Thinking of writing an ebook?

I’ve compiled a wealth of information on writing, publishing and marketing ebooks originally shared during the WordCount Last Wednesday live chat on Twitter, which took place Oct. 27, 2011.

My guest on the chat was Boston area freelance writer Susan Johnston, who blogs at The Urban Muse. Earlier this year, Johnston published her first ebook, The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets.

During the chat Johnston shared what she’d learned about picking appropriate material, formatting, distribution and promotion. Her comments have been edited for clarity.

What are the advantages of self-publishing an ebook vs. a traditional print book?

Self-publishing means you don’t have to wait for a publisher to choose your book, go through the printing process, etc. Plus, it gives a writer more control over their content and distribution methods. My ebook wouldn’t have worked as a traditionally published print book because there are so many links and so much time-sensitive information. I noticed a gap in the marketplace – a lack of info about online writing markets – so I decided to fill that gap.

How did you get started? What were your first steps?

I looked through my blog for content I could expand upon, then compiled a list of suitable markets. I also looked at the kinds of questions readers left and made sure that my ebook covered all those answers in detail. The blog was a great way to crowdsource topics for the ebook and figure out the kind of info readers wanted.

How much of the book did you take from blog posts and how much was original material?

Less than half the content was pulled from the blog and the rest was original. The directory of markets, which is a large chunk of the ebook, did not appear on the blog.

Is an optimum length or number of chapters or structure for an ebook?

Length depends on the topic. But you definitely want it to be broken into sections and subsections so it’s easily digestible. My ebook is relatively short – 61 pgs – so I wouldn’t want to have too much overlap with the blog. And I used a Q&A format.

Once your ebook is out, should you consider using bits and pieces from it for new blog posts, or keep it premium?

Keep it premium. If you’re charging, buyers want to feel like they’re getting something special.

What about turning an already published book into an ebook?

If your book is out of print and the rights have reverted back to you, it can be a great way to keep it in circulation. There are services like Smashwords.com that can help out with that or you can hire someone to format your book as an ebook.

What about links you include in an ebook – what happens if they go bad?

I took that on as an ongoing project. Buyers of my ebook can sign up for free updates where I add or subtract markets. I also invite readers to email me if they spot a broken or out-dated link and I’ll go through and check periodically. Eventually, I may deeply discount the ebook with the caveat that it won’t be updated anymore. I’ve seen other authors do that.

What subjects sell well as ebooks?

It’s important to choose a topic that fills a need, like the Damon Brown ebook on the iPad or my ebook about online writing markets. Do people want to know how to brew their own beer or start an Etsy store?

What software, services or other resources did you use to put your ebook together?

I typed my ebook using Microsoft Word and hired Amie Fedora to design the cover, then converted to a .pdf file. For simplicity’s sake, I just chose to use a .pdf because that’s almost universally readable. However, I tried to format as I went along and that was a huge hassle! Next time, I’d write first, format second. The toughest part was getting the fonts to embed properly in the .pdf, but there are lots of online resources to help with troubleshooting. Whatever the issue is, you can usually get help by Googling or tweeting. For instance, you could Google “MS Word 2008 embed fonts in .pdf.”

How did you handle setting a price and accepting payments?

I looked at how similar ebooks were priced and chose $15.99. Some ebooks are $9.99 but you can’t discount much from there. Mine is $15.99, and I occasionally discount it to $9.99. My ebook is available through Lulu.com andE-junkie. You can also sell through Amazon but you’ll need an ISBN for that. With E-Junkie, you can have readers pay through PayPa and they automatically generate a download link for their purchase.

Do ebook services take a percent of the sale price?

E-junkie takes a monthly fee and Lulu.com is free to set up and takes a 20 percent fee per sale.

Other than selling through ebook services, how did you promote your ebook?

I promoted it through guest blogging, giving away review copies to bloggers, promoting it on my blog and in my newsletter and on Twitter. Having an established blog and Twitter following really helped. Here’s a guest post I wrote with 12 promotional strategies for ebooks.

