You have 60 days to write an ebook, what do you do first?
How can you create something of high quality that people will want to buy?
First thing I’ll mention is that this is a rough guide. It might take you longer or less time to accomplish certain steps. The writing period will be vastly different from person to person, so just keep that in mind.
Secondly, this doesn’t get into the marketing and launching side of self-publishing. All of that can be found inside Ebook Blueprint. Let’s get started…
Days 1 – 3: Brainstorm Ebook Ideas
Most people skip this step, but I’ll argue that market research is one of the most important things you can do when publishing your own book. It definitely falls in the top 3.
But why is it important and what does it actually look like?
Taking the time early on to think about different topics and figure out what problem you’re going to help people solve will save you a ton of time in the future. The last thing you want is to create an ebook that no one wants to buy or cares about.
But the topic isn’t the only thing you should be thinking about, the ebook type is also an important decision you need to make. The type of ebook you’re going to write will determine the format and style your content will take. To reach more about ebook types, read this post.
Here’s a simple criteria to follow when choosing an ebook topic:
1. Does it fall into the top 4 niches? The 4 markets I recommend you look into are:
Dating & Relationships
Money & Business
Health & Fitness
Personal Development
2. Are there any Amazon Bestsellers on the topic you’re considering.
Click here to check out the bestselling books on Amazon. Click on the appropriate category and see what’s selling right now. This is a gold mine. After going through this list you’ll have a much better idea of what people spend money on.
Now, the idea is not to copy what other authors are doing, the idea is to determine whether your book idea is something that can sell. Most people don’t like competition, but in case it’s a good thing. It shows that there’s a market out there that’s willing to take out their wallet and buy something related to your book.
3. Do you have experience/skills that you can teach people.
If you don’t have the expertise you can borrow someone else’s expertise and sell that. This has been done plenty of times before and it doesn’t ruin your credibility – as a matter a fact, it helps it. You will be associated with these other successful people and your readers will trust you more.
But don’t take it from me, Tony Robbins, ‘MONEY: Master the Game’ is the #4 bestselling book on Amazon and this is the description,
Based on extensive research and one-on-one interviews with more than 50 of the most legendary financial experts in the world—from Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett, to Ray Dalio and Steve Forbes—
4. Are you even remotely interested in the topic?
Writing a book is no easy task. Seriously, it’s going to take everything you got.
There needs to be some interest in the topic or else you won’t finish the book. This can… no sorry – this WILL turn from extreme excitement to extreme boredom and lots of work really fast, so be ready for that.
Days 4 – 8: Validate Your Book Idea
What is product validation? Validation is the assurance that a product, service, or system meets the needs of the end customer. In other words, making sure people actually want what you have to sell. There are many ways to validate your ebook topic before you start writing, but surveying is probably the quickest one to set up and get real results from.
To perform a survey you need an audience to send the survey to. This is why it’s important to focus on building an audience beforehand by blogging, podcasting, and putting out videos. I asked 11 ebook authors if they wrote the ebook first, or build the audience first and here are the results:
Wrote Ebook First
Steve Corona
Built Audience First (10)
Darren Rowse
Pat Flynn
Kristi Hines
Lisa Irby
Tyler Tervooren
Farnoosh Brock
Henri Junttila
Marc Andre Cournoyer
Ali Luke
Kelly Kingman
Does this mean that you should focus on building your audience before you even think about your first book? Not necessarily. You can write the book while you grow the audience and then start validating by talking about different topics and driving traffic to your survey.
Two very important questions I would ask are:
1. What’s your biggest frustration when trying to (achieve what your product helps them with) ?
2. Fill in the blank, “If only I knew how to ______, I would be able to (whatever they want to achieve).
These two questions tap into their frustrations and desires, which is exactly what you need in order to write something that speaks directly to them.
Day 9: Outline Your Book
Once you know what your topic is, you need to break it down into small chunks of information that your reader can consume. These small chunks will ultimately turn into your sections and chapters within the book.
The reason you want to outline your ebook before writing is because it’ll speed up the writing process. Instead of thinking about what you’re going to talk about in a particular chapter, you can just pick a section of the book and start writing.
