How to Create a High-Quality Ebook

/How to create a high-quality ebook

Turn your knowledge into engaging content that works

Contents

Is ebook the right move for your business?

How to сreate a high-quality ebook: step- by-step process

Choosing your ebook topic: which one is right for your business?

Powerful ebook and how to write it

How to design an ebook if you’re not a design pro

Open vs gated content: what strategy suits you best

How to set up and launch your ebook online

What are the most effective ways of distributing and promoting your ebook? Understanding your audience: what are the best ways to analyze your ebook’s success?

Where to get your dose of inspiration: engaging ebook examples

Further reading

Imagine: you come to work every morning, open your inbox and see what? Five out of ten emails offer you ebooks. And, instead of working, you start wondering if an ebook is the right move for your business, whether you can make it a success and not a waste of time and money. But, if you have any experience in writing a series of blog posts or newsletters, you know how much time and effort it takes to create high-quality content. And, if you also have to design and publish it, it could take several months. Let’s explore how exactly ebooks can help different professionals and businesses to achieve their marketing goals.

Ebooks help you get the status of an expert and a thought leader

For sure, 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 – both your clients and colleagues. You don’t have to give away your business secrets, but if your company uses a certain approach that no one else in the industry does, brag about it. If you’ve worked out a useful method, tell people how you got there. / Gathering, structuring, and putting knowledge into an ebook can help to establish you as a thought leader and a credible authority in your field. An ebook can help you create a solid reputation for your business, and more importantly, your target audience will learn that you have essential knowledge you can share with them. Plus, being a thought leader in your industry is finding a way to cover topics from a different angle or in a new light to provide even more value to your audience. And ebook is a great way to do it.

For example, ABB, a multinational corporation operating mainly in robotics, power, and automation technology, proved its status by creating an ebook about oil and gas production, transport, refining, and petrochemical industry. It’s invaluable for the people who work in the industry.

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Ebooks drive traffic Include ebooks in your marketing strategy. Many businesses who want to grow their audience give away free ebooks as part of the Opt-in process. When someone subscribes to the business’ blog, they get a free ebook in return. This can be the start of a relationship between you and your clients. Ebooks allow you to spread ideas and connect with your audience Blog posts are usually limited to a little over a thousand words. You have to be concise and make your point faster. Ebooks, however, give you the opportunity to go into detail, share your thoughts, provide the examples and the illustrations you want. Your ideas, put in an ebook, will spread far and wide.

This way, people won’t have to search the web or your website for pieces of information: you’ll have given them what they need. They’ll appreciate it since right now we all are time-poor and want to be more information-rich. This will be the beginning of a relationship between you and your audience. If you keep providing them with content that is informative and relevant, they’ll always be coming back for more.

/ Another awesome thing about writing detailed ebooks is that you are actually doing your audience a favor: you save your readers’ time by giving them your knowledge in the form of an ebook.

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A nice example of how anyone can create a successful small business and start spreading ideas and connecting with the audience is Steve Chou, who runs a site called My Wife Quit Her Job. There, he talks about his entrepreneurial adventure toward setting up an online business and offers ebooks with advice on how it can be done. Sculpteo, a company that provides professional online 3D printing and laser cutting services for on-demand production, used the same approach. They made an ebook about choosing the right 3D printing material, which is an essential topic in their industry.

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Ebooks bring in quality leads

An ebook can help you get more high-quality leads that will convert into your loyal clients. Ebook sign-ups can help you grow your mailing lists for your marketing newsletters. Don’t forget to set up analytical tools to track how your audience interacts with your content and calculate the conversions you make from the ebook.

/ No matter how you slice it, ebooks bring more business to your company.

Bright Computing, a company providing comprehensive software solutions for provisioning and managing, drives leads by offering industry-related ebooks on its website.

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Ebooks help you improve SEO

While gated ebooks are still a very popular tactic, open ebooks are now becoming a go-to marketing tool. They are free and might not bring you a lot of quality leads, but they can still help you improve your SEO significantly. Make sure that other online platforms talk about your ebook and link back to your website; your readers can send the ebook to each other and share it via social networks. This way, you’ll get more links back to your site, which will build up your credibility and get you a higher position in search engines.

/ Creating a quality ebook can help you both attract your target audience and become more appealing to the search engine robots.

