Greetings and Salutations!

I did a 7 hour ebook project today! My goal was to time - from start to finish - how long it would take to go from the raw material of an ebook to a finished product. I tested on both the Apple iBookStore and the Amazon Kindle. I've documented the steps here for you!

http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/writing/gettingyourbookpublished/

The section that deals with what I did today is in the middle right of the listing.

It did involve a bit of tweaking but, now that I've figured it out, it's not bad at all!

First I gathered all my content of my ebook - titled Quick, No-Cook Low Carb Recipes - into Word. I set up the page numbers and footers for my print version of my book. When the Word file was set, I saved it out as a PDF.

I then went to Lulu.com and used their standard screens to load this in as a physical book. It was a short period of time later that I had a "real book" in their system ready to buy!

Next I started a new project in Lulu, this one for an ebook. I hit a few technical glitches in here but I documented the solutions for you. Things like removing curly quotes :) Soon enough I had loaded up the ebook version, meaning now my book was for sale as an ebook and heading towards Apples iBookstore!

Finally I logged onto Amazon, converted my ebook into Amazon's format, and loaded it up. Actually I *reloaded* it up because it turns out I'd forgotten I did this same process as a test back in October 2010. And it's been selling 40 copies a month since then!! Yikes!! It was only a test. Ooops. So now tomorrow I'm going to do a much better job of formatting the content so people can read it more easily :)

The fact that my test copy is selling 40 copies a month is a fairly clear indicator that ebooks are worth doing!

I highly suggest that everyone who's through Launch 3 take our ebook course. Once you do, swing by the ebook area of the forums to brainstorm about ideas. Ebooks should be 100% your own content and are best compiled from your top how-to articles! Our best selling ebooks are on practical matters - how to exercise, how to cook certain recipes, and how to meditate. Think of a practical area that your visitors would need help with, and then address that need! We're happy to help you brainstorm if you'd like some help. Just post in the ebook forum to get started!

Tomorrow I'll definitely be polishing up this No-Cook ebook, and then starting on the reworking of my next book in the series, the Microwave ebook! :)


Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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