Writing and Publishing an eBook

Writing and publishing a book has never been easier!  Have you ever dreamed of being a published author?  I have!  Technology available today makes writing and publishing an eBook within every aspiring authors reach.  If you've decided to write a book there are many things you'll need to consider.

There are an abundance of formats to choose from.  You may recognize two of the most popular formats.  One is EPUB which can be read by Blackberry Playbook, Apple iBooks (iPhone, iPad, iPod), and Barnes & Noble Nook to name a few.  The other is KF8, also known as Amazon Kindle.

I chose to write a Kindle eBook.  Here are some of the things I really like.  First of all, it's easy!  You need a word processor such as, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, Pages for Mac.  I use Microsoft Word.  Amazon has a huge, worldwide customer base and I thought their royalties were generous.   I think the behind the scenes faqs, helps and reports are great too.  I have a Kindle myself and a lot of other people have Kindles.  If you don't have a Kindle you can actually download a Kindle reader for free on you PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod, laptop, Blackberry, Android & more.  And if you are a Prime member on Amazon, and the author participates in KDP Select, you can borrow books and the author still gets paid royalties.

If you use Microsoft Word you can set up the formatting that works best for Kindle and save it.  Kindle doesn't "like" a lot of spacing or returns but you can set the formatting for the entire book and save it as a template for future books.  Word has spell check and grammar hints but you can also use paperrater.com to check for spelling mistakes, grammar, plagiarism, etc.

You'll also need a Cover.  You can hire a freelance artist to design the cover or you can do it yourself if you have a digital design application to create a .jpg file.  If you design it yourself you'll need access to artwork, either your own or public domain.  And you'll need public domain or purchased fonts.   Of course you'll want your cover to "pop".   It needs to catch the shoppers attention, have clearly legible fonts, few words and contrasting colors.

You can use keyword searches to decide on topics.  How-to books are great.  If you have an area of expertise search some of the keywords associated with your topic.  See how much competition you would have and what the price points are.  You don't want to select a topic that's already saturated!  If the topic looks like a good choice you'll need to set a competitive price.

Here is the cover I designed for my book "Scrapbook Layout Sketches".  I created it with three different background colors then before uploading it I asked a couple of friends for feedback.  We all agreed on this one.

And here are links to my eBook on Amazon.  If you are in the United States click here. And I just found out, duh, there's a different web address for my friends across the pond.  Here's the link for the UK.  If you get my eBook I hope you'll consider giving me a great review.