Hynes Industries, a supplier and processor of strip steel, roll formed shapes, and flat wire, creates a series of educational ebooks, like their ebook for engineers with tips on tapping into their creative side.

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Ebooks allow you to discover new mediums for promotion

Look where your competitors promote their ebooks and which platforms bring them success.Consider Amazon, EBooks.com, eBay, and other ebook sites on the web. Find websites where you’d like to post your ebook and decide whether or not you want to charge readers for accessing it. / Plenty of readers out there may be interested in your content, but they just haven’t found your website or blog yet. To make sure your audience can find your ebook easily, promote it across various channels: your site, blog, social networks, platforms like Quora or Medium, and even via messengers.

Include your best work into your ebook and use it to expand your audience and raise awareness about your business. Creating an ebook is just what you need if you want to:

gain the status of an expert and thought leader among your audience and colleagues, in order to get a solid reputation in your field drive traffic to your website and blog, expand your audience and get new clients spread your ideas and connect with your audience better bring in quality leads that convert into new and loyal clients improve SEO and get higher rankings

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Bonus idea Take the knowledge you gained when creating your ebook and turn it into a blog post, an article, a podcast, a webinar – whatever you want. Talk about the process of making your ebook and the results that you achieved. And if you don’t create the perfect ebook on your first try, write a blog post on the pros and cons of making your first ebook. Remember that with simple writing skills and a desire to find new customers, you can turn your knowledge into compelling content that works.

Is ebook the right move for your business?

Сreating an ebook may seem almost impossible, but it’s easier than you think, and you are definitely able to make an ebook on your own from start to finish. It won’t be an amateur document no one wants to read, but a beautiful engaging ebook that grabs readers’ attention. We’ve come up with a strategy for you as well as step-by-step guidelines on how to write an ebook. Read on to discover the suggested steps.

Topic To create engaging content, you have to choose a relevant topic. 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. Try different approaches and don’t doubt your ebook’s relevance and value:

Use Ahrefs , a data processing toolset for SEO and marketing. With the help of the Content Explorer feature, you can find the most popular content on any theme and see its relevance, referring domains, search traffic, and number of shares. All of it can help you decide how to explore your theme and see what interests the people in your field have. 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 peers talk 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?

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Outline

An outline is simply a framework for presenting the main and supporting ideas for a particular subject or topic. / Making an outline can help you structure your ideas and distribute them throughout the ebook. It allows you to see the whole picture and get rid of misplaced or irrelevant excerpts. An ebook, as any conventional book, has a standard 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. There are plenty of different approaches to making outlines. You can choose whatever works best for you:

Write a list. If you’ve already written articles and papers on your topic, you probably have an idea of what to include in your ebook. You can start writing a list right away: describe what sections and chapters your ebook will have. Once you write those down, 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 angles. Place your topic in the center and start adding ideas around it. Create connections with the help of lines or arrows. At this stage, write down anything that comes to mind, however big or small it might be. You can edit the entire thing later. Work backwards. Start at the end: what is the impact of your ebook? What goals do you want your readers to achieve? Then move further backward: what do they need to know before they can achieve those goals? And, finally, what should their first steps be? Examine other ebooks and books. Look through several books and their tables of contents to see what topics appear in almost every book. Is there anything that you can add to your outline?

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Content After making the outline you reach the biggest step – the 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 :)

Commit to writing a certain number of words a day. Try to estimate the length of your future ebook and set a writing deadline for yourself, in order to understand how many words you should write daily. Write your ebook at the time of day that works best for you. We all stick to different daily rhythms. So if you’re active and focused in the mornings, then that’s when you should be writing. If you’re at your best in the afternoons or evenings, do your writing then.

Focus and make sure nothing distracts you when you’re writing. Listen to music, if that helps you concentrate. Use 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 which is to put your thoughts down on paper or screen. You can come back to the draft in a few days, and then again at the editing stage (you may find that it doesn’t need any editing after all).

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Design All the previous steps were probably more or less 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, you can create a style guide for your ebook and keep to it:

Choose fonts: don’t use too many different typefaces 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 background and font color. Select 3–4 secondary colors that can be used to make certain elements stand out (i.e. buttons, links, forms).

Choose resources for photos: these can be the websites you usually use for stock photography (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.

