Just as in building a website, proper planning of your e-book is crucial to the success of your electronic publication. Here are a few things to consider when beginning to think about your e-book:
- What is the goal of your publication?
- Who is your target audience? This will be the primary deciding factor in what format you decide to publish your e-book in or whether you choose multiple formats.
- How long will your e-book be?
- Where will you want to distribute your e-book?
- Will you distribute your e-book on CD or other media?
- How/where will you market your e-book?
- What will you charge for your e-book?
- Will you need a graphic designer for your cover?
- Choosing your publisher
Each question is outlined in more detail below. Compile your answers.
1. What is the goal of your publication? Information? Self-help? Enjoyment? E-course? For profit? Whatever your goals are, define them before you begin looking for a publisher - you will need to have all of your ducks in a row before talking to potential designers.>
2. Who is your target audience? Knowing who is in your target audience is crucial because you will have to consider this in choosing what format you will compile your e-book in.
3. How long will your e-book be? Depending on the purpose of your e-book, it is recommended that you not exceed 100 or so pages because most people just cannot or will not sit at a computer reading your book on the computer screen for any serious length of time. You will need to decide if your e-book will be printable (recommended) so that your customer will be able to print and read your book at their leisure. If you are creating a novel in e-book format or similar length book, it really MUST be printable if you expect to please your customers.
4. Where will you want to distribute your e-book? Depending on where you want to distribute and/or sell your e-book, you will be limited to specific formats and/or guidelines that you must adhere to in order to meet the requirements of the distributor. For example, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com both require specific formatting requirements in order to be listed on their sites. You also lose a substantial amount of your royalties by selling on the bigger sites - usually at least 50% of the sale value. Keeping this in mind, though, you also could end up selling hundreds or thousands more books per year by having them listed on such sites. If you will distribute your e-books commercially, you will need to get ISBN codes and bar codes registered. You can learn more about that here.
5. Will you distribute your e-book on CD or other media? You can generally create these in any format you would like, but if you will sell them commercially, you will need to obtain a separate ISBN code and possibly UPC codes as well.
6. How/where will you market your e-book? You will need to decide if you will market solely online, in publications or wherever. If you will be marketing widely, you will need to consider your options for advertising venues, have advertisements made, etc.
7.What will you charge for your e-book? Determining pricing can be difficult, but it must be done. Most e-books are considerably less expensive than you would charge for a printed book, as the expenses incurred in preparing an e-book are done once, not repeated for every book sold, so your cost of production is very minimal compared to a printed book. Do a good search around the net to see what others are charging for comparable e-books. Also to consider are the actual costs of production, etc.
8. Will you need a graphic designer for your cover and/or advertising? That depends on what the purpose and target audience of your e-book are. If your e-book will be sold solely on your own site to a small, very targeted audience, you may be ok just having a basic jacket designed by the publisher of your e-book. If you will be widely distributing your e-book, I strongly recommend that you consider having a graphic designer design your e-book cover and possibly advertisements for you. You may also consider a PR specialist to help you get the word out to the appropriate venues and markets around the world.
9. Choose your publisher. Once you've compiled the above know roughly what you're looking for, start looking for your publisher. Based upon your answers to the above, a publisher should be able to tell you what format and give you a quote as to what it will cost you to get your book published with them or even if they can do it in the format you need. If they cannot, they usually can help refer you to someone who can.
We can work with you to build a professional, affordable e-book in either .exe or .pdf formats. Click here to learn more about the available formats we offer.
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© 2004 Susan M. Totman. All rights reserved.
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