Creating your own eBook is a perfect way to share knowledge and experience. It is also a great way to position yourself or your business as an expert in your field. EBooks can easily be self-published online and read on electronic devices, such as eReaders, PCs, and smartphones, to name a few. 

Due to the ease of digital publishing, eBooks are everywhere. This means that there is more competition than ever for interested readers. Although there are free eBooks, some digital creators can sell them online through either a web page or marketplace to generate passive income or use them for lead generation to collect information about interested readers.

If you are just starting out and need the basic steps on how to write an eBook, try this step-by-step article. This ultimate guide will provide additional helpful tips to improve the success of your eBook from the writing process to self-publishing and marketing. Whether you are just getting started or a more seasoned content creator, these seven tips will help optimize your eBook for more interest and views. 

Tip 1: Research Your eBook Topic and Audience for Maximum Opportunity

As an author, you must first determine the target audience you want to reach with your eBook to meet their needs and wants. Consider these traits of your target audience: 

• Key characteristics

• Top goals

• Main Struggles

Keep in mind that your audience may have smaller, niche groups that have different characteristics, goals, or struggles. If your eBook is geared towards a business to business audience (B2B) for example, managers and decision makers will have different characteristics/goals/struggles than other employees. 

Once your target audience is dialed in, determine again the popular topics, goals, and reasons to spend money for your audience to help drive your topic. Research existing materials to ensure that your eBook is meeting the demand for your niche and providing new and original ideas. 

Make sure your topic is unique to reduce competition with other eBooks. Consistency is key and straying too far from your existing content may reduce interests based on your existing audience. If you are building a new audience, additional research should be done to understand the market. 

Once the topic has been decided, reading and studying books from this category is fundamental to understanding what the ebook readers may expect. But remember that you can’t have everyone as your audience, nor cover every pain point in one eBook.

Hot tip: Aligning your topic with industry trends, current events, or trending news or conversations may generate additional interest. Still, it is imperative that your topic adds valuable insights to the discussion. “Newsjacking” is a strategy where global news is leveraged to gain additional visibility and can boost organic interest in your eBook. 

Tip 2:  Use AI to Outline Your eBook Content first

Once you have chosen the book's subject matter, you must study it in-depth to decide how to present the details. 

This should be done before you start the writing process since it will help you stay on track with your goal. This can be the best time to work on the table of contents and the ebook title which will help guide the first draft of the book. It’s important to keep a flexible mindset since future changes could be needed to improve the content.

AI eBook generators are useful tools to help create a compelling outline or even a first draft of your eBook. AI tools like ChatGPT can help narrow topics or focus eBook copy. These tools can often save time and provide new ideas or help break through writer's block. 

Keep in mind that while relying on AI tools to get started, you should not rely totally on AI and be sure to edit and refine your content so that it stays focused on your topic and targeted to you audience. 

Hot tip: You should always optimize your book for search engines using SEO. This can be achieved by creating a list of keywords and using them in your eBook's paragraphs, headers, and subheaders. 

Tip 3: Expect Costs and Budget Smart

Writing and publishing an eBook can come with certain expenses that you should keep in mind. No matter how much of the work you do yourself, expect there to be costs for research sources to software tools, professional editing, eBook design, publishing websites, and promotion. Experienced digital creators and marketing professionals that rely on eBooks to generate revenue and leads budget for these costs and have built in resources to assist with the content creation process. 

Choosing an eBook creator platform that serves multiple purposes can save you money that can be applied to other resources, such as promotion.. In this case, creating an eBook with AI-powered design can be the greatest investment. 

For this purpose, Typeset offers you an AI-powered platform that helps with content creation and design, which makes it the perfect option for creating and publishing eBooks for small businesses or independent digital sellers and content creators.

You should keep in mind that investing in quality design to achieve an eye-catching cover and visually appealing content is essential to get interest and engage readers. Additionally, you must always remember you’ll need social media advertising, email and content marketing campaigns, and other promotional efforts, which can range between 20%-40% of your total budget.

Hot tip: Add a contingency margin (10-20%) to this budget to cover unforeseen expenses. This will allow you to be prepared for any additional costs that may arise during the process.

Tip 4: Add Visual and Interactive Elements

Adding external and internal links, a clickable table of contents, videos, and animations to your eBook is a great way to improve your storytelling and offer the reader a more engaging experience. 

Additionally, visual elements help the reader digest information and break up the monotony of text-heavy documents. Infographics, charts and graphs, and high-quality images and photos improve readability and present the data that strengthens your argument in a better way. 

