The word ‘ebook’ means ‘electronic book’. It is a book that can be read on phones, tablets, laptops and other electronic devices. There is a higher demand for ebooks today, due to the global rise in the consumption of digital content. How do you create an electronic book? Here are 6 steps to creating an ebook.
Write your Content
The most fundamental among the steps to creating an ebook is writing the content. The core part of any book is its content. You have to write the text that people will read when they buy or download your book. Choose a topic you like and are well-informed on, and write about it.
You could conduct research and get citations to support your topic and give it more credibility. Give as much detail as you want to and discuss your chosen topic in depth. Write exhaustively.
Add Visuals and Images
The next step to creating an ebook is to include some images in your content.
Visuals and images are very helpful in creating a break or a place for the eyes to rest after a long body of text.
Besides being pleasant to the eyes, images also help you illustrate your story in a more descriptive way. Your visuals should complement your writing.
Adding visuals to your content is one of the less important steps to creating an ebook. It is important to point out that there are some ebooks that do not have any images in them. There is nothing wrong with that.
However, if you take a good look at some of those books, you would notice that they use a block of text or a quote from the book, and they format it with a bigger text size and place it in a square to create a break from the long text.
The essence of using images or differently formatted quotes is to reduce eye stress, prevent boredom and make a text more aesthetically pleasing. You could go with either option. All the same, ensure that the visual breaks are strategically placed.
Arrange your Content
The third step to creating an ebook is arranging your content. An ebook can be on any topic and on any genre. That means an ebook can be in prose, drama, or even a poem or collections of poems.
Each of these genres has a structure. Poetry is in lines and stanzas. Drama is written in scenes and acts. Prose is written in sentences, paragraphs and chapters. So, the arrangement of your ebook is influenced by whichever genre it belongs to.
To arrange your text effectively, think about each subtopic you have discussed in your writing and how one subtopic connects with the next.
Subtopics that are closely related should be together in one chapter.
If your ebook is in play form (a drama text), put together in each act the scenes that convey one central movement or progression in your play.
For a collection of poems, you can title each chapter after the central theme for the selection of poems in that chapter. You may not need to chapter your ebook on poems, if the poems have no central themes.
Structuring or arranging your content is one of the steps to creating an ebook that makes your content cohesive and easier to read.
Hire an Editor
Having written your content and added all the necessary graphics, the next steps to creating an ebook are editing and proofreading. Give your manuscript to professional editors like us at My Sharp Pen Editing Services to correct grammatical and spelling errors. An editor will ensure that your manuscript is free from errors, and looks professional.
Editing is one of the steps to creating an ebook that should not be skipped. This step could make a huge difference in whether your readers give your book 5-stars or bad reviews that will affect your sales negatively.
Format your Ebook
You can now format your book when your manuscript is edited. The format you choose for your ebook depends on the platform where you want to sell it. There are many platforms for showcasing and selling your ebook. The platforms include: Amazon, Okadabooks, Barnes and Noble, Apple Books and a host of others.
Formatting is one of the most important steps to creating an ebook, particularly in relation to how the final copy looks. Each platform has a few file formats that it allows. So, you have to follow the format to the letter.
These platforms allow only certain types of file formats, such as EPUB, PDF, AZW, MOBI, IBA and ODF. Many of these platforms do not allow .docx files because they do not convert well on the applications that readers use to read ebooks.
So, you have to convert or format your ebook to suit the platform where you intend to publish it. You may have to create a different file format for each platform if you decide to be on more than one platform.
If you want to know how your ebook would look, in addition to looking at it on different screens (phone, tablet and computer screens), use the preview on the formatting page of the publishing platform. If you also want to know how a hard-copy version of your ebook would look, you could print out a copy of your manuscript.
Publish your Ebook
Last among the steps to creating an ebook is publishing. Why would you create something so insightful and not have anyone read it, right?
Click the publish button on the platform you have chosen to sell your book on. Congratulations, you are now a published author.
Put your book out there for the world to find it and read it. Inform, entertain and earn through your book.
Electronic books have come to stay. They are easy to read on the go and you can have as many as you like on your electronic device. Hopefully, you have learnt the steps to creating an ebook, and we will be reading from you soon.
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