Create an eBook: Write, Design, and Publish an eBook From Scratch

1. Welcome to the Course: Hey there, my name is Lauren and I'm so excited that you're here and that you choose me to help you on this journey. Here's a quick background about myself. I have started and grown multiple online businesses from scratch in various niches. I've grown Pinterest accounts that YouTube accounts, email lists, you name it to over a 100 thousand subscribers and followers. I've started a podcast. I've also earned a full-time income. This allowed me to quit my full-time job. I've traveled the world and work from cafes from South America to Europe to Asia all while working on my online business. And just so you know that I'm not some internet unicorn, I actually used to be a tax accountant before I started exploring the online business world. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I first started. So it's totally okay if you're brand new to this, I will walk you through everything. Now, this course is going to be perfect for you if you want to learn how to create your very first e-book. Now whether that's for a lead magnet for your email list or a full eBook that you can actually share with your audience. There is no design or riding experience required for this class. In this class, you're going to learn how to create your own beautiful ebook from scratch. Generate topics and ideas before you get started. Identify your target market so you know exactly who you're offering this to. Plan, outline, and write your content, edit and format your e-book, design, an eye-catching cover. Make your e-book available on Amazon and other marketplaces. Create a landing page for your e-book, share and promote it with your audience and get feedback and reviews and so much more. As you can see, we have a lot to cover. So let's get started. 2. Why Write an eBook: Hey there, I want to ask you something before we get started. Why are you here? What I mean by that is, why do you want to create an e-book? Now it's important to give this some thought to identify your purpose and let it stick with you throughout this process. Because rule number one for creating any kind of content is to create content with a purpose. No one wants to read your word, vomit, even if you have a way with words, If it doesn't ultimately serve a purpose for them. And we really want to focus on the purpose and the end goals for them, your audience. Because your purpose could simply be to just make money. But honestly, that alone isn't going to sell your e-book. And it's not going to make people really like it or make them love it so much that they want to read more and they want to leave you reviews without asking. If you want those things, you need to focus on what's in it for them. And really just always putting that value first. But let's take it back to you for just a second. Now, why are you writing an e-book? Here are a few good reasons why you might want to write an e-book. Number one, you want to create a paid product for your audience. Number two, you want to wait to reach your audience on a deeper level. Number three, you just want to create a free e-book to use as a lead magnet or some kind of free giveaway or bonus. Number four, you aren't sure yet, but you want to explore the potential for your business. Now, all of these are really great reasons. I create an eBook as my very first paid product for my business. But I've also created quite a few free ones for other uses in my business as well. E-books are so versatile and they really can be a really great way to write new content or even re-purpose or re-package existing content. Whatever your reason is. I'm so glad you're here. And now that we've talked about you for a second, let's focus on what's really important means to the end and satisfying your audience. Throughout this course, remember to always keep your audience in mind. First and foremost, what do they want? What do they need? Whatever it is that you're writing, you're likely solving that problem that your reader has in one way or another. So focus on that problem and solving those needs throughout this whole writing process. Now I'll dive a little bit deeper into that perspective a bit later on in the course. For now, I just wanted to set the tone a little bit before we actually get started. Now in the next lesson, I'm going to share some tips with you on how to set proper goals so that you can create your e-book as quickly and efficiently as possible. 3. Set Goals for Your eBook: Hey, there, do you want to know what the worst part about this process is? Honestly, just how long it can take. You have ideas, you want to put them out there. But we often get hung up in the setup, the creation process, the overwhelm and the doubt that maybe nobody's going to want this thing that I'm creating any way. Welcome to product creation. You are creating a product, whether this is something that you will sell or whether it's something that you're going to offer for free. It's still a product if you're creating it for yourself and no one else than maybe some of this isn't going to apply. But I'm going to assume that you're pointing to share it with others. Now, one of my biggest productivity tips for getting work done faster is just to eat, live, and breathe until the thing is done. I'm personally not want to take too many breaks. I like to just put my head down and don't lift it until the thing is done because it really leaves absolutely no time for procrastination. I even simplify my meals during this time and reduce any other activity that just serves as a distraction, including my personal life and some relationships. Now I don't want to give you any bad advice here, but what I really mean is just to prioritize this above all else, if you can and if getting this done quickly matters to you. In addition to that, it can sometimes be helpful to set goals. I'll be honest because I'm really not a big goal setter myself. But that's because I'm pretty disciplined when it comes to getting work done for my business. I don't know. Maybe it's the inner accountant and me to type a person. But I do think that setting some basic goals can really help you go a long way here. Now, these goals can be flexible and definitely subject to change as long as you do respect them and prioritize them appropriately. So for example, if you set a goal to create your e-book in one month, and then you create a plan with smaller goals each week to get you there on time. You can absolutely do this. And I have seen my students do it that quickly. But if you sit the same goal for six months and you create a plan with smaller goals to get you there in that time. That same task is going to take you six months. This is called Parkinson's Law, and our work basically expands to fill the time that we allot for it to take. So here's where you need to do set goals with deadlines to complete a task. And then break this down into smaller subtasks with additional deadlines if necessary. Daily and weekly goals on which part of the process you want to complete and when. Writing goals to make sure that you stay on track and get the bulk of your work done in a timely manner. And definitely don't be afraid to be aggressive with your timelines and your goals. It's okay if you don't make those initial deadlines, as long as you are working hard on it and prioritizing it, you're gonna get this done faster no matter what. Okay, That's really it. That's my big goal. Speech. Just keep it pretty simple. 4. Identify Your Target Market: Hey, there, it's really important to identify who you are trying to reach before you start writing. The worst thing that you can do is put some generic content out there for the masses. Competition is gonna be sky high and your e-book won't stand out in any way. I want to ask you this question. Who are you trying to reach with your e-book? Just think about it for a second. Is it men? Fathers? Young fathers, single young fathers, working young fathers? Young fathers with a pug. Okay. No, that's the step too far. It's too narrow, but I think that you get the idea. Now, let's take it a step further and answer this question for me or for yourself rather. Who is your ideal customer? Because really narrowing down on this, who this person is and what they're actually feeling. That is going to be the secret sauce to your success. Think about this person. How old are they? Are they working or they money conscious or the budget? What problems are they struggling with when it comes to the topic that you're talking about? What obstacles are they facing when they're trying to reach their goals. For example, young couples with a new puppy, maybe they are 25 to 40 years old, financially independent, perhaps with a kid or two. They don't have enough patients. They don't have enough time. They probably have a full-time job already. They've been taught the wrong methods and they've tried puppy training school and it isn't working out for them. Dog is too old, maybe it's a rescue dog. This is important to note that you can focus your content and communication and your marketing on this particular person. When you buy a product or read an article, you generally trust it a lot more when you know it's written specifically with you in mind. When you're reading an article or watching a video on how to train your dog, you're gonna be more likely to seek out the ones that are about treating the same type of dog that you have for hate, whether it's hair, dieting, relationship advice, etc. You're going to want information from the people that you can relate to as much as possible. Now, it's okay if you don't know all of this information right away. Sometimes we do just have to guess until we know our audience a little bit better. But it's helpful to try to have this in mind from the very beginning and you're generally going to be more successful faster if you can. So either way, just think about