down your e-book topic to writing the book to editing, publishing, and marketing your masterpiece. Even those with minimal technical skills can easily publish an e-book. I take no shortcuts by telling you to hire someone to create your e-book cover or do the formatting for your book to get it ready to upload it for sale; you will incur no costs throughout the process if you don't want to. Now hold on and get ready for a life-changing adventure!
Find Time to Write Your E-book
Picking a Title for Your E-book
Picking a Price for Your E-book
Get Your E-book Available for Sale Online
Very Brief History (and Future) of E-books
Benefits of an E-book
Before we get into the gist of writing and publishing your e-book, I want to point out some of the numerous perks of publishing one. If you find yourself faltering and wondering why you are spending your time and energy creating an e-book, take a look at the list to jump start your resolve.
Easy method of sharing your knowledge or a story
No-cost way of getting published
You can skip the traditional, often-painful method of seeking out a publisher
E-books are a rapidly growing industry, ensuring your words will not be extinct in the foreseeable future
You can write the book anywhere
Another income stream that will continue for years to come
If you’ve already written a blog, articles, or other material, you may already have a wealth of your written words to draw from
As I wrack my brain, I can’t think of one negative to writing and publishing an e-book. It’s an exciting adventure, one you won’t regret. Although chances are you would regret not doing it in years to come.
Most people think this is the easiest part of writing an e-book but I disagree -- it is the toughest as well as one of the most important. It’s common for someone to think, “I’ll write a book on owning a dog,” or “I’m gonna do an e-book on being a manager.” Both are great starting points but chances are neither will work. Why? The topics are too broad and it would take hundreds of thousands of words to cover the entire subject. It’s unlikely your book will garner much attention or sales as people don’t need or want that much information. E-book readers are looking for fast and punchy specialized information. I could be wrong in your case but you are safer going with a specific topic.
Fiction is a different matter. Your e-book needs to be as well-written and developed as any novel you see on bookstore shelves. Don’t think that because it is an e-book you can take shortcuts with your story as it will reflect in your sales. On most e-book selling sites, readers can preview your book and get the first 15% or 20% for free to decide if they want to commit to buying the book. Your book has to shine to give them the nudge they need to purchase the rest.
Back to the nonfiction e-book, narrow down your topic to make your e-book specific. Instead of a book on owning a dog, consider one on training your Doberman to be a guard dog or 15 fun tricks you can teach your dog. Or consider one on the homeopathic side of being a Shitzu owner or how to get your puppy house-trained when you bring him home from the breeder.
If you’re set on writing a book about being a manager, pick an area of the topic; for example, how to be a manager that employees love to be led by, the customer service aspect of management, conducting effective business meetings, or how to enjoy your position as a manager. As you can see, the options are almost limitless.
Once you’ve pinned down a niche, check out the competition on the e-book sites to see what books are similar to yours. I recommend looking on Amazon’s Kindle site as they carry the greatest number of e-books so you’ll get a relatively accurate picture. If you find two dozen books on training a Doberman to be a guard dog, you may want to reconsider your topic or find another angle to come at the topic from. Of course this is a rudimentary research step. You may be the only person to publish an e-book on how to make balloon animals in the shapes of prehistoric mammals but the following day there could be six more on the topic available for sale.
By finding what niche topic your nonfiction e-book will address, you’ll increase your chances of attracting readers, which will be reflected in sales. And fiction writers need to write the best story possible to increase their chances of e-book success.
Now that you’ve pinned down what story you are going to write or what topic your e-book is going to address, it’s time to get writing the first draft of your book. I know it seems like a daunting task but if you break it down into attainable steps, you will produce a fabulous book in less time than you previously thought possible.
First of all, figure out how long you want your e-book to be. Fiction can be as brief as a thousand words if you want to do a short story or it can be well over 100,000 words. To give you a frame of reference, the typical print novel published today averages around 70,000 to 80,000 words. For a nonfiction book, the word count will be whatever you need to share all the information you want to share. Some e-books are the length of a newspaper or magazine article while others go into the six figures. Keeping that in mind, decide how long (approximately) you want your e-book to be.
Now figure out how long you want to take to write the book. But be realistic. If you have a full-time job, a part-time job, a family, a home, elderly parents that need care, and you volunteer at your child’s school, chances are you won’t be able to knock out 50,000 words in a month. Don’t get stressed out if you figure out you want to take ten or 12 months or even longer to write the book. It’s better to be realistic and knock it out one chunk at a time than to have unrealistic expectations and quit writing your book, leaving your goal unaccomplished.
You now know your word count and your timeline. Using those two figures, determine how many words you have to write per week. If you want to do 50,000 words in six months, 50,000 divided by 26 (the number of weeks) is 1,930. All you have to write is 1,930 words a week to have your e-book done in six months. That is very doable for anyone. If you want to do a 25,000 word e-book in two months, you’ll need to write 3,125 words a week. You can break it down into daily word counts but I recommend sticking with weekly. Unforeseeable things can pop up, throwing your day off track, and you could get disheartened and give up if you get behind on your daily counts. With a weekly word count, you can take a few days off if you wish and your project won’t suffer for it. Or you can knock all your words out on day one of your week and take the next six days off. The beauty of this method is that it is up to you.
Within a couple weeks you’ll figure out how long it takes you to produce your weekly word count quota. That knowledge will help you in the weeks and months to come to schedule your writing time.
As for the actual writing, I wish I could say there is a secret I could share with you as to how you can get it done. The truth is that you have to have to put in the sweat, tears, and manual labour. You have to sit your butt down in that chair (or at a desk or in the front seat of your car in the corner of a parking lot) and get those words out.
At this point, don’t give any thought to the revision or publication process. Don’t spend one moment worrying whether the words you are writing are crap or priceless; concentrate 100% on getting your first draft written.
Enough talking -- go get started writing your book, one word at a time. You can do it! As a bonus, you’ll be amazed at how much you learn about yourself in the process. Another bonus -- you’ll actually accomplish one of your goals instead of just thinking about it or smack talking to other people about it.
You will find many books to help you with the writing aspect of your quest if you want more information than I provided here. I highly recommend: