I recently participated in a Webinar which was aimed at ways to make money online. I decided to take some of the basic ideas and turn them into a series of blog posts. Although the original idea was based around writing an ebook I think the ideas could be just as useful for writing a Print book or Script Writing or Plays or Poetry or Journaling or Blogging or anything!
So, when it comes to our book/ebook we must ask several questions.
- Are we writing fact or fiction?
- If fiction, what genre?
- If fact, do you need to do all the Research from scratch?
- Are you an expert in a field or a niche?
- Could you get hold of some PLR* and change it to fit your needs?
- What do people want to read about?
If you want to find the answer to that last one it is possible to just Google the question.
- What kind of answer would you get?
- And how many answers would you get?
I just did it and it came back with 7,850,000,000 results in 0.63 seconds!
That is a lot of information!
But some of it is amazing – https://www.getresponse.com/blog/8-tips-on-writing-content-that-people-want-to-read-right-now
Would it be useful to know the kinds of things that people regularly ask about online and then see if you could write something that will fulfil their needs?
This is a website that does just that!
In their own words “AnswerThePublic listens into autocomplete data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around your keyword.
It’s a goldmine of consumer insight you can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products and services. The kind your customers really want.” From their website.
Where can I get help and tips on writing.
Then, there are plenty of writing courses that can help. Google or Bing or whatever ‘Free Writing Courses’ and again there will be many millions of results. You can vary the search like ‘Free online Creative writing courses’ or ‘free online business writing course’ etc. You then end up with something like this
Be careful though as some of these ‘free’ courses end up costing a lot of money. There are also the professional paid writing courses such as https://prowritingaid.com/
There are also webinars and courses through many portals.
Software – Which package suits you best?
Most people will be working with Microsoft Word on a PC or Pages on a Mac, which are probably already installed on your machine. These are software packages designed to appeal to every type of word processing. However Scrivener was designed for writers by writers! All these packages come with a cost.
However there are also plenty of free word processors such as Google Docs, FocusWriter, FastPencil and Evernote. There are also many other writing aids such as Hemingway App – it’s a style checker that’s designed to help tighten up your prose and make your writing clear and bold. Open Office is a free Word Processor; it is Open Source so don’t ever be scammed into paying for it.
yWriter is a popular word processor (intended mainly for novelists) with some impressive features (especially for a program that’s completely free). And to help with Grammar – Grammarly –It has taken over as one of the most versatile simple editing software and for a good reason.
Other useful software to aid writing
Dropbox – save your files into a cloud folder. Any files that you save in this folder will be automatically backed up to Dropbox’s servers in the cloud, which will be automatically downloaded to any other computers that are synced to that same Dropbox account.
Freedom –It’s a productivity app designed to help eliminate distractions by blocking certain websites – something more than beneficial for those of us who get side-tracked easily. It carries a monthly fee.
Getting your things out there!
With any kind of business idea, and remember publishing is a business, you need three things.
- Something to sell – your book/ebook
- Somewhere to sell from – a shop or an online platform
- Someone to sell to – an audience
Most people think that the first is the toughest part – they are wrong. Every year millions of books are written, published in some format – and fail to sell. Trust me on this – my books are still mostly on my laptop apart from this Swords and Sorcery spoof – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Things-Uranus-PP-Swifty-ebook/dp/B00D6BAFC8/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=strange+things+from+uranus&qid=1586299289&sr=8-1
The obvious choice is to find a publisher!
That is a totally different story.
Self-publishing is the way forward and can in many cases lead to a publishing deal with an established Publishing House.
Amazon and Amazon Kindle are two ways forward with publishing. It is possible to Upload your book to both by creating an account with Kindle Direct Publishing. They will walk and talk you through every step of the process, from uploading your content to setting a price and making it available on the Amazon website.
There are other sites such as Youwriteon.com which encourages you to publish with them, either as a part novel or as a full novel. They run competitions and have links to many publishing houses such as Penguin, Random House, Orion, Harper Collins, Transworld, Hodder & Stoughton and Little Brown.
If you want your work critiqued as you write then use FastPencil as mentioned earlier. It is a writing and publishing platform which goes from a completely free do it yourself package to an expensive fully managed professional programme – check the prices.
Finding an audience.
Ok so Amazon and the others will help you put a book or ebook in front of the public. How do you make people find it and buy it or even just download it if you make it FREE! This is where Social Media comes into play and you must decide if you want your own Blog or Facebook Page or Facebook Group or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever else is out there and trending. Whatever you choose there will be a course available of Blog Posts to help you. I will be writing more as I learn more about all these methods so stay tuned.
Moving forward.
There is an enormous amount more to this idea of writing, printing and publishing your book. I will cover more of these ideas in other posts.
Meanwhile, Enjoy Writing it’s good for you!!
*(PLR – Private Label Rights. I will write more about this in a later post.)
Phoenix Education 
You can find even more here https://eclipsedwords.com/2020/03/19/tips-on-blogging-heres-how-to-blog-smarter/
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