it. Now, I didn't know right away. And I took the opposite approach to this, throw everything up with a wall and see what sticks. It worked eventually, but it took me one field blog in a few months of trial and error in the red to figure it out. I've also tried to revamp one of my e-books and make it way better. Honestly, it was so much better or so I thought. But it turns out that my audience did not agree. After testing it out for three weeks and watching my sales absolutely plummet, I had to completely reverse all of my changes and swap it back out with the original old version. That was just one example of when I thought that I had an idea that would work better. And honestly I forgot who my audience truly was and what they were interested in. I got way too focused on what I thought was better. This is an extremely important part of your journey to success with your e-book. 5. Generate Topics and Ideas: Hey there, this is a pretty important lesson. What is your e-book and to be about, maybe already have some idea, but it's important to narrow down your topic to some extent. We don't want to market to the masses, remember? So let's talk about how to generate ideas and then narrow down your topic. Let's say that you're in the niche of home and plants and you want to write an e-book related to plant care. Here are a few different ways that you can frame this. The Ultimate Guide to house plants. This is the way that I started with an ultimate guide type of ebook on yoga poses. New plant parent. This is the beginner angle and the alliteration doesn't hurt how to house plant. And then you can tag on anything that you want in this title related to beginners keeping plants alive, et cetera, house plant journal and logbook. This one is a bit more interactive because of the journal aspect, you can record your plant care. Caring for killer plants. This is a narrowed down topic just for carnivorous plants. Stupid, simple plant care. Even you can keep these plants alive. This is an angle for all those people like myself who suck at keeping plants alive. Now here are a few different ways that you can narrow down this topic. Even further. Focus on succulent plants for healthy and clean air in your home. Plants that require very little sunlight and care plans for the busy people who don't have time for plants. Advanced plant care. Maybe you actually do know what the heck you're doing. Propagating plants and growing them in water. Plant aquariums, plants for herbs and medicine, reporting plants. You can see that there are thousands of different directions that you can go here. And this is a very important step because sometimes you'll realize that you, what you thought might be one eBook could actually be two or even three e-books. Now, here are a few really interesting takes that I found on this particular topic. So you can have some ideas of how you can put a more unique spin on this green witchcraft, discovering the magic of plants, which is plant log. Yes, another which reference can you tell that my Harry Potter fan house plant warrior, the syllables 40 resilient house plants for new plant parents. Sometimes I wet my plants verilog journal. Now those are just a few ways that you could stand above the crowd rather than creating yet another generic e-book on carrying for your house plants. Because there are already 5 thousand plus results on Amazon for this. But you know how I actually got these ideas. I did some basic research on Amazon just to get some inspiration and some ideas on what was possible and what direction that I could go with this topic. This is really just a brainstorming session here. Now it also helps to write these down while you're still mulling over all these options. And PS, if you already have an audience, you can actually send out a survey to ask your audience exactly what they're interested in. You can ask them what broader topics they might be interested in or brainstorm a few of your own ideas and ask them to rate them from most to least favorite. Now I'll talk a bit more about serving your audience in which software companies I use later on in this course. Then when you have your overall topic, think about whether it makes sense to narrow down this topic at all. This reduces the overall potential audience for your topic, but it also reduces the overall competition. Narrowing down your topic will help you create a more focused and targeted audience and attract the right people to your e-book. Now, remember to also narrow down the problem that you're solving with this e-book. When I created mine on yoga poses, it wasn't just the ultimate guide, the yoga poses that would have been way too broad. Instead, I focused on weight-loss because that's what my clients for my health blog, we're all interested in weight loss. So this was the angle that I chose. Now, hopefully you already have some kind of an idea of what your audience is interested in and how you might be able to narrow down this topic. But if not, another way that you can try narrowed this down a bit further as to do little bit of keyword research. And that's what we're gonna talk about in the next lesson. 6. Basic Keyword Research: Hey, I want to start off this lesson by saying that keyword research may or may not be important to you during this process. It actually depends on how you plan to market your e-book or bring traffic to it. If you already have an audience, Congrats, that's one of the hardest parts about running an online business. In that case, you may or may not need keyword research because you already have an audience of people to sell or share your e-book with. But if you are planning to show your e-book on a platform like Amazon or any other kind of marketplace. Or if you just want to have some chance of getting this e-book found in search results, then keyword research is gonna be more important to you. Now, I'm not going to dive into great detail here, but I think that's some basic keyword research is worth exploring and it could give you some additional ideas for the title and have pi1 of your e-book. So after you brainstorm some basic topics, it's time to turn those topics into actual keywords. Using a keyword research tool will help you figure out which keywords are more competitive or easier to rank for and suggests alternative keywords that will be easier to rank for. Now they also do a whole lot more outside of that, are outside of the purposes of writing an e-book and what we're going to look for now. But if you're looking for ways to market your e-book, creating content related to your epoch can be really helpful. The keyword research tool can also help you find related keywords that are helpful to include in your content. And also show you things like which articles are currently ranking for specific keywords. Again, that's diving deeper into the marketing of your product, which I will discuss in a bit more detailed later on in this course. For now, let's just focus on looking for some basic keywords to get some ideas for the content of your e-book and your title. Now, the key with basic keyword research is to find keywords that aren't too competitive but also aren't so obscure that no one else is searching for them. The highest difficulty keywords will also have the highest volume of searches and the highest level of competition. Now I don't want to discourage you from these keywords. And like I said, if you already have an audience already, this may not matter as much. But going after some less competitive keywords is also a really good way to narrow down your topic a little bit more. For example, indoor house plants is a really popular and very competitive keyword. Consider instead starting off with some low to medium difficult to keywords. When you view related keyword ideas, you can see that indoor house plant vines and indoor house plant pests have fewer searches, but much easier difficulty scores. These are often keywords or phrases that have more words in them and are called medium or long tail keywords. The key is to find a balance here. And if you are creating content to market your e-book, you'd want to create a variety of articles with various and somewhat related keywords. Now there's no perfect strategy here and you want to find a balance between what the data is showing you and what keywords or phrases are important for your audience. So numbs your articles or your eBook title will never have a chance that ranking in search. And that's okay if you already have an audience or if you have other reasons for creating your e-book. Now, keyword research tools can be really expensive, especially the best ones that you'd be the most data. But there are still some free options and I will include those free to check out the link to other resources in the description area. After you've done a little bit of keyword research, it's time to come up with a title and headline for your e-book, which is what I'll talk about next. 7. Create a Title and Headline: Okay, Now that you've done some basic keyword research into your topics and keywords and hopefully narrow down some of those. It's time to come up with a title and headline for your e-book. This step is really important and it's one that a lot of people underestimate. But people really do judge books by their covers and their titles. Think about when you're scrolling through books on Amazon, you tend to slow down or stop when a cover or title catches your eye. One of my biggest tips here is to use as much real estate as you're given. This means ideally utilizing all the space that you're given and creating a title that is on the longer side. But this is why we're also going to create a headline here. Because you can have a shorter title as long as you also include a headline with it that provides some extra detail. Ideally, your eBook title should accomplish the following. Number one, be descriptive of what your book is about. Obviously, someone should