How to Write Your First Ebook in 7 Days or Less! Chapter 1
So, you want to be a published author?
GREAT! You came to the right place. Hardly a day goes by I don't sell one or more books.It's a great source of residual income that keeps paying me, month after month after month.
While a lot of people assume that to be a "real working author" you need a traditional publishing house, but, I'm here to tell you, it's simply not true. In this guide, I'm going to show you how to:
- Find an audience for you book before you write the first word. This is, perhaps, the biggest key to success!
- Formulate a great book idea, even if you've never written anything more than a birthday card!
- Finish your book, the one thing that separates every wannabe author from those of us earning from it.
- Publish your book for free, and earn up to 95% of the price in royalties!
- Do it all in as little as one day, if you want to. So, let's get started.
Over the past decade, there has been a growing revolution It started out on quirky websites, with homespun authors sharing their secrets about political conspiracies and holistic medicine. Little books were being published, without the aid of the publishing houses, and slowly, but surely, millions of copies started getting sold.
In the past four years, the market has exploded, and with the advent of e-readers, and reader apps for devices such as tablets, and smart phones, ebooks have become a permanent part of the literary terrain, accounting for almost 20% of sales in all genres, even from the major publishing houses. This number has been doubling almost annually.
Why? It's easy, and it's cheap. In the past, the self-published author had to be savvy about printing, and writing, and marketing. They had to know where to go and who to talk to get there book done. It took months, or years to get it together, and once it was done, it cost a fortune!
With ebooks, all a writer needs to become an author is a computer and an internet connection. It can be done on a borrowed computer, over a public wifi network, without spending a single dime, and often in less than a week!
This means that for anyone with talent, the possibilities are as close as your fingertips and the potential is only limited by the number of people you can reach with your book!
•Writers no longer have to ask permission from the publishing God's to get their work into the market.
•We no longer have to either slog through submissions, or mortgage our entire lives to afford to see our work.
•There is no need for agents or publishers to get it done, which can mean more money, less time and the ability to write what you really want to see on the page!
That all sounds, great, but what does it really mean for you?
Here's how the old system used to work:
1.Submit your work to agents until somebody saw and liked what you do.
2.Sign a contract giving away a piece of your work to the agent to help you get to step 3
3.Your agent “shops” your manuscript around to publishing houses that typically print the type of book you have written
4.You wait to hear back from a publisher (which may never happen), even famous books such as Stephen King's “Carrie” have been rejected multiple times before finding a home.
5.Sign another contract with the publishing house for another percentage of your work and still no money yet, because those famous “author advances” you see in movies, rarely exist for first-time authors, no matter how promising.
And that is just for the privilege of seeing it in print, and maybe getting a glimpse of it on a shelf in a bookstore, if you are really lucky.
Here's how the new system works
1.You write the book
2.You edit, or hire the editing done for a set price not a percentage
3.You design and upload your book, or again, hire it done for a set price.
4.You promote and sell the book (something traditional authors also have to do much of the time, by the way) and keep up to 100% of the money!
There is still the matter of that cash outlay for good editing and design, and the pesky part about finding your own readers, but once you do, you can start making money right from day one!
Not only is it simpler, faster and cheaper, but done right the awards can be amazing! 30% of Amazon's top selling titles are now self-published! This means that writers just like you are writing, producing and selling millions of books to readers directly, by passing the old way of doing things and pocketing the rewards for themselves.
So, What Kind of Cash Are We Talking Here?
According to Forbes, over 80% of self-published authors report that their work is profitable which is much higher than any other category of self-owned business. Not only that but the top 2% report making over $100,000.00 per year.
Keep in mind, this is just from the major publishers, and does not take into account sites like Markrmorrisjr.com, where I know the author makes a decent living. In fact, I made almost $70,000.00 last year.
