Read our short guide on how to write, design, and promote your ebook in a fast and easy way to make your digital marketing even more effective.
How to create an ebook: a step-by-step guide
Turn your knowledge into powerful content
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Creating ebooks for your business can be fast, easy, and fun, but it can also be a frustrating process if you’re not sure how to do it right. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! We’ve come up with a strategy for you as well as step-by-step guidelines on how to make a beautiful ebook that grabs readers’ attention. An engaging ebook is a great way to get morequality leadsand loyal clients, share your knowledge with the world, grow your mailing lists, and track how your audience interacts with your content. So, let’s get right to it, shall we?
Contents
Topic: what will you write about? Outline: structuring your ideas
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Content: putting your knowledge into words Design: designing an ebook if you’re not a pro Launch and promotion: get your ebook out there Go ahead and start creating ebooks right away
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Topic: what will you write about?
To create engaging content, you have to choose a topic that is relevant for your audience. You can research what your potential readers are interested in this week or month, and what problems they are struggling with. Otherwise, you can share your own research and expertise on industry related issues. You have the insight, wisdom, and practical knowledge in your subject and field of expertise. You probably take it for granted, but your deep knowledge comes from experience, which is extremely valuable for your audience.
Nowadays there are many different tools that can help you with research. Here’s what you can do: # Use Ahrefs, a data processing toolset for SEO and marketing.With thehelpof theContent Explorer feature, you can find the most popular content on any theme and see its relevance, referring domains, search traffic, and number of shares. # Research Medium’s Top Stories: Browse popular article tags to see what people are passionate about right now. # Use Pocket’s Explore feature to see how many times a blog post has been saved. It shows if a lot of people find a topic or a headline worth checking out. Also, don’t forget Pocket’s Recommended tab, where you can find the most-saved articles from around the web. # Subscribe to your theme-oriented weekly curated newsletters to see what news and trends your colleagues talked about. # Read niche forums, communities, Slack groups, and Quora. What questions are people asking? What problems do they discuss? Is your unique experience relevant and can you share it with others?
Outline: structuring your ideas
An outline is simply a framework for presenting the main and supporting ideas for a particular subject or topic. Making an outline can really help you structure your ideas and distribute them throughout the ebook. An electronic book, as any conventional book, has a standard book format: introduction, main body, and conclusion. It is also divided into chapters. If all the chapters follow the same structure, a reader can understand what to expect.
As for the tactics of making outlines, there are plenty of them, choose what suits your mindset best:
Write a list If you’ve already written some articles and papers on your topic, you’ve probably got the main structure in your head. You can start with describing what sections and chapters your ebook will have. Then make a list of 3–5 key points for each section/chapter. Draw a mindmap This technique allows you to look at your ebook from multiple different angles. Place your topic in the centre and start adding ideas to it. Create connections with the help of lines or arrows. At this stage, put down everything that comes to you, however big or small—you can tidy the entire thing up later. Examine other ebooks and books Look through several books and their table of contents to see what topics appear in almost every book. Is there anything that you can add to your outline?
Content: putting your knowledge into words
After making the outline you reach the biggest step—writing itself. And what is the most important and often difficult thing about writing? To actually start doing it, and regularly. “Nulla dies sine linea” (not a day without a line), as the latin expression rightly suggests. To turn writing into a habit, you have to organize your writing routine. Below are a few useful tips on how to achieve it. We follow these tips every day as well, or at least try to.
~ Make a commitment to write a certain number of words every day. Estimate how long you want your ebook to be and when your writing deadline is, then you’ll know how many words you should write daily. ~ Write your ebook at the time of the day that is the most comfortable for you. We all have different natural rhythms. So if you’re active and focused in the mornings, write in the morning. If you’re at your best in the second half of the day, do your writing then. ~ Focus and switch off distractions when you’re writing. Put on music if it helps you concentrate. Use the apps that keep you from distractions. A nice list of such apps can be found here. ~ Don’t edit while you write. You’re writing your first draft, the main purpose of it is to put your thoughts on paper or screen. You can come back to it in a few days and one more time at the editing stage (you may find that it works fine after all).
To get inspired, look at the habits and rituals that help the writers at Copyblogger to make their writing awesome.
Design: designing an ebook if you’re not a pro All the previous steps were probably familiar to you, but designing an ebook might be an altogether foreign concept. However, this step can’t be ignored— your work should look great to catch your readers’ attention. Don’t worry, you can design your ebook even if you’re not a design pro.
First of all, you can create a style guide for your ebook and stick to it: ■ Choose fonts: don’t use too many different type faces and colors. A common recommendation is to use a maximum of three different typefaces in a maximum of three different sizes and colors. ◆ Choose color: use 2–3 primary colors that are consistent with the style of your brand for things like the background and font color. Select 3–4 secondary colors that can be used tomake certain elements stand out (i.e. buttons, links, forms). ● Choose resources for photos: these can be the websites you usually use for stock photography (for example Shutterstock, Death to Stock, Stocksnap, Unsplash). Decide what kind of images you need (landscapes, portraits, objects, color schemes, etc.) and what their sizes should be.
A helpful article 26 digital typography rules for beginners can help you with small details.
Launch and promotion: get your ebook out there
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Hurrah! You’ve created your ebook. Now it’s time to launch and distribute it. You may have already decided how to promote and share it to achieve your marketing goals, so we’ll just cover the main methods here: ♥ Create a landing page on your website to advertise your new ebook. Don’t forget to feature a CTA or a link to the landing page on a resource page or even your homepage ♥ Promote your ebook through your blog , if you have one. Publish an excerpt of your ebook as a blog post, or write a new blog article on the topic that relates to your ebook. Then you can link to the ebook at the end of your post, encouraging readers to keep learning. ♥ Include the ebook into your emails or newsletters to share it with your active clients. ♥ Leverage paid advertising and co-marketing partnerships that will help you promote your ebook to a new audience. ♥ Post your ebook on social media to promote your content to a wider audience.
There’s also a way to distribute your ebook without creating any landing pages. With the help of FlippingBook Online, you can add a lead capture form right to your ebook and start promoting it right away. This allows you to do the following:
If a lead leaves you their information, you will be able to see how many times they have viewed your ebook and when they left you emails. This can help you determine the quality of the lead more easily and contact themat the right time. To get content engagement The FlippingBook lead capture form reduces the friction associated with accessing gated content—your readers simply enter their email address and name and can read your ebook at once. There’s no need for any complex landing pages. Plus, you can even set your own fields and rearrange them to your liking. valuable personal information. To analyze statistics and qualify your leads
To make a preview of the ebook This can help build trust between you and your audience. It’s a way to make them sure that your ebook is worth their valuable personal information. It can be very handy if you publish various books and textbooks so that your readers can flip through the first pages and understand if that’s what they need.
Go ahead and start creating ebooks right away Now you’re fully equipped to set up your process of creating ebooks. Yes, it takes time, effort and energy, but writing and publishing your first ebook will be a great experience. You’ll get an amazing piece of promotional and lead generating content that will bring you many benefits and work for you for days and evenmonths. It’s totally worth trying.
About FlippingBook
FlippingBook is a company that provides software and cloud service for creating professional online documents in a fast and easy way. It allows companies from different industries, be it manufacturing, real estate, or education, to become more effective in their marketing activities. With the help of FlippingBook, they can turn a plain PDF into an ebook with professional look and feel, marketing tools, and analytics.
is a Content Marketer at FlippingBook. When Anna isn’t writing, she enjoys going to the theater, listening to music, and finding inspiration in the world around her. You can find her on LinkedIn. Anna Konovalova
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