How To: Write an eBook

How To: Write an E-book and Sell It on Your Blog

So you’ve decided to write a book that you can sell on your blog. You have already chosen a suitable subject. Now what?

The catch is that you actually need to sit down and write something. Hopefully you’ve already come to grips with writing for a living if you plan on selling an e-book which people will pay for.

“Writing is easy. I just sit down at the typewriter, cut open a vein, and bleed.” -Red Smith

Or perhaps you are like me – you have not yet come to grips with writing. Writing can be torture if you aren’t inspired, and in the proper mood. It doesn’t matter if you are writing software or blogging, the problem is the same. A blank screen and a keyboard won’t solve things. Sometimes the words just won’t come out, especially if you have everyday life getting in the way. Kids that need feeding, houseplants that need watering, a soulmate that needs… well, whatever.

Paul Graham published an excellent essay on procrastination and, for the most part, whenever he talks about “hackers” you can substitute “writers”. Whenever he talks about the “hard problems” that you should be concentrating on, you can just think about the next big article you will publish, or the bestselling book that you will write.

What can you learn from Paul’s essay? Writing is easy – just don’t bother with small things like dressing yourself, cleaning the house, shaving, and taking showers. Then you’ll have all the time in the world to write about important stuff.

Sometimes that isn’t enough, because my girlfriend still has input on whether I avoid doing life’s little chores. So when the words aren’t coming as freely as I want them to, I follow this amazing two-step plan:

1. Try to find solitude and concentration, and let the situation run its course; or
2. Cheat.

As you might imagine, step two is my favorite.

There are several good websites where you can hire a ghostwriter for fairly inexpensive rates. My favorites are Elance and Rentacoder. You post a description of your project (such as “E-book on how to build your own reusable space vehicle”) and writers bid on the work. In the past I have hired writers from sites like these, and so far all of the projects have all worked out quite well.

Outsourcing on this level is sort of a miniature version of the multinational corporation. Your lowest bids will almost always come from writers in countries where English is not the primary language. If you don’t have a lot of money, and you don’t mind doing more revising, then you might be able to find some bargains on the first draft of your book.

At the moment, the best contract writers charge about $25 USD per page. But they usually offer bulk discounts for larger projects (such as e-books). I recently paid $5.50 USD per page for a large writing project, outsourced to a writer who lives in the US. You can pay much less than that, but then you’ll spend more time editing and revising the work that you receive.

Paul Graham published another essay about how to create wealth. Again, this applies to writers as well as hackers. You have the ability to generate wealth simply by creating something that didn’t exist before, as long as someone somewhere wants what you have created. To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if you do the typing yourself, or if you merely cause the typing to happen on the other side of the world.

Obviously the preferred method for writing your book is to do it yourself. You’ll earn a sense of accomplishment and the quality of the work will probably be higher. But if you have an audience that is ready to buy something, and little time to create it for them, you might want to look into outsourcing some of your project.

In closing, all it takes is a little time and effort to get that e-book written. It’s totally plausible that by this time next month, you could be selling your first e-book.