Free Books

Creating Your Own Quick And Easy eBook Products

Second only to website creation, one of the most widely spread use of all of the information that can be obtained from the Internet is the creation of an eBook from gathering targeted specific information about a particular subject. You see them everywhere. Some are free and some are not. To some it may seem a daunting task to write an eBook. In the following article I will lay out the basic steps it takes to create your own eBook product.

Depending on the subject you choose creating an eBook product of your own can be accomplished in as little as 2 1/2 to 5 hours tops. There are really only 6 steps needed to create one. If you can write an article to post in article directories you can create your own eBook product. So what are these 6 steps? Okay, lets explore them. The six steps needed are:

Come up with an idea

You may have already picked an idea or already have several ideas. If not the best places to get an idea for a new eBook is to visit forums on the Internet that are based on a particular topic you are interested in or have some experience with. Maybe you love cooking and know lots of specialized recipes for the greatest home made cakes ever baked. Maybe you know a lot about little league baseball coaching, maybe you are an avid wildlife photographer. Seek out forums on the Internet pertaining to these subjects and read a few posts to see what kind of questions people are asking about them. It won't take long before you get an idea of what kind of questions you could answer in your eBook.

Research your idea

So by now you should have at least one idea of a subject for an eBook. Next you want to research the subject and gather more information about it. So how do you do this? Well you could continue to read more forums related to your subject matter or you could speed up the process and see if someone else has already covered the topic in some way and get information from their work. Now I am not advocating plagiarism here at all. You want your work to be original and fresh, but you can use other informational products to help you explain your subject matter.

So using your favorite search engine you can search for something like this: "fly fishing + ebook". This search will get you a list of results that are related to your subject matter and already written into an eBook. Now another slick idea is to search for PDF documents since most all eBooks are saved in PDF format. So you could do a search like this: filetype:pdf "fly fishing". These are but two examples of how to find already written reports and eBooks on your subject be creative and I think you'll find other ways of finding them. The key is you want to find free resources to use for gathering information for your eBook.

Name the eBook

No doubt by now you've already done this. In fact if you didn't have to do step one you probably did this step first. But even if you have think about the name you chose. Is it an appealing name? Does the title generate any interest in the subject. Does it create curiosity in the would be reader to want to download it or purchase the product from you? It is always good to use exciting descriptive words in your titles such as delicious, easy, exciting, breathtaking, comfortable, and so on. These words draw attention to the subject and help generate interest in your subject. So think about your title. Write down a few examples and have a friend or relative choose which one they think is best.

Map out your eBook

Alright now you have a subject, you have some research data, and you have a catchy title. Guess what you are almost 1/2 done. This next step will put you past the half way mark and its easy and extremely important so don't skip it.

When I wrote my first eBook "Discovering profitable niches in under 10 minutes – Guaranteed!" I didn't do this step. I should have once I found out about it and maybe someday I will rewrite it and then I will definately do this. I was just elated I was able to prove to myself I could write an eBook and people would want to read it. I give the eBook away for free so it remains a popular download on my website. Anyway this step involves just a simple designing a table of contents for your eBook.

Think about your topic and using a sheet of paper draw a box or circle in the center of it. Write your idea or subject in the center of this box or circle. Draw lines out from the box to another set of boxes and write your questions you gathered from step one in each. Draw lines from these boxes to a box that says answer in it. Now look at this sheet and write the content of the center box on the top of a second sheet of paper.

Now on this sheet of paper write down the contents of each of the second outer ring of boxes, your questions, and skip a few lines in between each one. Now on the lines you skipped think of a few smaller questions related to the original question. Use questions that begin with how, when, where, and why, but make them simple questions.

You now have a table of contents. You may want to adjust the order of your main questions to create a flow in your writing about the topic or title but with a few adjustments you now have a working guideline for creating the eBook.

Write the content

This is the meat of the work and will take the most of your time. But it won't be as hard as you might think. Open up a new word document if you are using Microsoft Office, or if you are using some other program create a new document in it. On this new document first create a title page with guess what?... The title of your eBook dead smack in the center of it in Big but not overly huge type. You want this to be centered on the page and look professional so don't use enormously big letters.

Insert a page break and create an about the author and copyright page. Insert another page break and write out you table of contents. Don't add numbers yet as you don't know right now how many pages your are going to write and which page each question will appear on. You can go back later and plug this in.

Insert yet another page break and paste one of your first listing in your table of contents on this page in bold type. Hit enter twice to create two blank lines and the using your gathered research data start to answer the question and any of the smaller questions you may have listed on your table of contents.

Now this might seem like a hard task and really its not. Just write like you are talking to a friend explaining the answer to the question to them. Think about what you would say if someone asked you the question over the phone and how you would asnwer it. Write this down. People like to read something that resembles a conversation and will enjoy reading it. If you want to add your own opinions or color to the answer do so, but try to remain factual, you are wanting your answers to be correct and irrefutable.

If you follow this method of writing you will find you can have all of your content written in no time. If during the writing you start to get tired take a break and comeback in a couple of hours with a fresh mind set of working on the content again. Do not force yourself to finish all in one sitting if you start to grow tired. Believe me your content will suffer if you do this.

Assemble the written content into an eBook

So now you have a fully written eBook. What’s the final step? Assemble it into an eBook and sit back and gleam with joy at your creation. So how do you do this? There is a free utility on the Internet you can download called CutePDF Writer. It is completely free for personal and professional use. Doesn't create any nag screens or popups like some other free PDF writers do. Basically it installs a print driver and within your document creation program you choose to print to the printer that installing CutePDF Writer creates. It creates a PDF version of your document that you can now open with Adobe Acrobat Reader and view your creation.

Conclusion

So now you see that creating your own eBook product is not so hard. Granted the first time may take you a little longer to create one, but your second one and all thereafter will be much easier to create. My first eBook wasn't as professional looking as I had hoped it would be but it did turn out to be useful to people and remains a popular download. So to that I am thrilled, as I am sure you will be also with your first one. Hopefully though if you follow these steps you will have a product that you can do as I did and give it away or even sell it for a little cash. Good luck to you and I wish you the best in your eBook projects.