Chris A. Baird | May 10, 2022
How To Write, Publish, And Sell An Ebook

Are you fully determined to do self-publishing but don’t know how to write, publish, and sell an eBook? Let me tell you the key steps that will help you succeed in self-publishing.

Developing A Self-Doubt

Tim deleted his entire manuscript off of his computer and was ready to call this writing thing quits. That's one of the reasons we're discussing today: How to Write, Publish, and Sell an eBook.

It was a few months ago and he was an aspiring writer. He had always had a bunch of stories in his mind of things he wanted to get into the world. Stories that he had written as a kid.

Now that he was an adult, he was thinking that he has these ideas and he wants to do it. He wanted to get into this whole writing publishing business and he had heard a lot about eBooks and getting them out. But it appeared to be that the whole process was a bit too complicated for him.

So, he was watching some of the videos where I was talking about just how easy it is to get started with self-publishing and to create your eBooks. The problem was that he had these stories in his head but he wasn't sure if he was a good enough writer to put them into the world.

He wasn't sure if somebody would want to read it. Now, this is by the way a very common problem of self-doubt. The idea is that you have these stories and that nobody in the world is going to hear them.

Here's a little bit of a secret before we continue with this story. It's the fact that there are people who will resonate with you. No matter who you are or what you write.

So, the quality of your writing itself is not necessarily to a certain point as important as finding an audience that will resonate with you. Now clearly, if you have natural skills at writing, you're going to be able to get it out and find this audience a lot faster.

But even a person who's not particularly all that great at writing still will sell books to people who will be very satisfied with the books that they purchase. Because every single voice of everyone in the world has other people who will be there when their ears hear that voice and the stories that they have to tell will sit there.

And want to hear every single word that comes out of their mouth. This is a complete fact that blew me away. I used to think that you had to be a top-level writer for anybody to want to buy your books.

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That was one of the reasons why Tim was a little bit doubting his ability on this. So, what he did was he started writing a little bit. He got going on his book and he was very excited.

But then it was like nobody's going to want to read this. So, he completely erased it from his computer and then started from scratch again. This time, he decided “I shouldn't start writing until I've taken a lot of different courses on how to go about writing.”

This was a huge barrier for him. Because when you first get writing and you're making progress, the last thing you need to do is go through a bunch of courses. Courses are useful, once we've got some progress, once we've perhaps produced something and seen how well it can do, then at this point, we go back.

So, how to write, publish, and sell an eBook? We read books and we take courses on a particular subject. A lot of people are in the habit of doing this whole thing. That is learning things before you're ready to get going with those things and implementing them in your books.

You definitely do not want to fall into the trap that Tim was falling into. But he was thinking, “Maybe I should wait a little bit.” I'm telling you; you should not wait to at least get your first book on the market.

Then we go back and take courses to figure out how we can improve the quality of our writing. At this point, Tim was reading one of my blogs and he saw that I was suggesting that there is a much easier way of going about doing this entire process. So, we broke it down after a discovery session.

We were going through the exact steps that I laid out. Now each of the steps I'm about to tell you it's a secret. Because the fact is that they go incredibly deep and difficult.

It is the one thing we don't want to do here. But wait for a second, I thought this is supposed to be easy with this whole self-publishing thing. And here I am telling you that it's going to be difficult.

Well not really, it's going to be easy when we go through it the right way. The right way is not to try to make everything perfect. But rather, we move slowly through the steps.

Doing The Right Way

Once we've completed our first round and put our very first book on the market, then we're ready to go to the next layer. Deeper on each of those steps. We don't get burned out.

But at the same time, the complexity and the difficulty of each of these steps can be insanely difficult. It can kill your entire publishing process. So, when I was sitting with Tim, I pointed out to him the first thing is we need to get a manuscript.

I tried to see if he could get the one, he had erased. He had lost it completely so I said, okay since we're starting from scratch, we can do this the right way. The right way is to figure out what it is you're interested in.

We went on to Amazon using KDSpy, my favorite tool for researching other books. We found out which books in which genre was specifically selling a lot of copies but didn't have so many books on the market.

So he went through the issues, in the areas that he was interested in. We found a few of them that we could simply shift a little bit into a profitable market. There is nothing more difficult than a sailboat trying to hope for wind.

Why don't we figure it out where the wind is already blowing and then put our sails facing that area? Now we still need to make sure it's a niche or genre that we're interested in. That we can publish multiple books because that's key to winning.

Remember, this isn't about becoming a millionaire overnight with your self-publishing. It's about getting a series of books that are going to build an audience. We're going to build this fire and get it going.