know exactly what it's about by the title alone number to let them know exactly what they're going to accomplish with this e-book. So whether this is to keep their plants from dying or help them lose weight. Think about that problem that you're solving and ideally identify it in the title somewhere. Something else that you can do and should add here if it's applicable, is a time limit. If your e-book will help them accomplish something in a certain amount of time. That's another great way to make your title stand out and identify expected results from the get-go. For example, lose £20 in a month though the savings of $10 thousand in one year. This won't apply to everyone, but it can be a great way to present the problem in solution if you're able to, then number three, let them know exactly who this book is. Four. So if there are any other identifying factors about your audience like their age, gender, experienced level with the topic, or other demographics. That can be a really great and helpful way to let your audience know that this is for them and they are in the right place. Okay, Now that was a lot, right? Number one is obligatory. It needs to be very apparent what your book is about that is non negotiable. Number two and number three aren't as important, and you may choose to prioritize only one of these. That's totally okay. I personally think that making sure that the problem at hand is abundantly clear is the most important. But you may also accomplish that with a descriptive part. So that's, that's okay. I know that this is a lot to put into a title. And when I say title here, I really mean title and headline. When you look at books on Amazon, you'll see that the written titles are very long, but the actual titles on the books, or sometimes a bit smaller, but with the headline. Here's an example. Let's say that my eBook title is stop sucking at succulents. I've already identified that my e-book is about succulents, a specific type of plant that is going to solve the problem of not being able to take care of your second one's better. So I've accomplished number one and number two, just with that short title. Plus I'm gonna give myself bonus points here for the alliteration. That always makes your title a bit catchier and easier to remember. But my title isn't complete. I'm also going to add a headline to further clarify what my book is about or who it's for. Stop sucking. It succulents the three-step succulent success system. This is another way just to add a unique identifier to my title and let them know what they can expect to accomplish. Or I could also say stop so I can get succulents. Beginner's guide to succulent care at home. This identifies that this e-book is for a beginner experienced level and also for succulent in your home. Now, there are a lot of buzzwords or power words that you can use to beef up your title is a bit. Some phrases like the ultimate guide, foolproof, proven plan, hidden truth, complete blueprints demystified. There are a lot. So I've included a PDF in the resources area that includes some prompts and some additional tips that you can use to help create your title and your headline. Remember to use the keywords in the title where you can. And then if you're gonna be sharing your e-book on a large platform like Amazon. These keywords and search phrases are what will help people find the title of your book. 8. Length and Structure: Hey there, We're getting closer to the meat and bones of this and actually writing your e-book, I promise these earlier steps of planning and research are really important because if you have a really clear idea of where you're going and what you're doing. You're actually going to be able to get the writing part done so much faster and so much better. So let's talk about the length and structure of your eBook. There's a general rule that is often true sometimes but not always. And that is that length implies string generally does. And people want to know that they got their money's worth out of something. If you don't provide enough information or your e-book isn't long enough and it's something that they paid for. They might be a little bit resentful about it. But on the flip side, if you add too much fluff just to hit a 100 pages or 500 pages or some other arbitrary number. People really aren't going to appreciate that very much either. I know that when I wrote my first e-book and it was a paid product, I was aiming for a 100 pages. And it was really just because of the overall structure of my ebook and the information I was including. It was also a good marketing point to add to my sales pages as well. But really you shouldn't focus too much on lengthier. You should focus more on delivering the right amount of value to your reader. Think about what you feel is the right amount of value for a book like this. We're almost to the point where we're going to start writing our outline. And you'll be able to narrow down this a little bit more. But you can do some research into some more e-books and see how some other people's compare, see how long they are. But the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because some e-books are selling for $15 and there are a 100 pages and some are selling for the same amount that are 400 pages. It really depends on what you're including in your e-book, how you structure it, whether you include photos or other supplemental material, et cetera, et cetera. Start thinking about the overall structure now, will you include any photos in your e-book? Sometimes this is very much necessary and desired by consumers, like with e-books on plants or recipes, but sometimes it's not at all necessary. So the case with e-books on dating or relationships, will you include any kind of supplemental material? For example, when I created my first e-book about yoga, I included printable workout cards in the back. It was just another great thing that I could mark it all my sales pages that also made my e-book a bit more unique and desirable. So the supplemental types of material could be checklists, printable, guide, log books, journals, any other kind of worksheets. I also want you to start thinking about the structure in terms of the division and delivery of this information. So you have standard chapters in your e-book or will you separate it into parts or modules or some other identifying divider? Again, a book about dating advice could be structured very differently than a book about plants are recipes. Now, there's no right or wrong answer here, and that's part of the beauty about writing your eat your own e-book. You can totally do this in whatever style that you want. And I do encourage you to think outside the box here because you don't have to fit into this traditional box of the book writing. And sometimes it's better not to. You can, and you should make yours very different. Think about what you would appreciate from an e-book like this and moving what might be missing from some other of the mainstream competitors. Keep all this in mind as we start preparing to write our outline and fill it in. Now in the next lesson, we're going to dive a little bit deeper and talk about your writing style and your voice. 9. Writing Style and Voice: Hey there, let's dive a little bit deeper into the structure of your e-book and talk about your writing style and voice. Some of this is related to formatting, but I want to talk about here first because it may impact how you write. I personally like to write in the style that I want my readers to see. For me. That means much shorter paragraphs. And I'm pretty good about correcting all of my grammar along the way. Type a, remember, sometimes I even add images or other supplemental material along the way. I really just like to have the full picture of how my audience is going to see something as I'm writing it. But my business partner was the complete opposite. He would just word vomit on the page for hours with tons of grammatical mistakes. And it would look no way, shape, or form like the finished product. So I encourage you to do whatever feels right for you. There's no wrong or right way to do it. Just remember what I said in the last lesson that this can look whatever you want it to. So when it comes to the body, the content, I prefer to write very much into smaller paragraphs, like one or two sentences long bar than big chunky paragraphs like you see in some traditional writing. I also personally like to bold more important words and sentences every so often just to make the text more readable and easier on the eyes. I think that it helps my e-book stand out against the sea of others and just makes information a lot easier to read and digest. But this may or may not work for you and your writing style and the information that you're sharing. This can obviously vary greatly between fiction and non-fiction workout books, recipes, et cetera. Speaking about the different types of books, There's something else that I want you to think about here. What point of view is your e-book going to be? Is it going to be fiction or nonfiction? Well, your e-book be more like a personal story or journey or we aim to sound more like a professional. Now my personal advice and style is do some combination of personal and professional. People want to know why you're qualified to teach them on a particular subject. And then doesn't necessarily mean just sharing your credentials, although you showed if you have them. But another way to share that you're qualified is to share your experiences. And that's where this personal perspective really comes into play here. So think about all of this when you start writing and in the next lesson I'm going to dive a bit deeper into the personal perspective and then we're going to start actually outlining our e-book. 10. A/B Perspective: Okay, So this is actually a bonus lesson straight from my content writing class. I highly recommend that you go to that class