Have you wondered whether you should write an ebook? A good way to decide whether an ebook is for you is to evaluate your goals and see whether an ebook is the best option. First, let’s answer a few basic questions:

What is an ebook? An ebook is a book in electronic form that readers can download directly from the internet. They can then read it on their computer screen, or they can print it out and read it like a regular book

What are the advantages of writing an ebook?

• It’s fast. You write it and edit it and, generally, put it in PDF form, and you can start marketing and selling your book.
• When you write an e-book, there’s virtually no cost to printing your book. You may pay for your shopping cart to sell the books, but you don’t have to pay for the physical printing. As a result you can make much more money per book, without investment!
• You don’t have to worry about storing inventory somewhere, taking time to mail books, running out of books or any other worries you might have when you write and publish a physical book. And there’s no shipping cost. You make more money and readers actually pay less, too. Everyone wins.
• When you write an e-book, you can make changes very quickly and easily. With a printed book, you have to wait until the next printing, but when you write an e-book, changes are instantaneous. This means you can put the book on the market quickly and still make tweaks and changes to perfect it as time goes by.
• E-books tend to be shorter, so they are often quicker to write.

Sounds great, but how can you be sure an ebook is for you?

• If you plan to have most of your readers find you on the web, an ebook is an excellent publishing and distribution choice.
• If you already have a large mailing list, an ebook works well.
• On the other hand, if you want to be on national TV or radio and interviewed in magazines or newspapers, it helps to have a physical book.
• If you want to do more public speaking, a physical book is more beneficial to your goal, as well. However, you can self publish and have both an ebook version and a printed version of your book. Some traditional publishers are now even creating ebooks of books they physically publish as well.

Now we come to the original question. How do you go about writing an ebook? The process is similar to that of writing a book.

1. First you need to identify your audience and the situations they are in.

• Are you writing for sleep-deprived parents who are at the end of their ropes?
• Educators desperate to get kids engaged and make learning more fun?
• Mechanics looking to improve their business skills?
• Teenage girls who want to fit in?

Understand your audience and what they see as their major challenge, problem or goal that they are looking to address. See how they describe this in their own words and make sure you address the problem the way they do. Even if you think you know what their real problem is and it’s not what they think, you need to start where they are and slowly, unconsciously, lure them over to your view.

2. You also want to write with a tone that works for your audience.

• For auto mechanics, the book can take on a technical tone.
• You want a book for frustrated parents to be free of jargon. That book might be short and pithy. You might wanted to bring in humor to get them to stick with the book and enjoy the process.
• A book on death might be less humorous (unless you're Maureen Hancock, the commedienne medium!).

Most successful books nowadays take on a conversational tone. If it sounds too dogmatic (I'm the expert so just take my word for it), you may lose readers. Remember, even technical books need to keep readers engaged. Almost any book can benefit from being entertaining, as long as the tone is appropriate.

3. Before you can write an ebook, chapter-by-chapter, you need to organize your ebook into a table of contents.

• If you teach this material in any context, you can organize your material the same way you teach it to others, each chapter building upon the concepts in the previous chapter.
• You can create a ten week program, with each chapter being a week in the program.
• Or you can order each chapter by the different audiences who might read the book (a chapter for nurses, a chapter for parents, a chapter for teachers, for instance).

In The Insider’s Guide to Writing Your Best Book in 60 Days we made each e-book chapter, and corresponding workbook chapter, a week of our course. Think about how your reader will use your book and then model the chapters in a way that makes it easiest to use.

4. There's one more thing you need to do before you start writing a book and that is, make a plan. Without a plan, you're likely to have the best of intentions, but life gets in the way and the book gets forgotten. A plan will help you make the book writing part of your weekly or daily routine.

Your plan should include

• When you'll write
• How long you'll write for (either time-wise or how many pages)
• How you'll get support for writing.

Actually schedule the time in your calendar or PDA. Block out one, two or even four hour blocks to work on the book. If something comes up, reschedule it immediately, so you don't just lose momentum and forget about it. The more sacrosanct you make your writing time (and don't be tempted to fill it with other activities that come up) the more successful you will be at writing an e-book and completing it.

5. Once you are clear whom you’re writing for, what they want, how you will organize the material and when you'll be writing, it’s time to write. Here are a few tips to keep in mind for writing an e-book that is well written:

• Make your book come alive for readers by showing them rather than telling them. If you want us to know that your client transformedin 4 weeks, give examples of that transformation. Be as specific as possible. The specifics make it real. One client of mine wrote about what a mess his car was. I had him get specific—What was in the back seat? Paper? What kinds of papers? What were they from? What brand of beer cans did he throw in the trunk? The specifics make it more colorful.
• You’ll also want to establish your credibility and pack a punch with research, interesting facts and data and stories of people you’ve helped or other specific examples from real life (they can be disguised if confidential).
• Consider starting your first chapter with a story or anecdote—this helps establish your credibility and, even more importantly, will entertain readers and keep them turning the pages! Stories often serve to drive a point home and make it come alive for your readers, making the understanding and learning more permanent. If you are sharing a personal story about someone you’ve helped, either get their permission or make sure you disguise them enough to protect their privacy. You can include a disclaimer in the book that says that your examples of composites of real people you’ve helped, partially fictionalized to protect their identities. As a book coach, I work with many psychotherapists, doctors and coaches, and in most instances it’s important that they keep the identities of their patients private. This is a great way to do that.
• Start your ebook by illustrating the benefits readers will receive from reading the book. Lots of interesting things are competing for your readers’ time. You need to motivate them to keep reading. stories can illustrate these benefits and bulllet points can reinforce them.
• Keep it simple and results oriented. I often work with therapists and doctors who may be inclined to include lots of technical information. Even a financial advisor I recently worked with started his book with a page of history of the financial services industry and tons of technical information. Unless your book is written specifically for those looking for technical information, you can provide the technical information in sidebars so that readers who want the enrichment can find it, but those who find it confusing or diverting can skip it.

6. Keep writing chapters using your outline and pretty soon you will have a finished first draft of your e-book.

7. Once you’re done, convert your file to a good e-book format. Many people use PDF format because it's fairly easy to do, is an industry standard and is able to incorporate text, graphics, links into a standardized file that looks the same on anyone's computer when they have Adobe Acrobat (an easy to install, free program that is pretty much ubiquitous).

However, you have many options, particularly if you are concerned about making your book one that can't be shared easily among users. The links to other articles at the bottom of this article can help those who are more technically minded to chooseamong the e-book creating programs.

In addition, your shopping cart software (and you'll need one of those if you are going to sell things on your website) may have special software to convert your word file, for instance, into an e-book format that is not easily shared or changed (you don't necessarily want people monkeying with your book).

8. You can use a shopping cart to sell an ebook to customers and get paid. With some shopping carts, you can even set up an affiliate program so that other people who like your e-book can sell it too and get a share of the profits—more sales for you and more readers benefiting from your e-book.

9. Now it’s time to promote and sell your ebook. But that's another article...which I will get to!