The key to making these interactive elements shine is to think of them as a complement to your writing, so you should start thinking of what ideas you can turn into images or audio during the writing process. Remember, keep these visual and interactive elements focused on your topic—if they are getting too far away from your narrative, consider different data. 

Hot tip: Create a CTA (call to action) that drives your eBook readers to a specific outcome, and set the goal of that outcome in advance. Is the goal to grow interest in your brand or for them to sign up for more digital content? Does this eBook lead to another resource? Always have a call to action so that readers can become customers. 

Tip 5: Design an Eye-Catching eBook Cover

Even e-readers often judge a book by its cover. An attractive cover design can be the deciding factor in increasing eBook sales. A visually appealing cover will help your eBook stand out and attract potential readers. 

A professional and eye-catching cover can suggest that the eBook's content is high quality, so you’ll want to consider your cover design. With the help of the title and subtitle, do the visual elements tell the story of your topic? 

Free tools like Canva offer templates to help those with graphic design knowledge create an eBook cover. However, AI is revolutionizing eBook creation and might be the best option to achieve a more personalized and professional result.

Typeset’s AI eBook creator will help you turn simple ideas into an eBook cover that resonates with your audience and your brand. And the best part is that you won’t need any design expertise to create an outstanding cover. Typeset will format your cover page for you and even suggest high-quality images that match the topic of your eBook. 

Hot tip: Stick to specific brand guidelines for the book content, cover, and marketing, by choosing a narrow palette of colors, fonts, and images. This step is fundamental to making your book seem more cohesive and professional.

Tip 6: Set Up Your eBook for Self-publishing

Once your edited eBook is in its final design, the time has come to choose an eBook publishing platform. This also means choosing a file format to fit the platform requirements, which could go from PDF, .doc, .xtx,  epub, MOBI, HTML, and more. 

Remember that the eBook format can affect the reader's experience and interaction. It’s also fundamental to understand the final purpose of the eBook to choose the best format. 

If you are publishing to your own website, consider if the eBook is available to all or behind a ‘gate’ that requires either a payment or contact information for access. There are platforms designed to optimize this experience for potential customers or teach you how to publish and monetize your digital content, like SamCart and CreatorU. 

If the book is going to be printed, sent by email as a giveaway, or is intended to have interactive content to be sold as a premium product, then the format may change to adapt to these goals.

There are many apps and websites that allow you to self-publish an eBook, including Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), Barnes & Noble Press, Apple Books, and more. 

Hot tip: Pay close attention to the requirements, the percentage of earnings, legal terms, and copyrights of the platform you choose for publishing. These aspects will make a difference in your earnings from all the hard work you’ve done so far.

Tip 7: Marketing and Promotion of Your eBook

Writing an eBook is only half the battle. Choosing the right marketing strategy is indispensable for your book's success. Creating additional resources to promote your eBook will help get the attention of your audience. This includes email content, social media, and other small “snackable” pieces of content to entice readers. 

AI content design tools like Typeset make it easy to take your existing eBook content and immediately turn it into social media content, a webinar presentation, and more. 

You should use all the tools available to promote your work and reach your potential audience, including the use of:

• LinkedIn and other social media platforms to create expectations around the content you’re working on.

• Email lists to help you reach people who have already shown they are interested in your brand and content.

• Blog posts that correspond to your eBook topic, complementing the purpose of your eBook and the topics it will cover. 

• Interviews in podcasts, or even using your own podcast, to discuss some of the main points in the book.

• Newsletters that tease information from the eBook, offer promotional benefits for early buys, and more.

All this promotional work for the eBook has to start before publishing it. This way, you can get people interested in your work and keep them engaged until it comes out. The promotion time will depend on your budget and your goals, but it can last for months after the launch.

Remember that these content marketing strategies will become an organic lead-generation method. This means additional content can boost your eBook sales while enabling you to build a trusting relationship with your audience.

Hot tip: Create a plan for promotional content surrounding your eBook before and after it is published to keep track of your marketing efforts. Track the performance of these efforts to improve future marketing campaigns or even readjust your current efforts. If your eBook is getting a lot of attention due to a corresponding Youtube video, consider more videos. If one particular element is drawing more interest, push that element or find new ways to talk about it. 

Don't just dream about publishing your eBook—make it a reality with Typeset! Transform your ideas into successful digital content by signing up for Typeset, the ultimate AI-powered platform for content creators, digital sellers, and small businesses.