Also, many free or affordable tools will allow you to make a nice and clear design for your ebook: Ebook templates – a nice variety of free templates from Hubspot GIMP – a photoshop alternative

PicMonkey – for adding text to images Subtle Patterns – for creating backgrounds

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Launch and promotion Hurrah! You’ve created your ebook. Now it’s time to launch and promote it. You may have already decided how to promote 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 your landing page on a resource page or even the homepage. Promote your ebook through your blog , if you have one. You can 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 in your emails or newsletters to share it with your clients.

Leverage paid advertising and marketing partnerships that will help you promote your ebook to a new audience. Announce your ebook launch on social media and insert a link to your ebook in your posts.

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You’re ready to go You’re fully equipped to set up your process of creating ebooks. Yes, it takes time, effort, and energy, but writing your first ebook will be a great experience. You’ll get an amazing piece of promotional and lead-generating content that will work for you for days and even months. It’s totally worth trying.

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Is ebook the right move for your business? Choosing your ebook topic: which one is right for your business?

Choosing the right topic for your ebook can be stressful, but that’s perfectly normal. And knowing that the topic of your ebook can influence a lot of readers can be scary. But don’t worry: your expertise, a rather valuable asset, is all you need to choose the best topic. The more you know about a topic, the more you can share in your ebook. Here’s how you can choose the best topic and start working on your ebook right away.oals.

Define your expertise Start off with research. Find out what valuable knowledge your prospects and clients are searching for and what insight you can offer them. See if your experience is relevant. Simply ask yourself these questions: Where are my areas of expertise? What knowledge do I have that’s of real value to my prospects and clients? How can I explain/show/illustrate my best ideas?

Do I know someone personally or indirectly who can provide materials for the ebook?

Take a look at RealHound that provides tools for commercial real estate management. The company created a thorough guide on how to make more money in commercial real estate to help their clients be more successful.

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Choose a specific topic in your niche

After defining your expertise, you should pick a specific topic for your ebook. A common mistake is putting everything you know into one ebook and writing a huge guide on a general topic. Instead, do the opposite – be specific. Narrow down your ebook topic to one major idea and focus on it. Here are some tips on how to help you pick a topic that hits the spot.

Choose a topic that helps solve readers’ problems. If you are in the B2B sector, or even B2C, then you work on helping your clients solve their problems and find the best solutions every day. So you know really well how to address your audience’s problems and fears. Expand on something you’ve already done. Do you often give advice on a particular topic? What questions do you get from your clients or colleagues again and again? An ebook can give you the space to dive deeper and provide your readers with a comprehensive guide on the issue.

Expand on something the Internet is talking about. Is there a topic that is being actively discussed online, in social media circles, or within your industry? Do you have the expertise to address it? Describe the way to success. You can also attract readers who are eager to succeed. What did you learn from your previous clients that can be used to guide others? Share your research. New information about your industry is always valuable. Can you turn your research or analysis into an informative ebook? Leverage your workshops, seminars, forums. The insights of top professionals gathered from surveys, conferences, or workshops will be valuable to an invested audience. Can you compile the results of your work into a report?

You are ready to choose your best ebook topic Now you understand what kind of topic would be the best for your ebook. And the good news is that the best ideas for an ebook are often easy to come up with. Your own knowledge may seem so ordinary to you that you may not value it anymore and just take it for granted, but in fact, it could be exactly what your readers and clients long for.

Focused on audit and assurance, tax, and consulting services, PwC created an ebook on the future of the logistics industry.

Here’s how Deloitte, a provider of audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services, compiled the results of The Consumer Goods Forum into an ebook.

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Is ebook the right move for your business? /04 Powerful ebook

and how to write it

How to turn all of your great ideas into an ebook? For some reason, your thoughts don’t sound so engaging when expressed in writing. But don’t sweat it: no matter what business or industry you’re in, you can write a powerful ebook. But what makes an ebook powerful? An ebook shares your deep expert knowledge with the reader in a light and coherent way. Full of illustrations and branded graphics, it acts as both marketing and informational content. An ebook can engage readers on multiple levels, and, when done correctly, it can definitely boost your business. To write a great ebook you just have to learn the tricks of organizing your writing process efficiently. You also need to know how to make the main sections of an ebook (introduction, main body, and conclusion) work to your benefit. Let’s see how it’s done.