too, if you haven't already. Because obviously writing e-book is a form of content writing. So it's really relevant to what you're learning here. Okay, so I wanted to share one of my biggest marketing seekers with you. Right now. This is something that I discovered on my journey towards connecting better with my audience, marketing butter, and selling better. Let's talk about this concept that I call the AB perspective. I'm going to illustrate first with an example of how it applies to weight loss because that's the nice that I have experienced in your clients and readers are at a point a, they haven't fixed their problems yet. They're still trying to lose weight and not succeeding. They often don't know why they can't succeed or don't understand the full picture. They're overweight. You're at a point B, you fixed your problems. You've lost the weight and you've succeeded. You most likely know how you've succeeded. You most likely know why you've succeeded in do understand the full picture. You are no longer overweight. You can share your before and after photos of yourself now. And some people will find that very inspirational and it's often necessary for credibility. But it will do little more than to give them some brief inspiration that will probably wear off pretty quickly. It's not super relatable because there's still overweight. They can imagine what that might feel like when they reach that goal, but they don't truly feel anything about it. So what are they feeling? Well, chances are, you know, because you've been in their shoes in the past. What did you feel like when you were overweight and nothing was working? That is the point, a perspective. If you can share those personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, stories, struggles, and experiences in the point, a perspective as it applies to them. That is what is going to hook them. You are connecting to how they feel now and showing them the path out. Try to put yourself into this point, a perspective as much as possible. This also honestly applies to so many other aspects, aspects of your business communications, including your articles, your other content, your emails, your products, your sales pages, and really every other place where marketing applies. Reliability is honestly everything here. 11. Create Your eBook Outline: Hey, there, are you ready to start writing? The first step in making your e-book come alive with actual words is creating a good outline. This is something that has helped me tremendously with both my e-books and my online courses. Actually, I also start without ones when I'm writing my articles. Creating an outline or overview of what you want to say. The helps you to make sure that your end product is organized and includes everything that you want to say. Ideally without going off on too many tangents or including anything that isn't really important or relevant. Now you can organize your outline and whatever way that you like. But here's my suggestion on some of the basic items that you should include here. Number one is your title and your headline at the top. Number two is your individual chapters, modules, parts or sections. You can break this down however you want and call these chapters or whatever you want. They don't have to be chapters. You can also just break down your e-book by parts or sections and identify them by different headings. Make sure to put in a placeholder in your outline for an introduction and a conclusion. Once I get all my major headlines in sections in place for everything that I want to cover, I start actually drilling down on the main points I want to cover in each section. This is when you can start adding subheadings within each section. Now, this part is totally optional. You may want to write a more traditional book style with a bunch of paragraphs within each chapter and no subheadings at all. I think that that definitely still works really great for fiction type of content. But personally think that it's a bit old school for nonfiction content, or most content outside of fiction novels, I prefer to have a very easily identifiable and organize content with subheadings and sub-topics within each section. It helps me when I'm writing and it's also a type of content that I personally prefer to read. So I can easily start and stop whenever I want or revisit those important topics again. Now I also add colors to my outline because I'm just that type a person. And it keeps me organized and I liked it. It looks nice. And that's pretty much it. Your outline can totally be subject to change. Sometimes when you start writing, you'll realize that other things that you want to include or rearrange and whatnot. That's why I personally like to start writing straight from my outline, is as simple as just filling out each section and subsection of your outline. I personally think that it's just a bit less intimidating than starting out with a blank piece of paper. It's easier to take breaks and pick up where you left off. Now, you can make notes when you want to add placeholders for images or other supplemental information. I like to highlight the parts that I want to revisit later just we don't lose track of them. If you want to write straight from your outline, you might want to also make a copy of your original outline just that you always have it to refer back to that easy high-level overview. In the next section, I'm going to give you some of my best writing tips to help you keep motivated and get this part done as quickly and less time consuming as possible. 12. Start Writing + Writing Tips: Hey there, the writing part is really up to you and it's going to look different for each individual person based on their writing style and their audience's needs. Let's talk for a minute about where your writing. I personally have written my e-books, right in Microsoft Word. Google Docs is also a great alternative. My first e-book was 100 pages, so it made sense to write it in a document software. But the smaller e-books that I created for bonus content or lead magnets for my e-mail list were all created directly in Canva. They look way better in InDesign software, but it also takes so much longer to create them. And the software can get a bit finicky when you add upwards of 30 plus pages. I wouldn't recommend that unless you're creating a smaller e-book. You can check the class, resources, and description for a link to that software and everything else that I mentioned in this course. Either way, it's often easiest to start out and just writing a document software like Word or Google Docs. Next, I want to give you a few tips. My best writing tips to think about. Number one is to do what you can to get in your writings zone. You want to write well, and you want to write quickly. Ideally, I'm assuming that you don't want to stretch things out for longer than they really need to be. Whether it is headphones on and focus playlist or complete silence. What do you like to work from a cafe or just in your home office? Do whatever you can to get in the zone and eliminate all distractions. That one's pretty obvious, but it's worth mentioning for those of you that don't have a lot of writing experience, or even just writing on a larger scale like this. Number two was to write like you're talking to a friend or a colleague. We tend to want to talk like professionals to illustrate what we know, what we're talking about. But in order to achieve that relate ability that I talked about, you really need to take this down a notch and make the atmosphere more comfortable and familiar for your reader. Be open and be honest. Even be vulnerable if it applies to the situation. That is how connections are built. Then at number three, it, my third tip is to remember that your reader is on a level one and you're often speaking from a level ten. Remember that you have the full picture. You're likely sharing information about problems that you have already personally solved, that you've got it all figured out. And we tend to forget some of the smaller nuances that our readers are still getting hung up on. We tend to skip over some parts that we know aren't necessary or important, but that does not mean that those things aren't important or necessary to the reader at that time. Even when we try to write at a level one, we honestly often still land somewhere around five or six. So remember what we talked about in the lesson on AB perspective. Your reader, is it a point to a level one and you're at a point b of level ten. So do your best to put yourself in their shoes while you're trying to connect with them in your writing. Now I think that this is also a really good time to set some goals. Create a goal that you will complete a certain amount of chapters or sections per day, or some kind of overall goal. How much that you'll complete by the end of the week. So not just for me, I just give myself a time limit. For example, I'm going to work for four hours of every day and then I will allow myself to work on other projects or aspects of my business after that. Remember that this is a very exciting thing. You are creating something out of nothing, out of your mind and your heart. And it is going to be so awesome. So learn it, appreciate this process a bit and know that you are going to feel like a million bucks when you reach the finish line. 13. Photos and Other Visuals: Hey, there, Let's talk about photos and other visuals in your e-book. Do you need them? Do you want them? This depends on a few factors. The first is what kind of e-book you're creating. Now if this is recipes or plants or crafts or any other kind of information that is visually stimulating or super-helpful to have photos along with it, you definitely need to include some photos. If your book is about dating advice or dog training like German Shepherds, it's probably not as important, but photos can still be a really great way to break up the