What are some common mistakes writers make in putting together an ebook?

Unappealing covers are one mistake. Invest the money for something that conveys a professional impression.

How profitable are ebooks?

It depends on how well you promote it, how the ebook is priced and if there’s a strong need. But the margins per sale are much better than going through a traditional publisher. With a print book, you might get a little bit in royalties for each book sold, but with ebooks it’s almost pure profit. With ebooks, you don’t have hard costs like shipping and materials so they make great blog giveaways, since you can just email a download link.

If you’ve written an ebook, what was your experience? What advice or resources can you share?

I’ve compiled a wealth of information on writing, publishing and marketing ebooks originally shared during the latest WordCount Last Wednesday live chat on Twitter, which took place Wednesday, Oct. 27.

My guest on the chat was Boston area freelance writer Susan Johnston, who blogs at The Urban Muse. Earlier this year, Johnston published her first ebook, The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets.

During the chat Johnston shared what she’d learned about picking appropriate material, formatting, distribution and promotion. Her comments have been edited for clarity.

What are the advantages of self-publishing an ebook vs. a traditional print book?
Self-publishing means you don’t have to wait for a publisher to choose your book, go through the printing process, etc. Plus, it gives a writer more control over their content and distribution methods. My ebook wouldn’t have worked as a traditionally published print book because there are so many links and so much time-sensitive information. I noticed a gap in the marketplace – a lack of info about online writing markets – so I decided to fill that gap.

How did you get started? What were your first steps?
I looked through my blog for content I could expand upon, then compiled a list of suitable markets. I also looked at the kinds of questions readers left and made sure that my ebook covered all those answers in detail. The blog was a great way to crowdsource topics for the ebook and figure out the kind of info readers wanted.

How much of the book did you take from blog posts and how much was original material?
Less than half the content was pulled from the blog and the rest was original. The directory of markets, which is a large chunk of the ebook, did not appear on the blog.

Is an optimum length or number of chapters or structure for an ebook?
Length depends on the topic. But you definitely want it to be broken into sections and subsections so it’s easily digestible. My ebook is relatively short – 61 pgs – so I wouldn’t want to have too much overlap with the blog. And I used a Q&A format.

Once your ebook is out, should you consider using bits and pieces from it for new blog posts, or keep it premium?
Keep it premium. If you’re charging, buyers want to feel like they’re getting something special.

What about turning an already published book into an ebook?
If your book is out of print and the rights have reverted back to you, it can be a great way to keep it in circulation. There are services like Smashwords.com that can help out with that or you can hire someone to format your book as an ebook.

What about links you include in an ebook – what happens if they go bad?
I took that on as an ongoing project. Buyers of my ebook can sign up for free updates where I add or subtract markets. I also invite readers to email me if they spot a broken or out-dated link and I’ll go through and check periodically. Eventually, I may deeply discount the ebook with the caveat that it won’t be updated anymore. I’ve seen other authors do that.

What subjects sell well as ebooks?
It’s important to choose a topic that fills a need, like the Damon Brown ebook on the iPad or my ebook about online writing markets. Do people want to know how to brew their own beer or start an Etsy store?

What software, services or other resources did you use to put your ebook together?
I typed my ebook using Microsoft Word and hired Amie Fedora to design the cover, then converted to a .pdf file. For simplicity’s sake, I just chose to use a .pdf because that’s almost universally readable. However, I tried to format as I went along and that was a huge hassle! Next time, I’d write first, format second. The toughest part was getting the fonts to embed properly in the .pdf, but there are lots of online resources to help with troubleshooting. Whatever the issue is, you can usually get help by Googling or tweeting. For instance, you could Google “MS Word 2008 embed fonts in .pdf.”

How did you handle setting a price and accepting payments?
I looked at how similar ebooks were priced and chose $15.99. Some ebooks are $9.99 but you can’t discount much from there. Mine is $15.99, and I occasionally discount it to $9.99. My ebook is available through Lulu.com and E-junkie. You can also sell through Amazon but you’ll need an ISBN for that. With E-Junkie, you can have readers pay through PayPa and they automatically generate a download link for their purchase.

