Tips for Writing Your First eBook

It’s easy to see why businesses want to be able to offer eBooks to their customers. Having the ability to offer an exclusive downloadable feature is a terrific way to engage customers and reward them for spending time on a business’s site. In addition, publishing a thorough and well-researched eBook will help to shore up that business’ reputation as an authority in their industry. The catch, though, is that the eBook needs to be well-written and offer something readers won’t easily find elsewhere on the internet! Writing an eBook can be a lengthy and challenging process. That’s where you come in.

As a freelance writer, being able to create custom eBooks for your clients says a lot about your professionalism, expertise, and confidence in the quality of your writing. It’s one of the most impressive writing services you can offer as a freelancer. If you’ve never written an eBook before, don’t panic! Since eBooks are a relatively new medium, most of your fellow freelancers won’t have much more experience than you do. Before you get started on your first eBook, check out these helpful tips.

Make sure you know what your client expects.

It’s important to know what your client expects from any writing assignment before you get started on it. However, it’s particularly critical for a long-form project such as an eBook. If you aren’t completely clear on what your client wants, you could end up spending long hours on a project that ends up being unsatisfactory. Instead of having your work rejected or going into round after round of rewrites, make sure you have a clear idea of what kind of eBook your client wants. These are some smart questions to ask:

• How long should the eBook be?
  • Getting a word estimate may be more valuable than a page estimate.
• What questions do you want the eBook to answer for your customers?
• What kind of voice or tone do you want the eBook to be written in?
  • You may want to ask for some examples.
• How are you planning to promote the eBook on your website?
• What demographics, if any, is the eBook targeting?

Don’t tackle a topic you know nothing about.

One of the benefits of being a freelancer is the freedom it offers you to learn about new subjects and expand your horizons of knowledge. That said, an eBook is a major undertaking. If you choose a subject you have absolutely no knowledge of for your first attempt at an eBook, you’ll have to spend much longer doing background research than you normally would. Along with slowing you down, this will also give you an inaccurate idea of what writing an eBook entails. This will make it harder for you to determine how much time you should allot for it in the future. You can tackle more difficult subjects in the future, but your first eBook should be on a subject you feel comfortable writing about.

Give yourself plenty of time to do research.

Whatever the subject of your eBook is, it’s a safe bet that you’ll need to spend a lot of time doing research before you can begin writing it. Make sure that you’ve allotted sufficient time to do this work—and remember that it counts as work! As you do research, make sure that you’re keeping notes of everything important that you learn. Copy and paste URLs of any websites or articles that could be useful during the writing process. Make sure that you’re getting information from credible sources. These may include legitimate news publications, university and government websites, and peer-reviewed journals.

Make an outline before you start writing.

Even the shortest eBooks are likely to be much longer than most of your other writing projects. If you’re working on more than one project at once, it can be easy to lose track of what you’re writing and fail to keep to the point. That’s why outlines are so valuable for eBooks. Once you’ve finished the research stage of your eBook project, review your notes and begin developing your outline. Make sure to include chapter headings and brief notes on the direction of each chapter of the eBook. You may want to submit the outline to your client for approval before you begin actually writing an eBook. That way, you can be sure you’re on the right track from the beginning.

Feel free to skip around.

Once you’ve got the outline in place, you don’t need to write an eBook in order, beginning with the introduction and ending with the conclusion. Of course, you can do that if that’s the way you work best, but you can also skip around and work on different sections. Some writers find that they can’t write a good introduction until they have already completed the body of the eBook. Once you’re finished with the eBook, however, you should review it with your outline in hand. Make sure that you haven’t left out any important points that you meant to cover.

Work for a few hours a day.

After you’ve started writing an eBook, make sure that you’re dedicating plenty of time every day to getting it done. Your eBook doesn’t have to be the only project you’re working on, of course. However, it’s probably going to be taking up more of your mental energy than most of your other projects—particularly if it’s your first eBook! If possible, try to ease up on the other assignments you’re taking on during the days you’ll be working on the eBook.

Give yourself time to edit the eBook.

When you’re finished writing your first eBook, it may be tempting to send it off to your client right away. Ideally, though, you should give yourself at least a day away from the eBook, and then a few hours to review it. This should include time for copy editing the text as well as time for reading it through and making sure that everything is as clear and logical as possible. When you’re planning your schedule for writing an eBook, be sure to allot yourself this time at the end of the project.

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