Writing your ebook An ebook, like any other book, can be divided into three sections: introduction, main body, and conclusion. However, an ebook’s structure is a bit different from that of fiction books or academic papers. Knowing the specifics can help you write a noteworthy ebook that engages your readers and expresses your ideas in a clear way. Introduction In academic and business writing, an introduction can often contain a lot of useless background information that leads to the main idea. Ebooks are different. An intro to an ebook is usually quite short but very enticing. You can tell a funny story, introduce impressive stats, or offer valuable expert knowledge to grab your readers’ attention right from the start.

/ Introduction, as well as your topic, are the first things that your readers see when looking at your ebook. That’s why it’s important to invite your clients to read it and tell them why it will be valuable for them. Here’s how you can plan your ebook intro:

You can start your introduction with a question or a short story to build an emotional connection with your readers from the first sentences. Then talk about the purpose of the ebook, what businesses and industries can benefit from it, and what values it promotes. You can also tell your readers why you decided to write the ebook. End your introduction with a suggestion and encouragement to start reading your ebook right away.

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Main body Even though it’s the biggest part of your ebook, it’s not too difficult to write, as long as you follow your outline and share your knowledge and expertise with your readers. To make sure you’re going the right way, ask yourself after finishing a new paragraph: “Is this information useful to my reader? Is it interesting to me?” Remember that your readers’ time is limited, and they like to scan books, even if the topic is interesting. As Tim Radford, a journalist and literary editor, says in his article :

/ When you sit down to write, there is only one important person in your life. This is someone you will never meet, called a reader.

Make your points precise and write everything in a simple and friendly manner. If you find yourself about to use a word you ordinarily wouldn’t, look it up in this helpful guide on plain English alternatives.

Conclusion Don’t think of a conclusion to your ebook in the same way as you would of a conclusion to an academic paper or research, where you address every point you made and draw results. Think of your conclusion in a broader context instead. A great way to conclude your ebook, no matter how many pages it has, is to answer “So what?”. Why is this ebook important? Why should your readers care? In fact, you shouldn’t finish your ebook with a full stop at all. The reason you write it is to initiate new activity — find new prospects, build close relationships with your loyal clients, gain the status of an expert and a thought leader. So make your conclusion more human and personal, and invite your readers to take the next step, which can be subscribing to your newsletter or blog, attending a webinar, or reading more of your articles and research. The last page of your ebook should include information about your company, short author bio, and standard contact info.

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Planning your writing Writing is an organized process, and it doesn’t always depend on inspiration. That’s why to start writing and actually write an ebook you have to plan how to do it. These are the main steps to create a good text for an ebook: First draft You take an outline that you’ve already prepared (we talked about how to write one before) and start expanding it with your research, advice, opinions, and strategies. You can start with the sections you are most comfortable writing and get back to the ones that you’ll need more time to work on later. For many writers, writing an introduction can be a drag, but we recommend drafting it nonetheless, to set a direction for your article. You can get back to it during editing. Once you put down your general ideas, you can add small details, stories, and logical transitions.

Editing It would be great if you could step back for a day before editing your text. This will help you to look at it with fresh eyes. When you’re ready to start editing, convert your book into PDF or print it out and carefully read it, preferably out loud. This way, it will be easier for you to see what needs changing. You should always look out for repetitive ideas or incomplete information. Also, make sure your introduction, main body, and conclusion have structural integrity. Don’t correct spelling or grammatical errors yet, check if your ebook works well stylistically: it should get your ideas and knowledge across to your readers in a clear and compelling way. Reviewing the details Now is the time to carefully go over each sentence and edit out spelling mistakes, tautologies, and wordiness. Use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway to find and correct errors. Then do the final review of the text: print out and read it again.

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Are you ready to write a powerful ebook?

You don’t have to be a professional writer to create an ebook, as long as you are passionate to share your knowledge with the world. You have now learned the principles and tricks of putting that knowledge into an ebook. And you know what? You have all you need to write an awesome ebook, so go for it!