Do ebook services take a percent of the sale price?
E-junkie takes a monthly fee and Lulu.com is free to set up and takes a 20 percent fee per sale.

Other than selling through ebook services, how did you promote your ebook?
I promoted it through guest blogging, giving away review copies to bloggers, promoting it on my blog and in my newsletter and on Twitter. Having an established blog and Twitter following really helped. Here’s a guest post I wrote with 12 promotional strategies for ebooks.

What are some common mistakes writers make in putting together an ebook?
Unappealing covers are one mistake. Invest the money for something that conveys a professional impression.

How profitable are ebooks?
It depends on how well you promote it, how the ebook is priced and if there’s a strong need. But the margins per sale are much better than going through a traditional publisher. With a print book, you might get a little bit in royalties for each book sold, but with ebooks it’s almost pure profit. With ebooks, you don’t have hard costs like shipping and materials so they make great blog giveaways, since you can just email a download link.

If you’ve written an ebook, what was your experience? What advice or resources can you share?

So for your reading enjoyment, here’s some WordCount Q&As I’ve done with writers on a variety of subjects. Happy reading.

Suddenly Frugal’s Leah Ingram – This prolific magazine writer, book author and frugal living blogger explains how she wrote her latest book in eight weeks.

One freelancer’s DIY book publishing success – Colorado-based corporate translator Corinne McKay explains how she self-published How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator and netted $12,000 in two years.

NewspaperDeathWatch.com’s Paul Gillin on online community news – New media pundit Gillin explains why small news ventures, in print and online, are fairing better than their larger counterparts.

One writer’s journey from print to online – Michelle Nicolosi got the online news bug back in the 1990s. Today she’s executive director of the now online-only SeattlePI.com.

Marketing your freelance business in bad times – Keven Malkewitz, a marketing expert and assistant business professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis, says in a down economy, cultivate existing clients, brush up on new skills and increase your marketing efforts.

If you’ve a freelancer with a unique take on the business, a successful blog or an online news venture, I’ve love to interview you for the WordCount Q&A. Contact me: michellerafter (at) comcast (dot) net.

McKay, a freelance translator who lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband and 6-year-old daughter, ultimately opted to self publish. Not only that, she picked a print-on-demand publisher to minimize the upfront costs of getting a book into circulation.

It worked. Since McKay’s book, How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, appeared in May 2006, she’s sold 2,500 copies and netted $12,000. Although modest by bestseller standards, McKay reckons it’s more than she would have made in royalties from a traditional publishing house. She also estimates that based on what she’s earned to date and how many hours she spent on the book, she doubled what she would have made using the same time to do her regular French-to-English translation work.

I asked McKay to share her self-publishing experiences with WordCount readers to shed light on the process for other freelancers who might be considering it as a new income stream to make up for newspaper and magazine work lost to the recession.

According to McKay, getting a book started was easy. The one-time high school French teacher was already teaching an online course on the subject, so course materials made up the first half of the 141-page book. To finish the rest, McKay set a goal to write something every day, even if it was just a sentence.

Picking an on-demand publisher was easy too. Once McKay crunched the numbers and decided to self publish with an on-demand service, she turned to her software-savvy husband for input. He steered her to Lulu.com, an on-demand publisher based in Morrisville, North Carolina, that handles printing and fulfillment for about 98,000 new titles a year.

Here’s how she made it happen:

How did you pick a topic?
When I looked at what I struggled with, it was running the business: how to find clients, how to write a resume when you have minimum experience but strong language skills, if you should work through an agency. There was a huge lack of info, even if you were willing to pay for it. The class had been really successful. I’ve now done 12 to 15 sessions. The capitalist in me thought, if people who don’t know me will spend $350 for an online course they’d spend $20 on a book.

How long did it take?
About 6 months. Once I decided to do it, I resolved to work on it every day. Some days when I was really busy, I did write just one sentence. Other times I’d write 10 pages in one day. You have to accept that unless you’re independently wealthy, that big block of time to write your book is never going to come. You have to set a schedule that works into what you’re already doing, whether it’s saying every Wednesday will be book day or every day from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. is book time.

