Introduction...

Hey and welcome to the Software Review Guy! Today I am going to cover a topic that is really taking off in the internet money-making/marketing world, that is self-publishing e-books!

There are a number of reasons why this is taking off, firstly the fact anyone can do this with limited to no budget at all (more on that later) but also because of the ability to easily sell your books on the largest e-commerce platform of all…Amazon!

I have now self-published a few of my own e-books and as such, I understand the steps required to get a book produced from scratch and I thought it would be a useful thing to cover in this article.

So if you are interested in making money by publishing Kindle e-books then you’re in the right place! In just a few minutes I’ll take you through the entire process, and I literally mean from the very start which includes generating an idea and topic for your book, I’ll also show you how to identify untapped niches and topics which you should target to maximize sales! I’ll then cover the entire process to take this idea topic through to a fully written e-book, produced in the correct format with a stand-out cover and description, and walk you through getting your book live on Amazon itself!

So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

Step 1 - Keyword Research & Analysis

The very first, and most important step in e-book publishing is keyword research. I want to stress here its importance, if you do this step wrong your chances of success decrease hugely! The easy trap to fall into here is to decide to write an e-book on a topic that you find interesting. Now, in an ideal world if your book ends up being on a topic you love that’s a bonus but this should not be a factor in selecting your topic, the only thing to base your selection on is the results of your keyword research and analysis.

So what exactly are we trying to achieve from keyword research? well, simply we are trying to find a keyword topic that gives us the best low competition/search volume ratio, to put it simply we want to find a keyword topic that is regularly searched for by potential buyers that has as little competition as possible basically an untapped niche is what we are looking for! again though be aware our topic needs to have a suitable search volume otherwise we'll be setting ourselves up to fail!

So, with the above in mind how do we conduct our e-book keyword analysis and research? well, there are a couple of ways:

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Step 2 - Creating a Title & Writing Your e-Book

Creating You Book Title

Ok, so now that we've identified our topic based on our research done in step 1 it's time to create the title for our book! The title of your book is important as (along with the cover) it is the first thing a buyer will see. Your title needs to clearly show the niche/topic that your book is about and needs to include your keyword(s) in order to boost SEO, also the catchier the title the better as this will help to hook buyers in!

An example of a poor title would be something like 'A Beginners Guide To Mountain Hiking' - ok your general topic is included but it doesn't really create much excitement or help the book stand out! also Amazon will allow more characters than this so do not waste what is valuable real estate in terms of getting your info in front of buyers! with this being said a much better title for the book mentioned above would be: 'The Complete Mountain Hiking Guide For Beginners - A Practical, Fun Guide To Get You Started On Your Mountain Adventures!'

How To Write Your e-Book!

So now we've got our title sorted it's time to actually write out e-Book! now, as with keyword research, we have two options here, a free method and a paid solution. For the free method here it literally involves writing out a book yourself, if you are good at writing and comfortable doing this you literally only need word processing software and Google to research your topic and you can quite literally write the book yourself! just make sure you use original content and do not plagiarize any other articles as Amazon could pick up on this and reject your book which would be a disaster! I will summarise my advice for laying out and sectioning your book shortly so if you intend to self-write the book then skip down and go from there!

If, however (like me!) the thought of spending hours planning, researching then writing an e-book fills you with dread then do not worry as there is another way! introducing ghostwriters! if you do not know ghostwriters are people whom you can hire who are skilled writers and who will literally write your book to completion based on a basic template you provide them! this not only ensures

Finally, I wanted to end this section by mentioning that there is software on the market which 'spins' articles and makes them unique, this may be an option for people who do not mind putting in a bit of work themselves but who do not want to have to write all of the content! One of the best I can find available is 'Content Professor' which spins articles on any topic in seconds which you could then use to construct the chapters of your book! I want to caveat this by saying I have never used this tool for an e-Book however so please do your own research before using it! if you want to check it out though you can do so here.

