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Writing & Creating Your eBook Part 3

Putting it together

Producing the final book

There’s more than slapping it together and offering it for sale to consider. Everything from what they will be reading it on to how it will display on the page needs to be thought about. And I don’t say this lightly, if they can get it on their eReader but it doesn’t display right they might not keep reading or they could ask for their money back.

You have to make it as easy as possible for them to read so you have some decisions to make – although they should be too difficult.

You could take care of some of these things whilst your book is at the editors. Remember when it comes back from the editors you have to go through it and accept or decline the changes they have suggested before you hand it off to your proof-readers. But in the mean time you can still be working on things.

Where will you sell it?

Have you got your own page to make sales on that you’ll have to drive buyers too or are you considering one of the many eBook sales platforms like Amazon or Barnes & Noble?

Whichever you decide you have to get people to the sales page and keep them there and get them to buy. So you’re going to need things like a book cover, sales copy, and a way for them to buy. The last one is easily handled on places like Amazon but you don’t get the full profit of any sales made.

The pros and cons

eBook retailers – can often set quite strict rules on offering your book for sale on their site and it’s important to read through them before you decide. However, there are few that will cause you much of a problem if you’re only going to publish in one place. The subject of your book, in some instances, can be a problem on some sites – but again those subjects tend to be extremes and largely centre on illegal subjects.

There can also be some issues with the title, some words in the title can lead to your eBook being limited in search results. It can cause the book to be considered adult material etc.

eBook retailers will do some of the work for you and provided you fill in all the relevant data correctly and write copy to compliment it you’ll be found in searches – no guarantees of how high though. They suggest your book to readers of similar genres or subjects.

The downsides can also include an unwillingness to inform purchasers of your book of any updates you make to the text, and although it’s free for people to download an updated version they are unlikely to find out about it.

You will still have to do a great deal of the marketing yourself. But you won’t have to worry about the method of payment and once you’ve put in your paypal address and set the price it’s pretty much all taken care of for you.

Your own sales page gives you more to play with, you can have as much copy as you like, take all of the profits, and design it however you want.

It will also land on you to direct people to your page, so you will need to advertise and market your book to the right people.

In person will cost you money, as you have to get printed copies of your book –which you have to pay for – and make the sales in person. You can approach local book stores with your book who may be willing to take a few copies to sell, or use copies as business cards if you do talks. If you don’t manage to sell any copies you could find yourself with a box of books you can’t even give away that cost you money.

On your own page you will be responsible for providing downloadable copies and deciding on the file format of those copies. Making sure they work on the type of reading devices available and look good. Adobe eBook reader is good for checking this.

When you use someone else’s platform they are responsible for this.

Your file choices are pretty much PDF, eMobi, or ePub to cover all eReader possibilities.

The cover

Although I love Canva and the ease with which it lets you create a kindle book cover, I recently sent one I’d created myself to my publisher and was surprised to be told it wasn’t the right size.

The industry standard for kindle eBook covers is 1563x2500 was what my publisher told me.

If you’re not doing it yourself – because like me you’re a little artistically challenged – either try 99 designs or an individual book cover designer. Make sure to look at their other work before you decide. There’s definitely a knack to it that good designers have, that makes the difference between your book looking like amateur hour or something to be taken seriously. It’s the first thing your potential reader sees so it’s worth getting it right. And it needs to be clear even as a thumbnail.