The truth is, as a self-published author, you are truly self-employed. No one is going to write you a paycheck and the work is 80/20 80% marketing, and 20% writing. You may have to beg, borrow and plead to get people to read your first book for free, then again, you might be like Amanda Hocking whose first attempt sold over 1.5 million copies of her debut novel and changed the face of publishing.
It is up to you!
If you are a creative story-teller, or an expert in a popular non-fiction field, you could earn a very healthy living off of your books.
John Locke in his book, “How to Sell a Million Ebooks”, talks about each of his books as an employee. He says that each book sells and makes money for him and the more books he “hires” the bigger his sales get!
That's right, don't forget that. You may only sell ten or twenty copies of a given title in a month but multiply that times ten, or twenty, or fifty and you could be pulling down full-time money for a job that just keeps getting easier the longer you work at it!
That's not all, but these books can continue to make money for you for as long as they are available for purchase, and most of that money, is yours!
With a traditional publisher, the author might hope to keep 10 to15% of the sale price of their books in royalties. For a typical $9.99 book, that means you make $1 to $1.50. With ebooks, a fairly standard percentage would be 70%. So, sell the same book for $2.99, and still make more money off of every sale than the traditional author.
There are other benefits too.
Ebooks Can Help Establish Your Writing Career
Let's just say, per chance, you are not among the top 2% of ebook authors making upwards of a 100k per year, there are still ways for you to cash in from your books.
Take me for example. I earn the bulk of my living from writing online. I blog, I write resume's I publish my own books, ghost write, guest blog and publish articles for various publications.
The one thing everyone wants to know before they hire a writer is, are you any good? They can go to my blog and read a few posts at Markrmorrisjr.com. I could also send them over to one of the various sites where I have books for sale to show them my credentials.
Another great way to make money from a book is to give it away. No, I am not crazy, I know what I just said, and I meant it. By using an ebook as a marketing tool, you not only make a friend, but depending on the topic of the book, you establish your expertise in the minds of the readers, making it an easy sell when you ask if you can provide them with services!
PR Web dot com writers suggest using Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing program's free promotional giveaways every ninety days to boost sales and make new friends! Load your books up with links to your other work and your website, or other products, so that they become little traffic driving sales pieces as well.
Some writers prefer to create special giveaway pieces, such as shorter reports the first segment in a fictional series, or a book that is designed to sell your services, while educating the reader at the same time. These are sometimes called “buzz pieces” since they are used to create buzz about the writer.
This is going to Cost Me a Fortune, Isn't it?
This is one concern that is common to many writers who consider publishing a book, even an ebook. After all, the goal is to make money, and the more you have to spend to start making it the more you have to sell to break even, right?
Well, the truth is, you can publish a book, in as little as a day, if you can type that fast, for free! You heard me. But, if you are not skilled in all facets of publishing, you might want to consider breaking out a little cash investment for the following:
•Cover designs. This can be done on Fiverr.com or similar sites for less than $20, and get great results. It can also cost you a couple hundred for a graphics pro.
•Editing is often best left up to the pro. Although, today's grammar standards are not what they used to be, and most writing programs can do basic grammar, punctuation and spelling checks.
•Formatting can be tricky, particularly on some sites. Amazon is not picky, but some other publishers, such as Smashwords, can be. If you want basic formatting, you can learn to do it yourself, but if your manuscript is extensive, did not get “marked up” as you wrote, or you are not tech savvy, this one can cost you a lot of time.
Many ebook publishers believe in outsourcing as much as possible so they can focus on creating great content, but learning any of these will make you a better author, and there are plenty of online sources for education and training in any of these.
Now that you understand the basic benefits to your writing from publishing an ebook, we'll take a look at what it does for you as a writer in the next chapter.
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Can't wait, want to read the rest of the book, right now? Great, go here and get your ebook copy!
Or, upvote this post and resteem it to get a free copy! Send me a tip note with your email address and I'll deliver a PDF version straight to your inbox for helping promote my post!
