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How to Make Money Writing and Publishing eBooks

Updated on April 8, 2013

Turning Your Imagination into Money

Just about everyone has thought about how nice it would be to write stories, have them published and sit back watching the money roll in. Well, it may not be all that simple, but with ebooks becoming more and more popular, writing for a living is slowly moving out of the fantasy zone and into reality for many entrepreneurs.

While some writers have managed to turn their creative writing into mega bucks, most writers have success by writing "how to" books.

Its a matter of finding out what is popular. The writers who make a lot of money writing fiction are writing about vampires and science fiction as that is a subject that is booming now. But there are other niches such as cooking, and designing that one may find a comfort zone.

Writing and Selling Ebooks

Writing and selling ebooks can be very profitable, and help one on their way to quitting their day job or simply add to their blogging career.

Just about everyone who has ever read a book has fantasized about becoming a writer of best selling books, and with the popularity of ebooks that fantasy can become a reality. True, there are a lot of ebooks being written and published every day. But there are humble ebook authors who have published their work and become six figure ebook authors almost over night.

The best plan to have is to create your own ebook library by writing as many books as possible. Most ebook authors who are earning six figures have several books published. The theory is that when people start to like your writing style in one book they will look for your next one.

Using Titlez

The closer your book ranks to #1, the more often your book appears in Amazon recommendations, and this is important because your book's Amazon Sales Rank is public evidence of the success of your ebook. The more successful your ebook apears to be, the more respect potential customers will have for it.

Many book sellers, publishers, and agents pay close attention to Amazon ranks. If you manage to pump up the sales rank of your book, it can prompt brick and morter stores to order copies. Publishers looking for complementary titles may also ask you to write the book for them.

Titlez is an excellent tool for evaluation of topic ideas because you can gauge the potential audience for a particular topic or title. With Titlez you can easily assemble a list of related books with their historical sales rankings and descriptions. This indicates weather other books on the topic have succeeded or failed, and may show where opportunities exist and where markets are saturated.

Titlez also provides pricing information on competitive titles, helping you determine the right price for your book. You can also track your book's performance over time to assess the effect of promotional efforts and marketing programs.

Successful bloggers

Blog your book- Julie Powell began a blog while slaving away in a thankless job as a secretary in New York. Each day for one whole year, she wrote about her experience of cooking every recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She called it the Julie/Julia Project. She began the blog because she was dissatisfied with her life and lacking self confidence, but was never entirely sure if she should follow through on the project until she began to hear from readers who urged her on and gave her moral support.
She eventually heard from thousands of readers as her blog grew. The resulting book, done in small pieces daily on her blog, was called Julie and Julia; 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. It was published by Little, Brown and Company and has sold more than 45,000 copies in one week.

The blog Baghdad Burning, was written anonymously by an Iraqui woman for safety reasons, was turned into a book and went on to win the Samuel Johnson Prize in Britain, with an award of $53,000.

Blogs can be a an encouraging way to get yourself to write every day or once per week. Even if your entire blog doesn't fit neatly into a book, you can take pieces of the entries and use them to begin or create a book project. you also get plenty of writing practice and , because blogs are so iformal, you probably lose that performance pressure felt by most when first writing.

If you are going off subject or making a mistake, one of your readers will often let you know. They may even suggest new topics that lead to other ideas.

Caution

Blogs can also be non productive time wasters and it is always wise to keep an open mind about your topic and writing in general when just starting out. It can be difficult to tell at first if it will be worth pursuing. But if after several months, you find you're doing nothing with your book and the blog itself isn't going to turn into a book, this may be the time to move on to something more productive.

Amazon

Amazon is not to be ignored when writing and publishing ebooks because of their more than 90 million registered buyers, and the fact that they provide free worldwide exposure for your book.

At least 30% of Amazon book sales are from obscure books that are not even carried in book stores. Amazon has a system that will recommend your book to people who are browsing books written on your subject. And the more people buy your ebook on Amazon the easier it becomes for others to see it, because when Amazon sees that your book is selling it automatically places it higher in search engines.

Social Networks for Book Readers

LibraryThing is a fun big book club that lets you display your particular taste and style. There is also a chance that you will meet a few virtual friends of similar taste.

You can enter your book titles, and the more interesting or off the wall your book seems to be, the more of a splash you will make on this site.

This site has a book recommendation system that is every bit as accurate as Amazon's. LibraryThing is definitely worth looking into.

Creating blog posts

An easy way to find new material for your blog is to crate a Google Alert, which will automatically scour thousands of media sources for any keywords you specify. You will be alerted through email when something containing your keywords appears in newspapers, magazines, Web sites, ect.

Designing Your Book

If you think your content is good and there is a market for it, but for some reason all the marketing in the world is not working, its time to look into a design of your cover. I have read numerous times that many people will buy a book because of the cover. As silly as it sounds, people will browse book stores looking at covers, and when they see something that stirs them emotionally they pick it up.

You can download a cover from CreateSpace which Amazon will size to match the dimensions of your book.

You may wish to use damonza.com for professional help with your cover.

Or if you are a "do it yourself" person, there are software programs that may be of some help, such as, myecovermaker.com


Link To All My Hub Pages

  • Skarlet at HubPages
    I write many Hebpages on various subjects including classic Hollywood and vintage everything. I also hubs on business, investing and various ways of generating income. I have also published books, and numerous articles online. Links to many of my pages can be found at the above address. Sincerely, Skarlet

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