In the last few years, a brand new form of digital book-making has emerged. Thanks to the growing popularity of smartphones and the internet, authors can now create ebooks and distribute them to eager readers simply by tapping a few buttons on their device of choice.
While many will no doubt enjoy the convenience that mobile ebooks provide, others may view them with a jaded eye. After all, the very idea of being able to download a fat PDF filled with valuable information and/or entertainment at the touch of a button is rather seductive, particularly now that many ebooks are available for free in digital form.
For those who crave traditional good old-fashioned offline prose, they will no doubt appreciate the effort involved in producing a beautifully designed ebook. Thanks to a rising tide of independent book publishing, you too can become a mobile ebook mogul by adhering to the techniques described below.
Set A Profitable Goal
As the name would suggest, a profitable ebook means an ebook that brings in revenue. For this reason, you must set a goal for your efforts and monitor your progress towards reaching it. Setting a simple goal of making $1,000 from your ebook will give you something to shoot for, while more ambitious authors might aim for $5,000 or $10,000 per month.
If your current income is less than $2,000 per month, you’re going to have to work extremely hard to make your ebook profitable. This is where most self-publishing ebooks go wrong. Rather than aiming for profitability, many authors simply throw together some content and call it a day. As a result, their ebooks never become financially viable and they have to keep on churning out new content to keep their readers interested.
Dont Be Fooled By Free Ebooks
With the rise of the indie author, self-publishing has become much more affordable. No longer do you need to spend thousands on expensive overheads such as design and development costs. Thanks to the increasing power of smartphones and the internet, you can now produce an ebook and have it available for free to read within days.
While this may sound like great news to fledgling authors, they mustn’t be fooled into thinking that free is always good. After all, the very idea of being able to distribute a “free” ebook to a potentially infinite audience is tantalizing, and a lot of self-publishing beginners fall into this trap. They think that by giving away their book for free they are automatically going to receive a flood of eager readers who will pay good money for the next book they write.
If you’re planning on self-publishing your ebook, always bear in mind that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. While you may be able to give away your ebook for free, that doesn’t mean that all your readers will automatically plonk down their hard-earned cash. Your book may be free, but that doesn’t mean that the production and distribution costs are. The more you can do to promote your ebook, the more likely you are to make money from it. Even when your book is free, you’ll still need to spend money on things such as domain names, web hosting, and email marketing to ensure that your readers discover your work and are compelled to buy your books.
Build A Solid Platform
Aside from setting a profitable goal, you must also build a solid platform for your ebook. This means creating a website or blog where you can promote your book, gain attention, and build a community.
On a practical level, you can start by creating a simple website that consists of a few pages with valuable content. You can use this to build up your audience and convince potential readers that your book is worth buying. Ideally, you’d like to have a blog attached to your website, where you can continue to engage with your audience and keep them coming back for more.
On an abstract level, you’re aiming to create a thriving community of people who enjoy your work and are interested in what you have to say. For this, you want to develop a brand for yourself as an author, and creating a space for people to interact with you is a great way to do this.
Once you’ve got a solid platform in place, it’s time to move onto the next step: creating and distributing your ebook.
Create And Distribute Your Ebook
The first step in producing a profitable ebook is to create one, of course. For many, this will be the most daunting step as they’ve never written a word before and don’t know where to start. The good news is that you don’t need to write the best novel ever to be able to produce a profitable ebook. All you need is a simple idea that you believe in and the drive to make it real. With that, you can use a variety of platforms to publish your ebook including Google Play, Apple Books, and Amazon Kindle. To get started, simply pick one of the above and follow the steps described below.
1. Choose A Book-length Project
Your first port of call should be your manuscript. This is the original version of your book, and it’s great if you’ve already written some content down on paper. If not, now’s the time to do so. Once you’ve got your manuscript down, go through it and try to break it down into chapters. This will make it much easier for you to organize your thoughts and move between ideas.
From there, you can decide whether you want to write a partial or full-length book. If you go for the latter, take care to plan out how much content you want to include. Most self-publishing platforms allow you to set a word count for your book, and you should stick to it. If you go above and beyond your word count, your ebook will almost certainly be rejected by the distributor, as it will have breached its terms and conditions. Most ebook distributors will only work with established authors, so keep that in mind if you want to reach a wider audience.
2. Set Up The Technical Backing
Now that you’ve got your manuscript ready, it’s time to think about the technical aspects of publishing your ebook. To do this, you need to set up a website where you can store your book and gain access to the tools you need to publish it. It’s a good idea to establish a separate domain for your site. Having a.com address at the end of your website’s URL will make it much easier for people to find you online.
When publishing a traditional print book, an editor would look at your manuscript, point out the good bits, and suggest changes to make it more readable. With a digital book, this is much easier to do. Simply review the book on your phone or tablet and make notes of things you want to change or improve upon. Once you’ve got these ideas, it’s time to put them to good use.
3. Get Feedback
The final step before you start the actual distribution of your book is to seek feedback. While you may believe that your ideas and opinions are unique, that may not be the case. Your book will almost certainly be picked up by others who are also trying to achieve their goals, so you may find that your book is not entirely unique after all. In which case, what you need is someone who is objective enough to give you an honest assessment of your work. To find this person, you can ask a trusted friend or family member to read through your book and give you their feedback. You can also seek out a writer’s workshop or online class where you can get feedback from other students on your writing.
Ebook Distribution: The Final Step
Once you’ve got your technical aspects of publishing your ebook sorted, it’s time to move onto the last step: distribution. This is when you want to actually get your ebook into the hands of your readers. For this, you can use a variety of platforms to distribute your ebook to readers, including Google Play, Apple Books, and Amazon Kindle. To get started, simply follow the instructions below for your chosen platform:
- For Google Play, simply go to your Google Play Console (https://play.google.com/), log in, and then select My Books from the sidebar.
- For Apple Books, go to the Apple Books store (https://store.apple.com/), log in with your Apple ID, and then select My Books from the top menu.
- For Amazon Kindle, go to your Amazon Kindle store (https://www.amazon.com/kindle), log in with your Amazon ID, and then select My books from the left side menu.