Here are two helpful articles from Copyblogger on how to write and edit your text to make it awesome: 4 Delightful editing tips to make your words dazzle and dance 15 copy editing tips

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Is ebook the right move for your business? How to design an ebook if you’re not a design pro /05

How can you design an ebook without any training in this field? Let’s face it: it’s scary and may seem almost impossible. You’d be transferring your ebook to a different dimension – from plain text to a digital book with graphics. Don’t panic. You just don’t realize yet that you may already have what you need to design your ebook. Do you have a website with relevant graphs? Don’t be afraid to use them. Do you have graphs or screenshots from your research or reports that are of value to your ebook? Insert them into your ebook to break the wall of text and make it more emotional and easy to understand. To show you how it’s done, we’ll walk you through the steps of designing the main elements of your ebook. Then we’ll share some practical tips with you that all designers use to make an ebook look professional and stylish.

What design does

First things first, let’s break down what a good design can contribute to the success of your ebook: Embodying your text Enticing design doesn’t compete with your text but complements it with images and graphic elements that emphasize your key points and support your main thoughts and ideas. Getting your message to your audience in the right way Clear design helps readers move through the ebook: various visual elements, such as bullets, section breaks, and quotations, make your text easier to understand and remember. Showing your expert status A well-designed ebook with helpful graphics and interesting images shows a reader that you put a lot of effort into your ebook and care about what you’re doing. It shows that you take your work seriously, so your clients and colleagues can expect a professional attitude from you.

Main design elements What to pay attention to when designing your ebook? Here’s what you need to take care of if you want your ebook to look good: Cover No matter how strongly they might deny it, people will judge your ebook by its cover. That’s why it’s one of the most important elements of your design. It presents your ebook to the masses. Here’s what you can do:

Create a cover that advertises your main ideas and goes well with your brand style, which would make it more recognizable. Make the title easy to read, include branding elements, and feature an image to grab readers’ attention. A good way to create your own cover is to look at examples of other book covers and decide what can work for you. Check out ebooks from Zapier , Marketo, Convertkit.

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Table of contents Any book, whether print or digital, should be well organized, so make sure to include a table of contents into yours. It will not only help readers to understand what your ebook consists of, but will also make it easy for them to find certain chapters to refer to later. Don’t forget to make your table of contents interactive and link each chapter to the relevant page. Chapters A great way to enliven your text is to make a visual emphasis on your chapters with a specific font or design. This will help readers understand where in the ebook they are, and learn what each chapter is about. A final call to action After a reader finishes the ebook, what’s their next step? Use a separate page to show your readers how to subscribe to your newsletter or blog, attend a webinar, or read more of your articles and research data.

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Tricks and tweaks that every designer knows

To work on the main elements of your ebook, you need to know a few universal design laws that are very simple but help to create clear and engaging design. Here’s a quick overview:

Typography. The general rule is not to use more than three fonts in your ebook: for your headings, subheadings, and the body text. You can download the fonts you need from Google fonts. Colors. Pick two or three primary colors that are consistent with the style of your brand. Remember that some people will want to print out your ebook using a B&W printer, so create visually engaging content that doesn’t depend on color. And if you’re interested in creating color palettes, explore Adobe Color Themes. Web-friendly design. Since you’re making an ebook that will be viewed online, try to tailor it for both desktops and phones for a comfortable reading experience.

Design is easier than you think Design is not all about drawing illustrations: it refines your text with paragraphs and bullets, highlights important ideas with colors and quotation marks, informative screenshots and graphs.

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Open vs gated ebook: what strategy suits you best

Your ebook is finally ready and you are eager to share it with the world. But should it be open to everyone or only available to your potential clients? You’ve put so much effort into creating your ebook, it’s only natural that you don’t want to share it with uninterested people. You’d like it to be noticed. It may seem that only proficient marketers understand what strategy to choose. However, it’s simpler than you think. Whether to make your ebook open or gated depends on the goals you want to achieve. Let’s see what purposes open and gated content serves to help you choose the right strategy.

Open ebook

If you create an ebook to share your ideas, knowledge, and experience with as many people as possible, and if you want to connect with your audience, then making your ebook open is the best approach for you. Here are the benefits that an open ebook gives you:

You can drive traffic to your ebook from different channels (website, email, social media, blog, search) and get more people interested. The SEO benefits are great: with the help of links and ranking, you can make your ebook very popular and easy to find. People will share it via different channels, which will get you higher ranking positions. Your ebook can even go viral. You have a bigger audience for retargeting and remarketing – you can reach anyone who reads your content.