text. And it also depends on where the person is consuming your content. If you're distributing your content mainly on Amazon or in a Kindle or e-reader format. You probably don't want to have too many photos in there unless they're absolutely necessary to illustrate a concept. Because photos often get caught off weird on these e-reader devices and they don't generally have any color anyway. But if you're distributing your e-book in a downloadable PDF format, I would definitely suggest adding some photos. It'll be just a really great way to break up the text. And it can just generally make your e-book look a lot nicer, more professional, like you put more effort into it. There really isn't a right or wrong answer here, and it just depends a lot on the factors above and especially what type of content you're writing. So check the resources, area and description in this class for some really great recommendations on where you can find at great photos. Also feel free to take your own photos if you want. Personal photos, if taken really well, can be a really great way to personalize your content. You can also create graphs, graphics, and other type of personalized and unique content that you can add this as supplemental information to your e-book. This can be the form of organized plans, journals, worksheets and set, et cetera. These are really great bonuses to add your e-book and you can also advertise them on your sales page. You can add them just to the end of your e-book or include them as a separate download with your e-book. Next, we're going to talk more about supplemental information in the form of links and resources for your e-book. 14. Links and Other Resources: Hey, there. Sometimes you might want to share additional content or resources with your reader. For example, some health writers recommend certain supplements to their readers. Or some plant enthusiasts might want to recommend certain tools that they discussed that they use on a regular basis. Sometimes you just want to include links to direct someone to your personal websites. They can look and see more about your business and what you're all about. And there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to do this, as I have learned from a lot of personal experience. So you've heard me mentioned a few times that you can check out the resources and description area of this class for my recommendations. Now, there is a very good reason why I don't tell you right here, right now exactly what those resources are. The biggest reason why I do that is because my recommendations are subject to change. I learned the hard way to be very careful about what information that you put in your content, especially your eBooks, to your online programs or courses that is highly subject to change. Because if it does change, you have to go in and update all of that content and it's just a pain because then you have to export and publish it again or re-record an entire video just for one sentence change. And you have to update that on whatever platform you're sharing it on. In my case, I recommend a lot of different software products for keyword research, creating images that website hosting, etc. I try to find free options for my students whenever possible and cost-effective options when those free options don't exist. But I don't talk about my specific recommendations because they do change from time to time when a free plan isn't free anymore, or a new software in the market is cheaper and better. I strive to only recommend what I personally use and have used and what I think is best for my audience. And those recommendations do change from time to time. So rather than having to update every single lesson or chapter and an eBook when something changes. I just changed the recommendations on my linked resources. It's one place and one much easier update. So long story short, if you want to include any kind of supplemental resources with your e-book, you might want to consider compiling a list of resources, adding it to your website, and then linking that resources list in your e-book whenever you recommend or mentioned those supplemental resources, take a look at my recommended resources page when you check out the recommendations for this class, just to get an idea of how this is done. 15. Edit Your eBook: Hey there congrats on finishing the toughest part. Hopefully you've finished writing your e-book, or at least for the most part. In editing process, you'll often find mistakes or decide that you want to reward or change something. But the bulk of the work is still over and that is a huge accomplishment in itself. Now it's time to edit your e-book. First, I recommend actually just taking a break from your content for a day or two before you start editing. It's important to give yourself a mental break and start the editing process with a clear and more objective mine. Sometimes when we read over our own work, we tend to skim through it really quickly or even skip over our mistakes entirely because we know what it's supposed to say. This doesn't mean that you have to stop work on your project entirely though. You can always start to work on a different part of the project, like creating your cover or designing your landing pages. These are more creative tasks that require a different part of your brain. So do feel free to skip ahead to those lessons if you want to give yourself a day break or two before you start editing. But when you are ready to start editing, the first thing that you wanna do is to actually just use a grammar tool to help you catch the most basic and obvious mistakes very quickly. This will save you a ton of time and you won't have to go through the entire content to find those mistakes herself. There's a really great free tool that I use for this. And you can actually just install it as a browser extension or upload your document to check for mistakes. So check the class resources and description area for all the tools that I recommend in this class, including that one. Now after you run it through a grammar checker, it's time to read the thing yourself. This can be quite a bit time-consuming, especially if your e-book is pretty long, but it's really important. You might want to take some breaks throughout this, every now and then just to give your brain and your eyes a break. Now, I also like to do some basic formatting on this as I'm editing just to vary up the work a little bit. So you aren't just straight reading for so long. I personally get bored reading a lot of my own content. As I'm reading through my content, I also like to make sure that my headings look nice and then my paragraphs for space really well. Sometimes I do add my photos or other visuals and materials throughout this process. Basically, I start to finalize it. But the point is you will end up having to go through your first draft at least a couple of times before it looks more like a finished product. Because after you do your first round of edits and you add other content or photos, you're still going to have to go back through it again to make sure everything looks and reads really well to your reader. Then it's time to put on some finishing touches like your table of contents, page numbers, et cetera, which is what we'll talk about in the next lesson. 16. Format Your eBook: Okay, you may have already done some of the formatting in editing process, as I mentioned in the previous lesson. But you still need to do a few things before you put your seal of approval on this thing and it's ready to export. Now, if your e-book is going on Amazon or some other marketplace, These instructions are going to be a little bit different. So make sure to check out the lesson on preparing your e-book for Amazon. The rest of the instructions in this lesson we'll be for anybody that's creating a PDF version of their e-book that will be available outside of Amazon and not specifically formatted for Kindle or other e-readers. First, you need to add page numbers to your e-book. If you have written your e-book in Word or Google Docs, you can look up the settings on how to add page numbers. Just add them to the bottom right or the middle of the page, wherever you would expect them to be. Now that you identify your different sections and content by page numbers, it's time to add a table of contents to the beginning of your e-book. Now, if your e-book is less than 15 pages, this probably isn't necessary. But if it's longer than that, it definitely is necessary. And it also just looks nice and professional. For now, we're just going to add basic table of contents. You can format this however you want, but make sure to make it on a separate page of your document. Now, if you're going to export your PDF straight from Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You could also consider adding a header or footer to your page. You could add some color of Business logo, acute image or something else to make your PDF look really nice, you can experiment a bit with a different templates provided within the document software or create your own. Now this part is optional, but I like to customize mine a bit just to make them look a little bit nicer. One other thing that you can consider here is whether you want to add any legal statements to your e-book. For example, you should add a copyright statement to protect your work from copyright infringement. You can use a simple statement like this. Copyright year published, your name or business name, all rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except as permitted by US copyright law. Now if you don't live in the US or you're distributing your book outside of the US. You may want to look into what the copyright law is in your home country, but it's important to have this basic protection on your work. The other thing to consider here is whether or not you might need to add a disclaimer to your work. A general disclaimer basically just