Online eBook Creation: 7 Steps to Create, Design, and Market eBooks of the Future

Today, the profile of an online eBook creator is diverse. eBooks form a strategic part of the marketing collateral leveraged by businesses to tell their brand story, promote a product or service, and enhance brand trust.

Experts in various fields can use them as a tool to boost personal and professional branding and authority in search engines. The best part is that producing an eBook is relatively easier than doing it in print copies.

Contemporary eBook creator software makes it extremely accessible and seamless to turn your creative ideas into a well-crafted, designed, and distributed title. This blog offers a guide on how to turn to write, design, and promote your eBook. 

Brief for “electronic book,” the basic definition of an eBook is content that is presented in an interactive digital format, accessible from one’s smart device, eReader, or computer.

In the early days of eBooks, their purpose was limited to converting paper books into digitally accessible formats that could be easily shared from one device to another.

However, contemporary eBooks are being conceptualized from scratch with multiple interactive elements to completely disrupt our idea of books in their original format.

Today, online eBook creators are reimagining storytelling with videos, quizzes, audio and sound effects, contests, and challenges. 

Today, online eBook creators are doing it for several reasons. An eBook is a tool to build influence, awareness, connection, and engagement. Here’s a deep dive into key trends: 

• Businesses are leveraging eBooks as a lead generation mechanism by offering easy-to-download eBooks with free content on their websites and apps. If the content is relevant and useful, it builds brand trust and curiosity. Readers need to share their email IDs to get access. So, this is an opportunity to identify consumers who can be nurtured as leads. 
• Getting consumers to subscribe to email lists is challenging. However, they are more likely to do so if they can get access to free, value-added content. The promise of a free eBook is a great way to increase subscriber bases. 
• eBooks tend to generate a lot of social media buzz, as opposed to brand-related campaigns. Businesses are leveraging them to attract followers and plug more targeted marketing campaigns later.
• Breaking into Google’s E-A-T or Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness algorithm is a key challenge for any business or influencer. eBooks provide a platform to build authority in search results. One can easily self-publish, earn links, market the eBook via email lists, and build a campaign around it. 

In short, eBooks are helping businesses and individuals build leverage to boost their professional and personal equity and brand value. 

1. Choose a Theme 

The first step is to identify the theme for your eBook, something that will resonate with your target audience.

You can consider building content around a common challenge your customers face and make the theme as specific as possible.

Some questions to engage with during this stage include – what do consumers need help with, what are they struggling with, and do I have the expertise to support them? 

2. Research the Topic 

Next, do adequate research on the topic. Read up on eBooks that may have already explored this topic, and understand how you can offer something new or with a value-add.

Research can also be around data accessible within your business ecosystem. For instance, sifting through customer emails, social media pages, and chatbot conversations can reveal many insights to build on. 

3. Outline a Roadmap

Planning the next few stages of the eBook is crucial to bring out a quality product. You can break down this stage further in the following steps, as follows: 

• Craft an eye-catching title for your eBook
• Identify primary and secondary keywords that can enhance search results. You can leverage SEO tools to do keyword research around your topic 
• Collate all your research in one location for easy referencing – include data, stories, and interesting facts 
• Build a content outline for the flow of the eBook – give makeshift titles for each section 
• Collate videos in one place.

4. Design Your eBook

Unlike print books, with eBooks, you will need to design them before adding the text using state-of-the-art and easy-to-navigate eBook creator software. This effective tool empowers creators to be innovative and build accessible, engaging, memorable eBooks.

Here are the steps to follow:

• Look up the latest eBooks to understand design trends – what consumers are responding to. This research can be insightfulness for your eBook
• Work on the eBook cover – you can play with images, colors, and fonts to get the right effect 
• Design the inside pages section-wise, even with makeshift titles 
• Keep smaller boxes for text 
• Add interactive elements such as buttons, videos, and quizzes 
• You can also add hyperlinks that can drive readers to your web pages, social media, and blog posts  
• Make sure that you focus on branding aspects such as logos, brand colors, tone, and vibe of the book, which should mirror the persona of your brand 
• You can include a brand-focused video and hyperlink to important brand pages 
• Ensure there are no copyright issues for images used.

5. Create and Add eBook Text Content 

When the purpose of an eBook is to increase leads and subscribers and establish expertise, then less is more when it comes to content. It’s now time to fill in the content boxes. Here are some pointers:

• The text should be brief
• Keep the information useful
• You can consider using humor 
• You can include data, infographics, and case studies at intervals 
• Make sure it does not result in a cognitive overload and that the takeaway is relevant for consumers 
• Ensure there is no plagiarism of content.

6. Set up a Web Page for Your eBook

You’ll need to set up a dedicated web page or blog post for your eBook. 

• Create a content blueprint for this page
• Set up a consent form that consumers can fill out before downloading the eBook – this works as a great lead generation/email subscription mechanism
• Link back to this page from any other web pages that host your eBook
• Optimize images so they load quickly, and use ALT TEXT to make them accessible 
• Make sure the content is optimized for search
• Set up the email mechanism by which consumers can receive a follow-up email confirming their presence on your mailing list, followed by your email marketing campaign 

7. Market Your eBook

This is one of the most important stages in the lifecycle of any marketing collateral. Your eBook must be marketed well, with a stellar campaign that checks off all boxes:

• Design an effective email marketing campaign that builds momentum among your customers, subscribers, and followers. Make sure it offers useful content and does not come across as salesy.
• Leverage influencers to market the eBook. Make sure the fit is right in terms of category and brand fit. 
• Build an effective social media presence that will increase followers and engagement around your eBook.

Consumer adoption of eBooks is now driving more businesses to make it a crucial part of their global marketing strategies. 

With advances in eBook creator software, the journey of designing an eBook is also simple, fun, and engaging. Award-winning cloud-based digital publishing platforms like Kitaboo are enabling businesses and other entities to create, publish, and securely deliver multimedia-enhanced interactive eBooks. 

The possibilities are limitless in terms of how creative one can get!

Contact our expert team now and get started!

To know more, please write to us at KITABOO@hurix.com

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• Offline Activity Tracking Now Possible With KITABOO
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• eBooks vs. Printed Books
• Importance of eBooks in Online Education