As you see, an open ebook has much to offer. However, it has drawbacks: you can’t get the information you need to identify which viewers are your target audience and which aren’t, so you can’t figure out who can be converted into leads. And if you plan to collect quality leads, then a gated ebook is exactly what you need.

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Gated ebook If you need to build a loyal audience, truly interested in your expertise and willing to engage and communicate with you, collecting detailed information from your leads can help you do that. Here are the benefits of a gated ebook:

Reaching the people who’ve already seen your ebook may be easier and more effective because you get a lot of detailed information about them once they fill out your lead generation form. If you collect only their email or no information at all, it’s very hard to connect with your audience. Having a lot of specific information about your audience helps you understand your clients better, see which industries and companies they are from, and adjust your work to suit their needs and help them solve their problems.

This strategy can actually help you get qualified leads, but it is not ideal and has certain drawbacks, the greatest of which is that you limit the potential audience for your content.

See how Uxpin, a collaborative design platform, offers a gated ebook on its website. Each lead provides an email address and the number of designers in their company in exchange for downloading the ebook. For more knowledge and expertise you can turn to our colleagues from Moz: they talk about pros and cons of gated and open content and share some tips on how to improve marketing processes in their great article.

Also, check out this very helpful article with many examples on when you do and don’t need to gate your content.

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Balancing lead generation and spreading your ideas

You can try combining gated and ungated ebook strategies:

Make the lead generation form optional. Using this strategy, you can insert several forms wherever you want – in the beginning, the middle, or the end of your ebook. Don’t require any of them to be filled out, but suggest subscribing to your newsletter, blog, or offer additional materials. You might actually get high-quality leads this way because you won’t be forcing people to share valuable information with you. Offer an open version and a gated version. Create two versions of the content: one for open access, and the other for those prepared to share their information in exchange for the full version. Thus, everyone can get the main points of your high-quality content, including graphs and images, but the details remain hidden behind the lead generation form. Those who want the full version will become your quality leads.

See how Search Engine Journal creates a page dedicated to its two comprehensive ebooks on link building. The readers can download the full versions but also read the ebooks chapter by chapter online.

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Open or gate your ebook according to your marketing goals Now you know that ebooks meant to attract links, shares, and exposure stay open, and those with more long-form, thorough, and expert content can get gated to collect quality leads. Don’t be afraid to experiment and combine both options. It could be exactly what you need.

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How to set up and launch your ebook online

When your ebook is ready for its debut, you will want to upload and set it up online to start promotion as soon as possible. However, you may think it’s not in your power, it’s something only an IT specialist could do. Don’t jump to conclusions so fast. There’s a variety of services and resources you could use to upload your ebook online, make an engaging landing page for it, and add a lead generation form that converts your readers into clients. Perhaps, you’ll need a few minutes to figure it out, or you could ask your colleagues from the IT department to explain it all to you. Let’s see how it’s done.

How to upload your ebook online

To start promoting your ebook you have to upload it online: First, convert your ebook into PDF. Now, almost any document creator offers the functionality to Save as PDF. Make sure to proofread and edit your document carefully before conversion to avoid mistakes in your final draft.

Then you will need to add your PDF to your web hosting environment. Some services can help you convert your PDF document into an HTML5 ebook – like the one you’re reading right now. It was created via FlippingBook.

Don't forget about the landing page

In most cases, your ebook will live on a specially designed landing page. A carefully crafted landing page presents your ebook to your readers and potential leads, and encourages them to take action, i.e. download your ebook. So it’s essential to make it work to your advantage. Let’s look at the main elements of a landing page:

Headline. The headline of your ebook landing page has to attract the attention of visitors and give a short summary of what your work is about. Often it is the title of your ebook. Subheading. It further explains the purpose of your ebook and the benefits that people get from reading it. Ebook description. The ebook description helps you to explain why you wrote this ebook and what value it provides to your readers. You can write a short synopsis of your ebook in the form of a bulleted list to give your readers a hint at what your ebook is about.

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Lead capture form. The lead capture form is one of the most crucial elements of your ebook landing page because it allows you to collect information from visitors, turning them into actual leads for your business. The design of your form can also influence the download rate of your ebook. HubSpot conducted a study of over 40,000 landing pages and discovered that conversion rates improved by nearly 50%, when the number of text entry fields was reduced from 4 to 3. So make sure to only add the most important fields into your form. Call to action. Your call to action needs to be attention-grabbing and easy to find. Make your button stand out with contrasting colors and place it above the fold of the page when possible. The text on your button should tell your potential leads what exactly will happen when they click it.