Planning Your e-Book!

This is another crucial step that cannot be skipped over, we want to produce quality content as if our book is poor it'll attract bad ratings following its initial sales which will damage our ranking on Amazon, conversely, great content means great reviews and therefore, great ranking meaning many more sales, I'm sure you can see why therefore having a good book content is key!

In order to achieve a solid book content having a plan for the book itself is the best practice, this applies whether you are self-writing or outsourcing the writing to a ghostwriter. Here I will summarise the steps (and associated word counts) that I like to aim for in my books!

I will always start with a book overview as I think it's good to get this down on paper, especially if sending this to a ghostwriter, this includes details such as the list below, this allows the writer to get a good overview and feel for how the book should be written.

• Title

• Subtitle

• Author (use a pen name here unless you want to use your own name if self-writing)

• Word Count – 7,500 words minimum – if this goes over a bit that is ok.

• Target Audience - Gender/Age

• Problem that led the customer to purchase this book

• Solution to that problem

• Links to top competitive titles

Next, we need to breakdown the chapters of the book, again i will summarise for you an example outline that I have used successfully in the past, this may seem a bit over the top but I want a writer to construct the book in the way I require so this means less chance of any errors occurring by making things crystal clear for them and helping to make their job as easy as possible.

1. Introduction: 1500 - 2000 words approx

2. Body Chapters: 2000 – 2500 words

   • Chapter 1 - Title & brief overview/outline of chapter content

   • Chapter 2 - Title & brief overview/outline of chapter content

   • Chapter 3 - Title & brief overview/outline of chapter content

   • Chapter 4 - Title & brief overview/outline of chapter content

   • Chapter 5 - Title & brief overview/outline of chapter content

3. Conclusion : 1000 - 1500 words

4. Resources Page - to include all citations etc used in the writing of the book

I like to aim for between 12000 to 15000 words if possible but this will depend on your topic and some books may require more or much less, it'll also likely come down to your budget so just adjust the word counts above as necessary, have a good think about potential chapter titles and provide as much or as little info here as needed, of course, you can just let your writer use their own creativity to construct chapter titles for you!

Creating a rockstar book description!

So if we've done our proper keyword research we know we'll get eyes on our book as it will pick up ranking within Amazon, our book cover (see step 3!) and title will draw in initial eyes enough to make buyers click on our listing, this is step 1 to making sales! We now need to close these interested buyers with a sale!

To do this our description comes into play - here you are allowed 4000 characters and I suggest you use this as much as possible! this should be properly written, have your main keyword(s) naturally packed into the paragraphs, and do the job of convincing the prospect to buy! it is worth touching here on the problems the reader is likely to have and how your book solves this issue along with the other benefits of the book!

A good idea here is to ask your ghostwriter to produce the description for you within their original contract, as they will have written the full book this will be easy for them, you could maybe agree to have this included as part of your total price! there is a useful article from Amazon themselves about the requirements for the book description found here.

As ever Fiverr has a wealth of writers who can help write a book description so check it out and hire someone there if needed! Check out Fiverr.com Here to find writers for your book description!

Ok so now you've got your plan for the book and description you can start to get to work if self-writing or send it off to your ghostwriter and wait for it to be returned to you! no time for relaxing though, we need to get on with producing an awesome book cover so let's cover that now!

Step 3 - Create An Awesome e-Book Cover

As I touched on earlier another key factor in getting your book noticed is its cover! its need to catch the reader's eye and stand out above the competition to get them to notice your book then hopefully intrigue them enough to click on it and eventually buy it! the old saying 'don't judge a book by its cover isn't true here!!)

So how do we create an awesome cover? well there's no real rules to what your cover should look like, I'd recommend just having a look at the Amazon best sellers list and getting a feel for how the covers of top books look on there, there are then a couple of options for having a book cover created.

