Creating an eBook Cover
There are two pieces of advice here. Take the second one. You can either 1) learn how to create an e-book cover yourself, using free and paid software, or 2) you can pay someone to do it.
All of the freelancing sites mentioned earlier have talented designers that do nothing but create e-book covers! Incredibly, Fiverr is loaded with e-book cover creators that can design a quality, jaw-dropping, engaging piece of artwork for you for just $5 to $25.
If you decide to take on the job yourself, here is some advice.
- Use a combination of PSDCovers.com and Photoshop. Obviously, you need to own a copy of Photoshop. If this is the route you are going, the best step-by-step instruction for creating killer e-book covers using those two resources just mentioned is located at http://www.betterblogimages.com/make-a-professional-ebook-cover-in-5-minutes-using-free-photoshop-actions/.
- If you don’t own a copy of Photoshop, here are some free e-book cover design software suites and websites that turn out great products. In many cases, paid upgrades are offered for even better results.
- MyEcoverMaker
- Free Ebook Cover Creator at Adazing.com
- Quick 3D Cover
- CoverFactory
- EbookMaker
Distributing Your eBook
If you followed the outline in this special report, you have your e-book created. It has been formatted, you have chosen a niche or micro niche that you know is popular, and now all you have to do is distribute your creation. You have a lot of choices here. There are dozens of Internet marketing forums, online retailers and book-specific sites where you can distribute your e-book.
So, where should you begin?
Probably the easiest way to begin selling your e-book, and maybe also the quickest, is to offer it on your website or blog. Microsoft Word, Open Office and all the other popular word processing software suites offer about a 3 click process for saving text in a PDF file format.
Then you simply create a sales page, download page and thank you page, and deliver the e-book as a PDF file. WordPress is the top blogging platform by a wide margin. WP makes it easy to deliver a PDF file to your customers, and the other major blog and website creation platforms are just as easy to use this way.
Let Amazon Handle the Selling
Amazon is the largest online distributor of e-books. When you publish through the Amazon website, the company works very hard to get your e-book noticed. As with other e-book selling websites, Amazon has a publishing system which is unique.
Whether you tackle the process yourself or hire a freelancer from Fiverr, Odesk or one of the outsourcing websites mentioned earlier, you definitely need to be on Amazon. Royalty per sale is 35% to 70%, depending on your price point and other variables. When you work with Kindle Direct Publishing, your e-book can be viewed on Kindle e-readers, as well as computers and smart phones through the free Kindle application.
NOOK Press
NOOK is the name of the popular Barnes and Noble e-reader. Within 72 hours of submission, your e-book could be up, online and reaching millions of readers with this process. As with Amazon, it costs absolutely nothing to upload and publish your material.
Barnes & Noble provides marketing advice, a writing community, an email-based help line, and integrates easily with PubIt! if you already have an active account there. Selling through NOOK Press means a commission of 40% to 65%, and similar to Amazon, your e-book will be available for purchase around the world.
LuLu
This is another great place to sell your e-books. It is not nearly as far reaching as Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but can be an important source of income nonetheless. The company offers a simple 3 step process that shows you exactly how to download and format your manuscript, and save it as an EPUB or PDF file.
The company sells your e-book through the LuLu website, as well as on iBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo. Commissions range anywhere from 35% to 80%, depending on where a sale is made.
The following websites deserve serious consideration as well when you are deciding where to sell your e-book. The best advice is to use the 3 major players listed above, and as many of the following e-book selling sites as possible. (Commissions listed could change at any time.)
- Fiverr – 80% commission, $5 selling price
- Kobo Writing Life – 70% to 80%
- Smashwords – 65% to 85%
- Tradebit – 70% to 85%
- BookBaby – 100%
- E-Junkie – 100%
- PayHip – 100%
- Scribd – 80%
- ClickBank – 50% to 90%, includes a marketplace where affiliates will promote and sell your book for you
- JV Zoo – commission varies, and like ClickBank, you can find plenty of affiliates that will promote and sell your book on your behalf
Each of the above online publishing experiences are different. Some provide tools to help you write, publish and market your book for free, and others offer paid services.
