Things you must know before Self-Publishing your eBook (Part 1)
Selling your eBook for profits: What to know, what to avoid, and what to never forget!
It would be amateurish of me to tell a platform full of writers how to write their eBooks. I’m sure if you have, at a time, considered penning down your thoughts and self-publishing, or if you actually are in the process of writing an eBook, you have already come across tons of Dos and Don’ts for when you are writing your first eBook. Understandably, there will come a point where you stop, sit back, and ask: How can this make me money?
If you already are a Writer enrolled in Medium’s Partner Program, the earnings are instant and promotion efforts are almost nil. So, before we dive into how you can position your eBook amongst a sea of thousands of eBooks, here’s why you should actually consider writing your first eBook:
- Establish yourself as an Industry Expert: With the right mix of efforts and promotion tools, your eBook can actually make you a niche guru.
- Offers more to your readers: Be it your readers on Medium, your blog, or any other website, your eBook can be an extended version of your articles/blogs that can really give a serious touch to your work and build a loyal reader base by leaving a remarkable impact.
- A good way of generating Passive Income: Very obvious but true.
- Gather Unique Readers: Whether it is the unique visitors of your blog or your personal followers on Instagram and Facebook or someone who stumbled upon your ebook on Amazon, if your reader connected with your book, there’s a high chance they will convert into a loyal reader of your blog and other works as well.
Now that you have made the decision (or even if you are still considering), let’s begin with all that you need to know, what mistakes you definitely need to avoid and what you must never forget!
What good is good quality content if no one is reading it?
What you need to know
Researching Keywords and Categories
Perhaps the most significant part of your pre-publishing process is to optimize your book’s Title and Description for better Search Engine Optimisation. This should not be something you’ll just type on your keyboard and hit Publish without giving a second thought because what good is good quality content if no one is reading it?
For people to read it, your book needs to show up in their searches, at as much a better ranking as possible. While browsing for eBooks, know that people will hardly ever go beyond Page 5–6.
You can start your Keyword research by defining your niche and finding the most-searched-for but relevant categories your book fits into. After categories, you can work your way down to working on your title, cover art, and then writing your eBook’s description.
Picking a Niche is crucial for your eBook
This can sound like a piece of average advice but carefully selecting your niche is a must and here’s why. As a serious writer on the internet, think of this in the long run. A good practice is to write rather short eBooks than writing long novels. Writing short eBooks can help you turn it into a whole series if your first book does really well.
Consider this; when you keep your eBook priced low, people will be paying the same amount for a 50–70 page book or a 300-page book because the reader’s focus will mostly be on the price.
So cultivate your niche carefully, and if you can, keep it a little specific so that there’s room for more content to follow.
Choosing the right Platform(s) to Publish is key
A popular idea would be to publish your eBook on every platform possible and spam the internet with the links. But this common notion should not be the way to go. Focusing on 2–3 platforms should be optimal because you will need to put more effort into Marketing and Social Media after you are done publishing. Here are a few platforms you can choose from:
- Your own website: Be it your personal website or your blog’s website, it is the perfect platform to reach your current and target audience and the earnings can be maximum from here if your reader base is supportive. All you need to do is set up an Email Address Pop-up or a page where the reader can pay. After payment, the readers will receive their copy of the eBook through an automated mail service. If you don’t have a website, you can create one yourself by using a Website Builder without knowing how to code and at a minimal cost.
- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing: Even though Amazon charges a commission for every sale, the best reason to publish here is for its reach. The process is free and convenient wherein all you need is your PayPal account and rest, Amazon will convert your final draft into the optimal format on its own. This can help you reach unique readers and also provide a platform for your readers to leave feedback.
- Free Ebooks: On this platform, you can’t sell your ebook but you can ask for donations from your readers. The donated money will be directly deposited to your linked PayPal account. It can be a great way to start and you can get some pretty generous donations if your readers like what they read.
- Lulu: Publishing through Lulu is very easy and one of the most popular ways of self-publishing. Lulu distributes your book to Kindle, Nook, iBook, etc. You will have full control over publishing and distribution where you can choose to sell only hardcover copies or only eBooks or both.
You don’t really need a Graphic Designer for your Cover
Of course, if you already have an amazing designer on your side, then go you! But the upsides to self-publishing is that there are hardly any costs, and even if there are, these can be adjusted around and kept at a minimum for more profitability.
As a first-time writer, you definitely want to cut down costs. One way you can do this is by making the Cover Art yourself and instead, invest in hiring a great Editor to finalize your draft.
No matter how much we’d like to not judge a book by its cover, you’ll be surprised at how many people buy books because they liked the cover so much. If I talk about myself, even though I’ve read Ikigai on my Kindle, I still purchased its hardcover version, solely for the cover art and aesthetic.
So if this is your first time designing a cover, you might want to shuffle through a lot of other successful book covers, take notes from them, define your own style, incorporate your learnings into making your own cover and then make 3–4 designs before landing on your final decision.
You can learn more about how you can make your covers here:
A tool that I really trust is Canva. It’s mostly free to use and you can benefit from hundreds of free eBook templates to get a general idea for your design. The only downside? Canva’s convenience can make it a little mainstream.
Lastly, if you’re not investing money, know that you’ll have to invest a lot of time in this process to really get the perfect result, so make the decision after calculating what truly is at stake. At times, time can be of the essence for the topic of your eBook (in case of trending topics). In this case, do invest in a good designer, especially if you are a beginner.
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Things you must know before Self-Publishing your eBook (Part 2)
Stay tuned for Part 2 of Self-Publishing your eBook series wherein we will discuss some blunderous yet avoidable mistakes most self-publishing writers make and tips and strategies you should not forget to incorporate before you hit Publish.
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