Everyone of us has a wealth of business expertise and knowledge that we have built up through experience and wouldn't it be great to share this with others, either for profit, as marketing or purely for information?

Three speakers, Kristina Julin-Stringer of Itisagoodidea.com, Chris Thomas of Milton Contact Limited and Tony Hetherington of P4-Publishing presented the informative HBN Seminar on E-books at HBN on 4th July 2008. You can listen to the full seminar using the audio link below, see the pictures taken in the slideshow and also read the speakers notes here.

Listen to the seminar

Slideshow

Speakers notes

1. Kristina: How and why to write an E-book

Why write an e-book

• Why you should write an e-Book

• Credibility and visibility
• to become an expert
• generating leads
  
• Why people buy e-books
  • instant access
  • most recent information on a relevant subject
  • sensitive subject that they might not want to purchase in a shop - e.g. skin cancer.

• Why you should do your research first
  • To make money, make sure you have a market
  • Knowledge can be used to generate specific keywords that will ensure your e-book is found more quickly

How to write an e-book

• Your niche
  • Something you feel passionate about
  • A gap in the market

• Find your keywords
  • typical statistics to judge a good keyword

• Outline your chapters
  • using a "grocery list method" - because words become sentences and sentences become chapters maximum 6-8 chapters, 100-120 pages.
  • continue to 500 - 750 words - becomes an article that can be published
    
  • repeat generating articles that together become an e-book! (approximately 100 pages - still home printable)
    

The e-book itself

• Format of e-book (e.g. PDF) if it ain't broke don't fix it!
• How to make money out of it - Go out and talk about it, chapter by chapter

2. Chris' Notes: Styling and formatting your e-book

STYLES - a mnemonic for styling and formatting an E-book where:

• S - Size - think about the size of the final document
• T - Type - choose an interesting typeface that suits your material and format
• Y - Use styles and formatting in Word or Open Office Writer to define consistent headings and other formatting
• L - Layout - plan a good and professional looking layout for your book
• E - E-links - Use hyperlinks within and between documents to add further value and efficiency
• S - Save - Save document frequently to your PC, save consecutive drafts, make external back up copies
  

3. Tony's notes: alternative ebook strategies for production and promotion

In the past 4 years, from over 1.1 million books that were published, a staggering 960,000 have sold less than 99 copies – don’t let yours be another flop! Take control of your own book now.

1. Link it to your business – a free giveaway via an autoresponder. The giveaway should be a “useful but incomplete” answer to their biggest fear or frustration.
2. Blog/ebooks strategy – ideal for artistic subjects such as poetry and fiction where a strong bond can build between author and readers.
3. If a tutorial or a how to guide then change it into something else to add more perceived value and even raise the price! Create a video course, e-course, physical book or DVD or a membership site with the same material.

Websites mentioned.

www.aweber.com or www.getresponse.com – To get an autoresponder.
www.techsmith.com – to get 30 day trial of Camtasia to create PowerPoint videos.
www.Lulu.com – To create printed versions of ebooks on demand.
www.Kunaki.com – To create CDs and DVDs and distribute them on demand.
www.Clickbank.com - To get other products to sell or get others to sell your ebook.
www.openoffice.org – free office software that can create pdfs.

Tony's website is http://www.p4-publishing.com and http://www.launchworkshop.com