You can read more on how to create optimized ebook landing pages in this article from Semrush. To get inspiration and learn from the best, look through these examples and their analysis.

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How to set up an ebook landing page

There are several ways to set up a landing page for your ebook: LeadPages . It was created specifically with landing page conversions in mind. The tool allows you to use such features as opt-in boxes and click-to-subscribe text links. Unbounce . It helps customize templates or create your own pages from scratch.

PageWiz . This service offers unlimited A/B testing, professional integrations, and an easy-to-use editor. If you can ask your IT team and designers for help, you can create a special page on your website. On this page, you can even remove the navigation menu at the top of your website and the footer at the bottom to keep your visitors focused on one thing only: your ebook.

There’s also a way to distribute your ebook without creating landing pages. With the help of FlippingBook Online , you can add a lead capture form right to your ebook and start promoting it straightaway. This allows you to:

Forget about landing pages. FlippingBook’s lead form reduces the friction of accessing gated content – your leads can read your ebook once they enter their contact details. Make a preview of the ebook. It’s a way to convince your audience to submit their valuable personal information in order to keep reading your ebook. Customize your lead form. You can collect any info you need – email, name, phone number, company name, etc. Analyze and qualify leads. See how many times a lead views your ebook and when exactly they entered their email. This will help you to determine the quality of the lead.

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Ready to launch your ebook for the world to see?

When your ebook goes live, it makes your marketing more effective. With the help of your advertising and promotional campaigns, people will find your ebook online and will be able to download it. That’s why you should try to make your landing page and the ebook itself professional, enticing, and easy to understand.

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What are the most effective ways of distributing and promoting your ebook?

After you publish your ebook online and create a compelling landing page, you may think that your work is done, but it’s not the case. On the contrary, it’s just the beginning of your ebook’s promotion, because without it nobody will click, download, read, or even see your ebook. Promoting an ebook involves much more than just creating a landing page, tweeting the link, and emailing it to your clients. Let’s take a look at all the ways of promoting your ebook, so you could choose the ones that work best for your business.

For a wide audience You have a general idea about the audience and you can target accordingly, but you don’t know them as well as you do your loyal customers. Therefore, when it comes to a wide audience, you should use as many promotion tactics as you can. People digest content in different ways, so the more channels for sharing the ebook you choose, the more interest and engagement you’ll create. Website Showcase your ebook in several places on your website. For instance, it can be home page, resources section, customer login page, and banner or sidebar callout. Blogging Create a series of blog posts about your ebook. You can even turn each chapter into a blog post for your corporate blog and link all the blog posts with each other to make a small guide out of them. Just remember to add a call to action promoting your ebook at the end of each post.

You can also create an infographic with the ebook’s tips or quotes and post it on your blog. Don’t forget to prepare a guest blog post for the sites covering the topic. Social media It seems like everyone is on social media these days. But don’t try to embrace the boundless – find out which social platforms are popular among your audience and create your presence there. This way, you will be exactly where your audience is, and social media will become a really powerful instrument to attract and retain your clients. Here’s what you can do:

Post your ebook chapters on Facebook and encourage your subscribers to read, comment, and share. Tweet with quotes, stats, or tips from the ebook. Host a Twitter chat on the topic. Post snaps and Instagram stories with featured quotes or tips.

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Influencer marketing Influencer marketing is not an easy strategy. It takes time and effort to build a strong relationship with influencers: you have to work out a process of engaging with them and finding ways to support their work. But if you already have a relationship with influencers, you can contact them and ask them to post and share your ebook. You can also describe what your ebook is about and ask if they would be willing to provide their point of view on the topic. Then you’ll be able to use their quotes in your promotion.

Cold base Along with your active clients, you usually have a cold base of people who signed up for your website ages ago and haven’t done anything since. An ebook is a wonderful opportunity to rekindle your relationship with this cohort of people. Look how you can promote your ebook to this audience:

Add the ebook into your nurture programs. Create a content pack for the inactive audience, including a case study and the ebook. Include the ebook in your newsletters. Run a webinar with the ebook author, featured thought leaders or brands. Share your ebook on your organization’s forums or on the community site.

