I’m literally bouncing with excitement to write a book and you should be too!
Have you ever had an idea that lit your world on fire? Like the whole axis upon which your world spins feels like it was tilted in the best possible way?
Yeah, me neither.
Until now!
It’s one of those things, you spend all of your life wanting to just be happy and content, and in some ways you are. If you are like me, you may be spent a little longer trying to find that one thing than others. I recently wrote an article on Medium describing that exact feeling of not quite finding your calling.
I recently made the decision to write a book and I have kept it super under wraps. My husband knows but I haven’t even told him I started writing it yet, my mother doesn’t know, you reading this are the first to find out! The decision came to me when the universe kept on telling me to listen to my intuition and I finally did.
I’ve known about how to write a book online but I could never discover the inspiration behind what to write. I had considered compiling my knowledge about a certain subject but I bored myself thinking about it. While I won’t tell you now what it is, I can tell you I will be using skills I’ve learned about online marketing to help sell it!
Before you write a book consider why you want to.
Is it because you have a story you can’t wait to tell? What is it? Are there specific skills that one would need to have prior to reading your book?
You have to be really specific about who your target audience is before you write a book online, or else no one will see it. Furthermore, you need to be really focused yourself on what you want to talk about so that you get your point across clearly and succinctly.
What is the layout of the book going to look like?
It’s important to how someone will read the book, how it’s laid out. Are you going to be adding tables and charts to further get your point across? Is the book going to have other illustrations?
Have an idea in mind of the beginning, middle, and end. The worst thing you can do is just to wing it and the book feels completely disjointed. Try writing down your ideas and organizing them into charts prior to tackling it.
You can publish directly to Amazon!
Yes, you heard me! You don’t even have to go through the whole publishing middle man process when you write a book online. Go directly to Amazon KDP and download your book!
They have an entire resource library there as well as tips for how to market your book yourself! Utilize their expertise here, they certainly know more than myself, I only know that it’s possible.
Decide between publishing only ebooks or paper books, or both. Again, Amazon will walk you through it all so be sure to go through that process.
Hire an editor.
It’s wonderful to write a book online, but be sure to follow grammar rules and so on. Hiring an editor is one way to be sure to do it well. You can hire editors through marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.
Also, be sure to use Grammarly when you are writing your book. Use the free app for your phone or the extension for Chrome. Further editing you can do yourself is using Hemmingway Editor. But still use an editor!
Hire someone to do the graphics.
It’s one thing to write a book, and be sure not to plagiarise! But also be sure you don’t use free pictures and most certainly do not use something you don’t have rights to! You could try to do the graphics yourself, but I know from my first attempts that I am not a graphic designer.
If you don’t have someone to do them that you already know find someone on Upwork, Fiverr, or 99Designs. Trust me, if you don’t have an eye for these things this is definitely the way to go!
You can buy a picture or use your own but be sure you have the right to the picture!
Write a book for the passive income.
Writing a book is famously a way to make money without working for it! Sure, you work a lot up front without knowing whether or not you will sell a single copy, but it is worth it if it sells!
Books have a high return on investment and in the dreams of being wealthy, making money while you sleep is the way to do it!
Learning how to market your book is something that you can work towards. Work on building a social media following and building the like, know, and trust with an audience of people and that is half of the battle.
Buy an ISBN!
This is one that I didn’t know before I went to publish but when you want to publish your own book online you can use a free ISBN from KDP or Ingramspark but then they own distribution rights. When you buy your own ISBN it gives you your rights to your own book and you can choose where to publish it from there.
Where do buy an ISBN once you write a book? In the U.S. you can only buy from Bowker, which is pricey but I suggest buying in bulk so you can write more later!
Furthermore, when you are uploading to KDP use their free download to format your book, Kindle Create. You may have formatting issues but whoever made your cover may be able to help as well as the editor. If not, you can change the size of the JPEG file before converting to a PDF.
With Ingramspark I kept getting ICC Color issues that getting a free trial of Adobe Acrobat DC Pro helped with. You have to save your book and cover as a PDF/X and change the colors to CMYK. It sounds complicated but seriously just get Adobe I spent an entire afternoon trying to change the colors for free and all I got was a headache and a waster afternoon.
So what do you think? Will you go for it?
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