How did you decide to self publish?
I’m in a freelance group called Boulder Media Women that was a great resource. I talked to people who’d been published the traditional route, done regular self publishing and print-on-demand publishing. Talking to them I realized if your book has a really targeted market you would do as well or better publishing it yourself.

Why’s that?
Small publishers working with first-time authors expect the author to do most of the marketing. So if I’m going to be promoting this book myself would I rather get 5 or 10 percent royalties or 50 percent royalties by self publishing? Also, part of reason I’m successful is I’m a maniacal perfectionist about my work. It was hard to think about giving that up. I know people who’ve had terrible experiences with traditional publishers where they felt the manuscript they’d poured themselves into was unrecognizable. The combination of those two was a gamble I was comfortable accepting.

How did you decide on an on-demand publisher?
My husband had seen in the geek news that Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat (the open source software company), had started a print-on-demand company and he thought on-demand was the future of publishing, with zero waste, no inventory sitting around and meeting demand for books that are purchased so information doesn’t go out of date as quickly.

How did it work?
I wrote the book in OpenOffice and used a program called Lyx to create a .pdf of the book. Lyx is a free book layout program. If you use Lyx, it helps you create a copyright page, table of contents, index and chapter headings, everything that make it look like a standard book. That’s important because you have to have a standard book if you want to sell it to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or special order through bookstores. If you don’t want something that looks like a professional book, Lulu will publish that too. Anything you can upload as a .pdf they’ll publish.

What did you do for a cover?
I considered using a cover designer from Lulu but in the end my husband designed the cover. We found an illuminated manuscript that featured a story about a translator at the Yale University library that was in the public domain and got permission and used it for free.

When did you see the first copy?
If you use Lulu’s global distribution network you first order a proof copy. It’s like the best Christmas ever seeing the proof copy of your book. Once we saw it we corrected some errors, made a new .pdf file, uploaded it to Lulu and that was it.

Who determines the cover price?
With Lulu, you set pricing yourself. My book is $19.99 and if someone buys a copy from Lulu I make $10. If they buy a copy through a retail channel like Amazon, I make $4.50. Lulu handles order fulfillment. With traditional self publishing, unless you outsource order fulfillment, you’re taking books to the post office and paying for shipping. When someone buys my book from Lulu I don’t see anything but the profit. If I want to buy copies of the book to sell myself, which I do a lot, Lulu has a creator price of $5 to $7 per copy depending on what sale they have at the time. They just had a sale and I bought 100 books for $4.90 each. With a traditional self publisher you could get them cheaper but that wouldn’t cover fulfillment.

How does Lulu pay you?
I have a Lulu account that’s linked to my PayPal account. Book sales show up on my monthly Lulu account statement. Amazon sales show up in my Lulu account as a lump sum every month. Lulu has a deal with PayPal so I don’t pay commissions to PayPal on Lulu royalties. Any royalties I transfer into my business checking account or keep them on PayPal to buy stuff online.

How did you market the book?
I have not marketed the book as aggressively as I could have. I sent out press releases and review copies for the first 3 months. I do some passive marketing, my blog, Thoughts on Translation, is a soft marketing tool. I also have some affiliate deals. The American Translators Association sells it from their Website, and they sell a lot of books.

How has publishing a book helped your business?
You can’t underestimate how much having a book adds to your credibility. It’s been a great promotion for the course I teach and I’ve gotten a lot more requests for speaking engagements and interviews as an expert on business practices for freelance translators.

Any plans for second book?
I’m working on the second edition that I hope to have out in 2009. It will have a bigger focus on using Web 2.0 tools like Facebook and Twitter both as resources and for marketing. So far, the translation industry in my specialties seems unaffected by the economic downturn, Q4 was my most profitable. I’d like a forced work slowdown so I could work on the second edition without feeling guilty. I’m not going to complain, but it is hard to have my translation work volume to be high and work on the book.