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Salespeople As a marketer, you control the content, its message, and the promotional approach. But when it all comes down to closing the deal, a salesperson takes the wheel. Your ebook can still be of great help to your colleagues, though. See what you can recommend them to do: Print out the ebook and use it as take-aways or leave-behinds at meetings.

Ask your marketing and sales teams to add a link to your ebook in their email signatures. Include the ebook in your newsletters.

Don’t be afraid to use more new tactics for promoting your ebook Don’t get overwhelmed by the amount and variety of the promotion tactics out there. Think of them as a big list of opportunities where you can pick a new tactic and try it out. And as you promote your ebook, you’ll quickly learn what works for you and what doesn’t.

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Understanding your audience: what are the best ways to analyze your ebook’s success?

The more you know, the better you are equipped. Same thing goes for your ebook. You’ve got the launch and promotion strategy, but is it working? How can you tell? Creating an ebook takes a lot of time and effort. Plus, you want to be sure that you can analyze its performance and potential value. Let’s see what metrics you can track to understand how your ebook works.

Downloads Usually, ebooks are made in the form of downloadable PDFs, so if it’s your case, the first metric you can track is the number of downloads your ebook gets. This is a simple and clear metric that tells you if your audience is interested in the topic of your ebook. People don’t waste their time downloading things they don’t need. So if they decide to get your ebook, it means they need your knowledge and advice. You can analyze which topics are engaging for your audience and which aren’t. According to the number of downloads, you can improve and change your content: popular and useful information will be downloaded more often.

Landing page visits & conversions

You can track your ebook’s landing page visits, conversions, and statistics, such as time spent on-page. With these data, you’ll know if your landing page is compelling and if the topic is clear, or if it’s too complicated and doesn’t engage or convert visitors into customers at all.

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FlippingBook lead capture form Adding FlippingBook’s lead form helps you collect leads right within your digital ebook and all the lead info is gathered into one convenient chart. And using the built-in stats, you can analyze when and how many times your ebook is viewed, what kind of content is more engaging, and on what page people stop viewing the ebook. This will show you if your content should be more thorough or if it’s too complicated for your readers.

Analyzing your ebook performance will help you make the right decisions to grow your business Tracking and analyzing your ebook is an essential step of your work because gaining insight into content usage allows you to optimize your sales and marketing processes and, eventually, grow your business. It helps you create better content, improve its impact and effectiveness, understand the audience, and connect with your clients on a deeper level.

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Where to get your dose of inspiration: engaging ebook examples

Now you have the knowledge you need to create high-quality ebooks without being a professional writer, designer, or programmer. You’ve learned the value of your unique knowledge and level of expertise. It’s time to share it all with the world and make it work toward your business success. So go for it! To get you started, we’ve pulled together a small list of ebooks to inspire you on your exciting journey. They say learn from the best. No matter what your topic is, browsing ebooks from different industries is a great way to stay up-to-date with new trends, ideas, and ebook designs, as well as to find something that can be useful for you.

Engaging ebook examples

The psychology of web UI design e-book bundle by UXPin Setting goals: defining your own success as an online creator by ConvertKit The ultimate guide to turn your traffic into sales by OptiMonk Create better work together by Dropbox Social media workbook by Hubspot Building an effective operating model for digital learning by Infopro Learning The ultimate guide to starting your first ecommerce business by Oberlo The manager’s guide to effective feedback by Impraise Recurring revenue: the secret to scaling your agency by Flywheel The fast lane to great design by Upwork

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Time management and productivity tips by StarGarden 3 ways the right data improves customer engagement by Salesforce The beginner’s guide to SEO by MOZ The 5 principles of engagement marketing by Marketo The ultimate marketing guide for online educational companies by Single Grain Ultimate guide to content creation: outlining the process in four key phases by Clear Voice Customer Service: listening, personalizing, and delivering the ultimate experience by Bitly SaaS providers handbook by MuleSoft Attention-driven design by Unbounce Content strategy: a guide for UX designers by GatherContent

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Further Reading Content marketing and writing Copyblogger Brain Pickings Content Marketing Institute Seth Godin Gregory Ciotti HubSpot The Content Strategist The Write Blog Design Creativebloq Designer Daily HOW Design 99designs Smashing Magazine Visme

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