You can do it yourself using a tool such as Canva or BeFunky - these should give you enough to produce a decent cover! you just need to ensure you check out the sizing guideline required (see article from Amazon here) to ensure its correctly sized up and will work when we come to actually create our e-Book file later on!

If you aren't so keen on doing the design work yourself you can, of course, outsource this element too, Fiverr.com again is a great tool for this, just head to the platform and search for e-Book covers then check out the numerous designers who offer this service!

Check out Fiverr.com Here to find awesome e-Book designers!

Obviously, your book cover should include your title, subtitle, author's (pen) name, and also some imagery which is in keeping with the topic, again you can find inspiration from other best-selling titles or simply let your designer use their skills!

Step 4 - Proofreading & Quality Assurance

So by now, you've created a beautiful e-Book cover that is befitting of your awesome book! and right on queue your book has been written and returned to you! you're getting there now but it's time to fully proofread your book. This is a step that is tempting to overlook in order to get publishing sooner but it's vital you ensure the content is correct and is high-quality, if not this will lead to poor reviews and fewer sales!

You can easily do the proof-read yourself, however, if you struggle with reading to a high level or English isn't your first language I'd definitely recommend getting a specialist proof-reader to check it over, again Fiverr.com is your friend for this, ask your proof-reader for a report of suggested changes and then get your writer to amend as necessary! again understand this is a bit of an investment to hire a proofreader but it's worth it for the long-term sales benefit of having a top-notch book!

Check out Fiverr.com Here to find proofreaders!

Step 5 - Create Your e-Book

Once we've checked over our book and we're fully happy with the content it's time to create the final versions in the correct format for Amazon Kindle. Fortunately, this one step you can totally do one your own as Amazon provides a free tool called 'Amazon Create' - download it for Windows or MAC and just follow the guides on the homepages which walk you through the process.

You'll use Amazon Create to set up your chapters correctly and add your cover and other key details, the end product will be an e-Book in the correct published format and the tool also lets you preview how your book will appear in various readers such as Kindle!

There are as ever people who you can hire to do this for you but it's something you can save money by doing it yourself if you have time!

Check out Fiverr.com here if you need someone to create your e-Book

Step 6 - List It On Amazon!

You've now reached the point of being able to list your creation on Amazon! congratulations!

To get it live for sale you need to sign in/register at https://kdp.amazon.com and access your bookshelf area in order to upload your title! you'll need to add your title, description, and various other details about the book and then wait for the book to be checked and approved for sale, once you get a notification it is live you can monitor your stats and sales via the Amazon KDP dashboard!

Once sales roll in you'll start to be notified of payouts due which are paid at the end of the following month!

Pricing Your e-Book!

A note here about pricing as you'll be required to set your sale price during this section here. There are various Kindle e-Book royalty calculators out there so search Google and this will give you an idea of how much you'd make per sale depending on what price you list your book at. Remember to start off low though until you get some sales then you can steadily increase the price as your book becomes more popular!

Step 7 - Next Steps!

Amazon will provide you with various promo codes which allow you to give your book away at a discounted rate in order to make initial sales and get quick reviews, this is great for boosting your initial ranking! lookout for these inside your seller dashboard.

To take an e-Book one step further you could consider having an audiobook produced! ACX is Amazon's audiobook platform and is one of the fastest-growing mediums around at the moment, stay tuned as I'll be producing a guide on how to do this real soon!

Conclusion

You've now reached the point of making money from your self-published Amazon Kindle e-Book on autopilot, Amazon will pull in sales for you while you sleep! it's time to rinse and repeat the process from start to finish!

I hope this training guide has been useful and has shown you the process for producing Kindle e-Books! do reach out to me with any questions or feedback on the guide and let me know if there is anything further you'd like me to cover in future articles! my email address is thesoftwarereviewguy@gmail.com

Until next time thanks for reading my quickstart guide on how to make money from Kindle e-Book publishing

The Software Review Guy