But, Mark, I'm ready to publish my ebook now! Okay, find the link below and sign up for free to start selling your books for 95% royalties!
Not only that, but you'll get:
- A free customizable author's page
- Instant uploads of virtually any type of digital content.
- Set your own price and collect commissions instantly in your Paypal account!
- Selling tools to help you market your book.
- A capture tool to get the emails of everyone that buys!
- An affiliate system to help you create an army of sales people to help sell your books!
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Stephen King, dude, not Larry King, wrote "Carrie". :)
Also, yeah, ebooks can be a way to make money, but the key is being prolific and staying in Amazon's "New Releases" algorithm, which is which you need to be able to pump out 10-15k words a week, which is usually the minimum. Because that kind of workload is strenuous, a lot of authors go with hiring ghostwriters for a penny a word. For a 10k word story, that's about $100, but if you've built up a fanbase, it can pay for it while keeping on schedule.
The unfortunate thing for writers is how easy it is to find ghostwriters, as a lot of them don't know, or are too nervous to ask what they're worth, or believe they'll never be published.
James Frey, the author of "A Million Little Pieces"? He takes advantage of that by going to MFA writing programs and hiring writers fresh out of grad school to write for "fiction factories", where writers are paid about $5-10k for their work, but he keeps all the rights, including film options, which is how the author of "I Am Number Four" got seriously screwed out of a lot of money.
Amazon is usually the route a lot of self-publishers want to go because of the "one click buy" on a customer's Kindle, so some authors are willing to take 65% royalties for that added convenience.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Good post!
When I ghost write a book, it's typically $5 to 7K, but they give me the whole structure in interviews. It usually breaks down to $75-$100 an hour when my part is all done. And, it's non-fiction. I don't think I could ghost write fiction. It's too personal for me.
BAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, I know Stephen King's work well, dude. I wrote this in one day originally, and never had it edited, so, I guess I've been reading Stephen in my head every time I've been over it. LOL Good catch. And no, that's not the only way to earn with Ebooks, and anyone only paying ghost writers $100, and I can seriously not be friends, because that is robbery. I get a minimum 10 cents a word, for crap I can write in my sleep. And, I have a list of dozens of authors that earn their livings from self-pubbed ebooks, with NOTHING on Amazon. It's all over the map. I think the only major author actually doing ghost writers any favors is James Patterson. Several of his collaborators have come out with an audience of their own, from what I've heard.
Yeah, I had a decent publisher until they closed down. I looked into small ebook presses that would take on new writers, but no one will take on a series in progress, which is why I started publishing myself in serial on Steemit. Unfortunately the only genre that really gets any traction is Romance, and that usually requires setting yourself in a niches, or doing commissioned NSFW stuff.
Until I find a steady income, I still have my day job teaching, so at least there's that. :)
I've got a buddy, 70 yrs old, retired engineer, writes traditional "space opera" scifi. He put his first novel on Amazon, made $20k on it the first year, get this, with no previous audience, no website, no social media presence, no email list. Now he's up to number 8 and his book sales are almost three times his retirement income, which he said is pretty comfortable. If I hadn't known him (Facebook) for three years and seen evidence of his total honesty, I'd think he wasn't sharing everything, but I can't find him anywhere, except on Amazon. So, you never know. Let me know if you'd like to chat about some possible collaboration. I'm working on several ideas. My fiction has been an uphill battle here for the last couple months. I'd like to try some interactive fiction. Most of the fiction getting decent payouts is doing so with paid votes, or on Adsactly, a big communal account that keeps about 3/4 of what the stories they share make. Just so you know, though, my fiction made me about $40k here last year. Now, if I could just get the books to go better. LOL
Find me on discord if you'd be interested in discussing something like that.
Most of the small indies want some money, in my experience, or don't have a marketing machine, so it's a wash, you might as well take 90%, or 97% like you get on Payhip.com if you have to sell your own books anyway.