That is something that so many authors do not understand. They either expect it to be super easy which it isn't. They quit or they expect their books to sell an infinite number of copies when they are first released which they don't.

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So, how to write, publish, and sell an eBook? In Tim's case, he thought it would be easier than it would be. So, he was trying to make things perfect and he was choosing the hard way of doing it. That was the first thing, he found the niche that he was going to write in.

It is a very important step and perhaps the most important step that I talk to almost all of my free discovery clients about. It is that we're going through exactly your books. Even this week already looking at somebody's books, they're selling copies of it.

But at the same time, are they selling as many copies as they could? So, with tomorrow's discovery session, we'll be taking a look exactly at this issue. The thing is putting out 500 to 1,000 words a day, that's the next point.

Tim needed to go through and make sure that he was producing daily, a certain number of words. Now, you can sit in a chair known as the Button Chair Method. To make sure that you're on the right track where you're sitting in your chair and you're pumping out these words.

Now some people say, “Look, you should wait until the muse comes until somebody inspires you to do this.” I'm telling you, that is a terrible idea. That is the way you lose. You win by dedicating time to make sure you're going to get so many words.

I’m saying 500 or a thousand words a day until we get this book done. Now I know some of you, I get pushback from you. There are a lot of fake gurus who say it should just be easy, you should be able to get the words automatically.

I'm telling you; you're going to need to work through it. So, Tim heard this particular thing, “okay write it down”. The next thing was to hire a Fiverr editor.

You can find editors, just make sure it's somebody who got 500 or a thousand reviews. And you should be plenty good to go with that particular editing option if you go with the Fiverr route.

Posted The Book On Amazon

The next thing is we're going to format the book using Jutoh. It is my favorite tool for formatting. It is so easy; we just get it in there.

Then we need a cover for Tim and we go to 99Designs. We put in a thing; they compete for your cover as I always said in my description below all of my YouTube videos. I give all of the resources that I specifically use, my affiliate links of the things that I use for all of my books.

Then the next thing is we're going to set up your KDP account. And the final thing would be posting the manuscript, the cover, your categories, keywords, and description. I know it sounds like a lot but once we've got the book written and edited and we've got our cover, the excitement drives the motivation to hit these last few buttons.

If you haven't done it already, then do it if you've got your manuscript and you've got your cover. Do not waste any time when you reach this point. Now in Tim's case, he was starting at the very beginning of this entire process.

So, what happened was I've been following up with Tim and he managed to get through all of these steps in about one unbelievable month. He posted the book on Amazon only four weeks after the free discovery session because he was so dedicated.

We're not talking about a book that's a thousand pages or something. I think his book was only 30 or 50 pages long. It was a very short book but he was able to get it there.

He wasn't seeing many sales of the book. He chose the correct niche and he was posting the book. The cover could be improved a little bit but it's his very first time working with 99Designs and trying to get it sorted out here.

Sometimes, we're not graphic designers so we don't know which types of covers. That's one of the reasons we're using KDSpy to look at his competitors’ covers. To see what exactly the top sellers in his niche were doing.

He was deviating a little bit from that. But like we talked about, we're not going for perfection on our very first book. We're just trying to get a book on the market.

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So that we have something that we can improve upon. If we wait for perfection, you will sell nothing and you will build no audience. This has to hit the market so that we're able to do it.

He was able to start with the next set which is as we're going back and forth during the coaching. With the marketing phase on his books, content marketing, running ads, and an email list.

Then we continue, now if I said do all of this from the start, you would completely be overloaded and overwhelmed. That is self-publishing the difficult way. I've seen so many courses out there where a lot of people go through all of these steps.

They tell you all of these things you need to do. You're just left saying “Where am I supposed to even begin? There are so many things I need to do.” And I'm telling you the easy way of doing it is we go through the steps the first time.

Like I was timekeeping him, breaking it down, and keeping the whole process as simple as possible the first time. Then when you come around for the next round, our next goal is to improve each of those areas so that our next book is even better.

And you know what, we're able to use the very first book that we wrote with our audience as we're looking. We run ads and see how it is ‘connecting’ with them. As they join our email list, we can get into dialogue with them which is what I do with people who join my email list as well.

We get into one-on-one dialogues where we're able to look exactly at what the problem is. What the sticking points are in the book? And we're seeing these organic reviews coming through where people are critiquing the books.

They are telling us what exactly we need to do. That's one of the reasons it's very important to pay attention to videos that are breaking down these exact steps. That's why I created a video on How to Get a Book Published. Go ahead and check it out.

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