There are 4 important sections to an outline: the section, the chapter, the sub headlines, and the action steps. Pretty straight forward. One part that most people leave out are the action steps. This is especially useful when writing “how to” or skill based type books.
You want your readers to implement the things they’re learning right away, so adding a few action steps at the end of each chapter will increase the likelihood of them taking action.
I go into much more detail about how I outlined by Designed to Convert ebook in this article I wrote a while back. So, for this part of the process, go read that post.
Days 10 – 50: Start Writing. Don’t Edit, Just Write
There’s not much that I can say about this part of the process. This is where your determination and discipline are put to the test. This is where most people fall off and never get back on the horse. This is the part where most people just give up because it’s too much work.
But that won’t be you.
I know this won’t be you because you’re reading this article. You’re motivated and your desire to succeed is greater than your fear of failure. But just in case you need some writing tips, here are a few I picked up from writing 2 ebooks.
1. You can re-purpose content.
If you’ve been writing a blog for a while there’s a pretty good chance you have articles you can use as a chapter (or section) of your book. You might need to make a few edits here and there, but for the most part, some articles can be copied and pasted.
But wouldn’t people get upset that the same content can be found for free on my blog? No. As a matter a fact, most people won’t even notice, and those who do will be happy to buy a book that consolidates all of that information in one place. So don’t worry about it too much.
Plus, it feels great to know that you already have several pages written.
2. Don’t edit while you write.
Leave the editing process until after you have your ebook written. This is going to be hard for some people to do, but it’s a must if you want to finish your book in less than 3 months, as opposed to a year.
Editing and proofreading is important and should get it’s own focused time. Getting someone else to read your ebook before publishing it might also be a good idea. It’ll be hard to catch all your mistakes no matter how many times you read it. Keep that in mind.
3. Start in the middle.
If you don’t know how to start a chapter just start with an important point you’re trying to make within that chapter. Then, once you’ve written the main idea, go back to the beginning and add an opening sentence (or paragraph).
This helps big time when inspiration is low. I’ve learned that inspiration comes when you’re taking action, when your brain is working and you’re making progress. So instead of waiting for inspiration to arrive, just start writing wherever you want and it’ll find you.
Lastly, if you commit to writing 750 words every day for these 50 days you’ll have 37,500 words at the end. 37,500 is way more than enough content to fill an ebook. Typically you’ll want to have between 25,000 and 40,000 words depending on the topic.
This is equal to about 90 to 140 pages, which is a hefty book. Remember, don’t get overwhelmed by thinking about the 37,500 words, just focus on the 750 words every day and you’ll be fine.
Send Out Review Copies (days 51 to 56)
Sending out review copies is good for a number of reasons:
Other people will find mistake you didn’t catch
You can check for understanding
You can gather positive feedback to use on your sales page
The first two are important, but let’s focus on the third one for now. As soon as you’re done proofreading your ebook, make a list of 50 bloggers/influencers you’d like to contact and send reviews to. These people might be very busy so you can’t expect them all to drop what they’re doing to read your entire book.
But of those who reply back to your ‘honest feedback’ inquiry, you can get some pretty solid advice and maybe some awesome reviews. The key is to not to annoy the person by asking for a review of your book, simply send them a copy to read at their convenience; and if they can offer some feedback, you’d really appreciate it.
When choosing the bloggers, make sure they target the same audience as you, or talk about something closely related. This process might take longer than 5 days to achieve depending on how long it takes for them to get back to you.
Review it & Make Final Changes (days 57 to 60)
Finally, look at all the feedback you received from the 50+ bloggers you sent the ebook to and make those changes. You don’t have to make every single change if you truly feel that it won’t improve your book overall, but do take their suggestions seriously.
This feedback is extremely valuable, especially if it’s coming from top bloggers and influencers in your market. They might offer feedback that can help you dramatically improve your book, like:
Ebook layout
Ebook design
Lack of congruence
Too much surface information
Lack of detail in certain areas
Grammar issues
Spelling issues
Title to Content confusion
It’s important not to take this feedback personally and be open to criticism. This is just part of the growth process and we all need to hear the harsh truth at times in order to get better at what we do. So if this is your first book, don’t worry about making a lot of mistakes. All you can do is learn from them and keep moving forward.