states that the work is for informational purposes only and that you were not responsible for the actions that people take from reading your work. For example, if you write an e-book about fitness and working out and then someone does your provide a workout and they break their leg. I disclaimer generally prevents them from being able to sue you. Or if you provide tips on investing and then someone invest their life savings into the stock market and loses it all. They generally can't sue you for that bad information. Now, you may or may not need this depending on what your e-book is about. It's definitely more important in some niches like the medical and financial field than others. Even recipe books need them due to the handling and potential consumption of certain food products like raw eggs. So I recommend doing a little bit of research here in your nice to see if that's something that you need necessary and if nothing else, just include a general disclaimer that says something along these lines. That's really the bare minimum, but please do some due diligence and research for yourself because of course, I am not a lawyer and can't actually give you any legally binding advice in this regard. Okay, back to formatting. I think that I have covered the basics. This part is really up to you and part of the formatting is really just telling the e-book in whatever way that you want and think as, as aesthetically pleasing. Make sure that your headings and subheadings are big and bold enough to stand out. Make sure that your images look very nice. They're not blurry and they're sized properly to fit on each one of your pages. As you might have to add or restructure content a bit just to make things fit well on the pages without things just getting cut off at the wrong times. But you'll get this part figured out. Just make sure to go over your draft a few times whenever you make changes to make sure that everything still looks good. Because when you add things, other things start to get rearranged. Next, we'll talk about designing the cover for your e-book. 17. Cover Inspiration and Design: Hey there, it's time for the fun part, your cover design. This is also going to be a class project. I'd love to see what you come up with and whenever you're finished with it, or even just a first draft, please upload it to this class so I can take a look. I'm so excited to see what you come up with. Now for the rest of this lesson, I'm going to show you some sample covers and inspiration just to help you get some ideas for when you design your cover. Okay, let's get some inspiration for your e-book cover. First, I'm going to start out by looking through the templates. Canva is awesome because it has all kinds of templates that you can use to get started with. So you can click on any of these covers and actually start creating from this very designed. So if I wanted to click here, it will open up in a new tab and I can start designing my cover with this template. You can change any of the images, texts. You can change the different fonts, the images, everything. And you'll see also over on the left here it will show you some other results as well. So I just loved to go through these templates first just to get some different ideas. Now, I'm just going to go over these briefly, just to give you some ideas for things and really show you some things that I personally think stand out quite a bit. Number one, is that one that I actually just showed you here. This hello, autumn. I like this one a lot because the color scheme is very nice and it's just a very nice clear image. The same with this keto diet here. I would never use this text in this font style because it's very plain. But I love that the image is very big and bright and it's very obvious. Now, it really doesn't matter necessarily. I suppose what I like, It's more about what you like. I'm just going to show you some general over an overview of some designs that I like and why I like them. But you may want to have real photos and your cover. You may want to have cartoons, you may want to have something completely different. It really probably depends on what type of ebook your writing. And of course, you can also use Amazon to get some ideas as well. So I like this travel guide right here, just because it's very simple and it never hurts to have a very simple one, the same with this life stories over here. Perhaps it's a bit too simple, but I do really like it. I love this healthy snacks right here. Again, it's very simple and it just really highlights this image right here. Now you can see when I hover over here that the image is start changing. If we click on this, it also actually has a full set of pages here that you can use as templates as well. Again, you may or may not want to use something like this, but these templates are here for you to use and customize if you want them. So some of the templates have more pages included in them than others. You just have to click through some of the ones that you like just to get an idea and see what's available. Now, this design over here, I know that I definitely see this design quite often on some titles available on Amazon, ones that are more about crime and fiction. But again, just scroll through these and there are literally thousands and thousands of them. Scroll through them just to get a few ideas. And one thing that I like to do is actually to create at least two or three different covers and very different designs. Just to kind of exercise my creative ability a little bit more. And then at the end, choose which ones I like better or even better. You can actually ask them opinions from somebody else just to get a more objective opinion. And that's pretty much it. Y'all, I really highly recommend starting out with these templates just because it's honestly the best way to get started unless you already happened to be a graphic designer. But if you have no experience with graphic design, you have all of these amazing ones already picked out. All you have to do is just change the font style and change the images on them and boom, you're done. Make sure to check out the resources guide, of course, for this course, for the links to these templates in this software. 18. Export and Compile Your eBook: Okay, I hope that you have created an awesome cover for your e-book. Once that is finished, you are ready to finalize and export and compile your e-book. The easiest way to do this is to save your cover as a PDF and export your e-book contents as a PDF as well. There are tons of free PDF tools online that you can use to merge these documents together so they are attached as one file. Once you have your merged file, you should compress this file to reduce the size that takes up less space to store and it's easier for people to download. You can use recommended or extreme compression, but just make sure to look over the PDF again after you're finished. Nums using the highest amount of compression results in too much loss of quality in your images. So you have to be careful there and check over everything after you're done compressing it. I'll include some recommendations to do this in the resources and description area of this class. Okay, now you have a finished product. Your PDF is ready to upload or sell or share or do whatever you want with. I will discuss how you can share your e-book in the next couple of lessons. 19. Share Your eBook: Hey, there, are you ready to share your e-book with the world? There are a variety of ways that you can do this. First of all, you can share your e-book on your website or through any of your own channels like social media. You can sell it or give it away for free as a bonus or lead magnet for your e-mail list. You can create a page to advertise it right on your website or as a separate landing page. This may depend on what website theme you're using and how you set your website up. Because you're going to need some integrations to help you set this up. Now, I'll discuss this in more detail soon when we actually talk about creating your landing pages. It's a bit easier if it's free and offered an exchange for signing up for an email list. That's because you can generally up your upload your e-book directly to your e-mail service provider and have it delivered automatically in a welcome email when people sign up for your email list. Now, if you're in this camp, makes sure that you check out my course on email marketing strategies because the entire course is about creating lead magnets and growing your email list that way. Now the other option is to make your book available on Amazon or similar platforms like nook, iBooks. You can do this whether you want to sell your e-book or offer it for free. The benefit of the major platforms like Amazon is of course that they do drive all of the traffic for you. But they also take a pretty big cut of your earnings because of it. So if you're selling your e-book yourself, you have to put in the work to build an audience and drive the traffic to your e-book, which can be difficult. This can take a lot of time, but you also own a 100% of the profits and congenitally price or e-book at whatever you want and a bit higher. When you sell an Amazon, you're usually pretty limited to the market price of related products. If you want to have any chance of selling your e-book. In addition, Amazon, of course, is super competitive. As you might imagine. One more option that you have is to actually put a book for sale on Amazon and drive your own traffic to that Amazon page. This can work really well too, because Amazon is a really trusted platform and it can help you get some of those initial reviews and traction on your Amazon listing. So as you can see, you have a lot of options here, and they both have quite a few pros and cons attached to them. Now I have personally done both of these. I've opted to sell my e-books myself rather than putting them on Amazon. I did this because they already have my own traffic channels put in place and I could still the e-book for quite a bit higher than it would have been able to on Amazon. But I've also offered a couple of e-books for free on Amazon. I did this specifically to grow an additional traffic channel to funnel my traffic into my e-mail list, website, and other paid products. Now you can choose to do one or both of these options. But if you decide to offer your eBook on Amazon, there's a very specific preparation process involved, and that's what I'm going to talk about in the next lesson. 