Wait! Before you start writing that eBook

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Offering an e-book can be a wonderful asset to your business website. An effectively produced and well-written e-book can provide the following benefits:

1. Increase credibility for you and your business
2. Help grow your “list” of potential customers
3. Provide another income stream for your business
4. Serve as a “bonus” for other products or services that you may be offering (i.e. “Bonus! With a one-year subscription, receive a free eBook on How to Make the Best Widget On Earth … In Less than 30 days”)
5. Provide instant gratification to your audience. People love instant gratification. In an age where information is readily available 24/7/365, having the ability to purchase and download an e-book is (generally) preferred over driving to the bookstore … or waiting for a shipment.
6. Provide a high return on investment. Relative to traditional publishing methods, e-books have very low production and distribution costs. If you plan to write your own e-book, multiply the amount of time spent on producing the book by your hourly rate to figure out the total costs of writing the book. If you’re hiring a “ghostwriter”, the writing costs will be evident and dependent on the resource or person used.
7. Allows for a shorter publishing cycle. It takes a lot longer to publish a book through traditional channels. Depending on the publisher, it can take well over a year to deliver an e-book to an actual bookstore; that’s assuming that your manuscript was accepted by a publishing house. However, an e-book can be created and distributed in a matter of weeks.

These are certainly very appealing benefits.   However, before you immediately start writing your e-books, take some time to consider the following questions:

1. What are your primary reasons for writing this book (ex: to promote your business, to educate people on an important subject, to distribute a volume of training guides, to make money etc.) All reasons are valid, but it is important to identify YOUR reasons and prioritize them from most important to least important.
2. Who is your target audience? This will be important in determining the style of writing and presentation of the material. Your writing style and information presentation should appeal to your target audience, not to you.
3. What is your topic? Determining your topic is very important, especially if you want your e-book to have long term appeal. Develop a “short list” of potential topics, and then start researching how often those keywords are searched in major search engines. Use a tool such as Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) to determine how many people are searching on that specific topic. You’ll need to determine if the topic has a potential audience AND evaluate the competition for that audience.
4. What questions will be answered? Make a listing of the questions that your e-book will answer, and then try to break them down into sub-topics? This can aid you in developing a framework for writing the book and it may also help you determine if your topic is too broad or narrow in focus. Also consider the last time that you paid for an e-book? What motivated you to buy an e-book instead of searching further for a free resource? Did you read the entire book? Were your questions answered? To ensure that you have a topic that people are willing to pay to read more about, you have to consider these questions to determine the “value” of your book.
5. Are you a good writer or will you need to hire a professional writer?
6. Particularly if you don’t have a third-party publisher or editor, have you identified a small group of people to review and provide critical feedback on your book? Preferably, this is a small group that consists of trusted individuals that are knowledgeable or interested in the subject matter and are capable of giving direct and honest feedback. I personally would enlist individuals with the following characteristics: subject matter expert or industry member, someone interested in the topic, and someone with more superior grammatical and writing skills.
7. What is your budget (time and resources)?  Time is money.  How much resources (and time) are you willing to dedicate to produce this book?   This will help you to determine a reasonable timeline and budget for this project.  Whether you’re writing the book yourself or using a “ghostwriter”, develop a budget for: 

• Writing the book
• Producing the e-book (i.e. creating the final format)
• Marketing and promoting the e-book.  

This will give you a clear benchmark for evaluating the success of your e-book. It also provides an honest picture of the time & resources needed to produce a quality product.

e-Book Topic Research Resources:
Wordtracker – How often are keywords searched on major search engines
Amazon.com – Research current books available on your subject
Magazines.com - Research the topics discussed in industry-related magazines

Please feel free to post your comments regarding your e-book publishing plans or past experience producing an e-book.