20. Self-Publish on Amazon: Alright, let's talk about how to self-publish your eBook on Amazon. Oh, and by the way, this is gonna be an Amazon specific guide because it's the biggest platform out there. If you are going this route, I also recommend making your e-book available for sale on noch in iBooks. Check out the additional resources for some links to guides on how exactly to do this on these other platforms. I'm going to walk you through some of the more important aspects of this process. Then I will point you towards some specific resources that will walk you through how to do this exactly step-by-step. The thing is, Amazon is changing these guidelines and standards all the time. So the absolute best way to set this up is to look through their most up-to-date information from Amazon itself. In order to self-publish your eBook on Amazon, you'll need to create an Amazon kVp account. From there you can enter the basic information about your e-book, such as the title, description, author, et cetera. Make sure you take time to write your description and choose your keywords and categories carefully to make sure that your e-book is easily found in search. Once you get through some of the initial settings, it's time to upload your e-book content. This is the part where things can get a little bit tricky because you'll need your e-book to be formatted pretty specifically for Amazon, or you're going to end up getting flagged with errors every time you upload. Now these formatting standards are the ones that are pretty specific and will probably take some tinkering around to get them totally right. Check out the resources and class description area for links to my resources with the Amazon formatting and setup guides. The formatting guide, it will tell you exactly how to set paragraph indentations and line spacing. Format your chapter titles, create your table of contents. This one's pretty specific because it has to provide the user with the ability to jump from the table of contents to the specific section in your e-book. Formatting guide will also show you how to add front and back material like your copyright and legal content that we discussed. In certain format images add page breaks that your pages in Chapter start and end in the right place. I'd hyperlinks and footnotes. And lastly, it will show you how to check for errors, preview your e-book, and upload it. It's a lot, but it's also laid out super carefully and Amazon has tons of help articles and documentation on this. So if you don't understand how to do something, there's usually a link to some additional supporting documentation to help you. Now when you're finished formatting, it's time to upload. You can actually upload your Word or text document directly to Amazon. But sometimes you're careful formatting could end up getting lost in translation. When Amazon converts this to there more, more friendly, more Kindle friendly content. You can certainly try this first and use the Keynote Preview or an Amazon to see how your e-book looks. The other option is to convert it to a better file type before you upload it. And of course, there are a few different ways that you can do this. And you'll see these link throughout the online documentation. One of them is to download Kindle create for Mac and Windows. This software will help you do a lot of the above things a bit faster and easier. Again, there are few different options that you can use here. And this is just one of those things that you're going to have to dive into this step-by-step with these instructions. Really follow them to a T. I'll link the best pages and resources for this in the class description area. So makes sure to preview your e-book before you're finished, just to make sure that everything looks really great on all e-reader devices. Take the time to skim through the entire book from start to finish. From here, follow the rest of the abscissa, set up your book and set your pricing. Now, when it comes to setting the pricing for your e-book, I would recommend staying pretty competitive. Don't go too much above market price for similar or related books in your niche. If anything, you might want to sort of actually a little bit lower than other peoples, just to entice people to start out with your e-book and maybe review it. That's pretty much it. Don't be distraught or discouraged if you publish your e-book and then refresh your account every morning and see no new sales. Amazon is really competitive and it could take time for e-book to get discovered. If ever, if it's been really popular Aneesh, you may actually need to do some of your own sharing and promoting, which is what we'll talk about soon. Next, let's talk about creating a nice landing page outside of Amazon for your e-book. 21. Create a Landing Page: Hey there, it's time to start talking about how you're going to advertise and promote your e-book. The very first step here is to create a beautiful landing page for your new eBook. A page that you can share with your friends and family, your audience that you can put on your website. Really just a high converting page that you can send traffic to. Now if you put your eBook on Amazon, you can certainly direct traffic straight to that page, and you might prefer that to start out with. But alternatively, you can create a dedicated landing page for your e-book where you can explain more about the e-book and designed in a way that might convert a bit better than an Amazon page. You can either sell it straight from this page or you can actually just link the Checkout button to your Amazon page and let them check out there whether e-book is free or paid. You'll want to create a landing page even if it's just for a free e-book because that's how you're gonna get more e-mail subscribers. This is something that I discussed in a lot more detail in my course and how to build an e-mail list. Now there are a number of ways that you can build this landing page. Please make sure to check out those extra resources for this course because I'm going to provide you with all the links are recommendations for how to get all of this setup there with all the different options. Okay? First option one is that you can build your landing page straight on your website. But you do need to make sure that you have really good and customizable theme for this one that allows you to create columns and place elements exactly where you want them. And if you want to sell your e-book, you're also going to need to use a plug-in or integration that works within your website theme to be able to accept those payments that also often require setting up for a payment processor as well, like PayPal or Stripe. The second option is to use your e-mail marketing service. It provides you with this option. The e-mail marketing service that I use and recommend is designed for creators and has this feature actually built into it so you can create a landing page. So your e-book right with that software. Now it can also be used to create a landing page for your e-book if it's a free lead magnet designed to get more e-mail subscribers when you're selling your e-book. In this manner, the landing pages aren't quite as customizable. Unfortunately, although the process is super easy to set up, the winning pages are, however way more customizable if you're setting up your e-book as a free lead magnet. Okay, and then the third option is to use a specific landing page software to sell your e-book. This is external software that specializes in landing pages. Definitely provides the absolute most customizability. But there is usually a low cost attached to it. It's generally not free, although it is, the one that I use is a great software if you can afford it. I've been using it for years. If your budget is of the utmost importance, I definitely recommend starting out with option one or two. Lastly, I want to quickly cover what you should include in this landing page. Here is the basic setup. Number one, start with a big bold title or headline. This could be your eBook title or headline, or it could also be a phrase or a question. Are you ready to or are you struggling with? And then mention the problem that they are going to overcome with your e-book. Introduce yourself and your background and why you're qualified for to help. From here, you could talk a little bit more about the problem. Briefly acknowledge some of the more common ways to tackle the problem that they have likely heard before, or some of the common complaints or problems along the way. Then you can briefly explain why your approach is different. A couple other things I like to add our a brief peek inside. This can be screenshots of pages in your e-book or just an organized listing of exactly what they're going to get or what main sections or chapters are included in your e-book. Then adding some kind of bonus is always a good idea to incentivize people to purchase. You can customize this in any way that you want. And you should certainly add some more info than I used in this example, because I don't actually sell an e-book on succulents. I just created this example and contents just for the demonstration in this course. But these are all really the basic and most important items that I personally use in my own landing pages. Again, it makes sure to check out those resources because I'm going to provide all the links to everything. And you'll also get a link to that sample landing page just so that you can check it out for ideas. Now, in the next lesson, we're going to talk more about how to promote this landing page. 22. Promote Your eBook: Hey there. So now that you've finished your e-book and your landing page, it's time to get people to it. How do you get people in the door? That can honestly be one of the hardest parts about running a business. But maybe if you're here, you already have that. And if so props to you. This lesson isn't necessarily going to be about driving traffic specifically because that's an entire several courses on its own. But I do want to talk to you about the type of content that you can use to create and drop curiosity and interest in your e-book. I call this product focus content. Or you could also call it sales centered content. But it's really just content designed around educating people more about the problem that they're struggling with and the problem that is solved in your e-book. And this works whether you're selling your e-book or whether you're offering it for free as a lead magnet or a bonus. One of the best ways to sell this e-book and degenerate that curiosity and interest is to create content about that particular subject. Content that draws in targeted people and then presents a solution to them. This could be in the form of website articles that YouTube videos, instagram Stories, TikTok videos, podcasts, episodes, et cetera, et cetera. Let's say that we have an e-book on how to keep your cycle and succulents alive. You can create content about how to keep your succulent alive. The ten biggest mistakes new plant owners make. The five most common ways indoor plants die, or unique care for your succulents and on and on. These are all related to the main subject of the e-book. And the aim of all of them is to, number one, educate your audience more about the problem. If you can present it in a new light or give them an a-ha moment, they're more likely to trust you. And number two was to build trust with them. If you provide enough value to them for free, they're going to want to learn more from you. Then number three is to introduce your e-book. Include a small call to action throughout your content and especially at the end. Let them know where and how they can learn more. The more related your content is to your e-book, the more targeted those individuals will be and the more likely they are going to want your e-book. Aside from that. Share it with your friends and your family. Share it with your existing audience. If you have one, maybe include a longe discount for them, or try to look for some online communities that you can share it with. This will hopefully help you get some initial traction and your first bit of feedback and reviews, which is what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. 23. Get Feedback and Reviews: Okay, Now that you've launched your e-book, how do you help it grow? And 61 of the first steps to do this is to get some initial feedback and reviews. Have you had any members of your audience that you can give your e-book too for free and just an exchange for some initial feedback, not a review. That's a great place to start. You wouldn't want to get any negative feedback showing up in your first few reviews. And it's a good way just to see if there are any obvious changes that you need to make or might have overlooked. Another way to get feedback is through surveys. This is something that has personally worked out really well for me in the past. Has biggest surveys are a really great way to get an idea of how well your e-book or product has performed and what improvements, if any, you need to make. If people say it was great, but I wish it had this, then you can simply add that missing information to increase sales and make your customers happier. These are some of the most common questions that I ask. How will your plants are succulents doing, or have you reached your goal weight yet? This is a good place to ask whether they have done the thing that they were supposed to accomplish with your product, whether they have solved that problem. Then I like to ask why or why not. Leave this as an open answers that they can explain. This is a really great place to find out what is still holding them back. Because sometimes it's a problem within your products that you can fix and help them overcome. You can ask them how your product compared to other similar products that they have taken. I'd like to ask this one just to get a general idea of how well they liked my product compared to others. Then lastly, you can ask them what they are most interested in next. Now that they have solved this problem or made it through this step, what's next for them? This can help you get some ideas for additional products or content. Now when it comes to asking people to take the survey, were that their time is very valuable. I send out my surveys after a period of times that they have long enough to work through the product or the e-book. And I usually send them via email with a line-like take the short two-minute surveys that they know that it's a very small ask of their time. Remember to say thank you for your time and let them know that you really appreciate the feedback and then it will help you deliver the best content possible to them. Many surveys software companies provide a free version like Survey Monkey or type form. You're usually fairly limited and what kinds of questions that you can ask, how many responses to that you could receive. But they're usually very sufficient enough to suppose basic questions I've just outlined. Then lastly, let's talk about how to get reviews and testimonials because these are so important to the growth and success of your product. Now if you're an Amazon chopper yourself, which I'm sure that you are, you know why reviews are everything. Now if you're sharing your e-book on your own landing page and not Amazon. This isn't gonna be as important because you probably don't have any kind of five-star comparison system. But even in that case, testimonials and personal reviews of your e-book are still really important because they build trust and they encouraged people to take that leap of faith and purchase your product. So here are a few different ways that you can get reviews and or testimonials. Number one is to offer your audience and extra bonus. You have another small PDF that is somewhat related to your e-book topic that you could offer them. Maybe even something as small as some kind of printable planner. Offering this in exchange for a review or testimonial will help to entice people. You could also offer them a discount on another product of yours if you have one number to another option is to offer them the e-book for free in exchange for a review. But I really don't want to encourage this method. It's a good way to get on authentic and incentivised reviews. And I just generally think that it's bad business. Honestly, you wouldn't want to rely on reviews of other products that you wish to buy in this way. So let's focus on putting some good karma out there in the world and doing this the right way. Number three is ask family and friends to help out. Now, of course, need to be careful with this route too, especially if you are still trying to offer it to them for free in exchange for a review. This road is okay, but you really just need to make sure that you're getting honest and authentic purchases and reviews of your content. Then the fourth option is just to ask and ask. Often, put a note at the end of your e-book that asked for review. If you're on Amazon, send them an e-mail follow-up a few days later or even a couple of weeks later or both. You don't want to wait too long because they will definitely be less likely to do it. And at the end of the day, there really isn't a lot that you could do here except to create the best content possible that's designed to really help people. And the reviews should come in naturally. But you definitely don't want to wait around for that and just hope they're going to come in, do take action here. 24. Key Takeaways: Alright, y'all, we have covered so much in this class and I hope that I've been able to give you a ton of insight into how to create a successful e-book from scratch. I'm so excited to see what you come up with and I hope that you'll share the finished product with me. I just want to take a moment to go over a few of the most important key takeaways from this course just to wrap things up. Number one, remember your goals and your reasons why you are creating your e-book to help make sure that you deliver the most relevant and valuable content possible. Remember to set goals and deadlines along the way to help you finish this project as efficiently as possible. Number three, identify your target market. You know exactly who you're writing for and who you are sharing this with. Number four, remember how important your title, headline and cover our keywords help you get found and covers help you sell. Number five, at talking to a B perspective whenever possible or applicable to focus on that relatability to your audience. Number six, evaluate carefully how and where you will share and promote your e-book. And number seven, lastly, congratulate yourself on this accomplishment because it's a really big deal. It can be a bit scary and definitely can evoke feelings of imposter syndrome. But you'll be so glad that you did this and your audience is going to thank you for it. Alright, y'all. I just want to say thank you so much for being here and choosing me to help you on this journey. If you like this course, please consider taking just a moment to leave me a positive review. I really appreciate it from one small business owner to the next. And make sure to check out all my other courses on all things online business. And I will see you in the next one.