You Should Write an eBook

Sometimes you meet people that really have something interesting to say. You find that you are captivated by that person because most of the time he/she passes on not just good advice but also wisdom. You find that what the person has to say intrigues you or even excites you. You might even feel a sort of frisson you have not felt for a while. When said and done though, you want that information in a book. So why does that person intrigue you? Why do you want to know more? Why do you find yourself thirsty for knowledge? You may find that this individual has answered a long-standing question or in some cases, a problem you may have been trying to solve. 

You decide to act as you find the individual agreeable by suggesting this person writes a book. It surprises you that the individual themselves never considered what was said worthy of a book or something to write about. You find yourself disagreeing with that person by saying that there is a need for the information to be out there. There is, however, one question not considered by you – what if the person is not interested in writing or simply too lazy to write?

Let us assume for a moment that the individual is too lazy to be bothered and says so, what would you do next? You think for a moment and then it hits you. How about writing an eBook, you say. The person ponders this for a moment or two and then says this might be too much work. I mean I have to write many pages to get across the message. You interject almost immediately saying there will only be a need for about ten pages or maybe twelve. There is a brief pause, a smile appears and the person says I will do it.

A smile appears on your face with thorough satisfaction that finally the eBook will be a template for some of your thoughts.

There is, however, one more thing. How does this individual go about writing this eBook? Let us not ponder what to do to get started. We will simply borrow from Seth Godin’s suggestion from the lens “How to make an eBook”. Here they are: 

1. Write something worth reading! 
2. Put it into Word or a similar word processor.
3. Change your page layout to wide
4. Even better, change your page size to eight inches wide and six inches high.
5. Use a legible font for the body copy. Times New Roman is fine, but boring. Do not use something fancy.
6. Use a headline font with bravado!
7. Now, if you have a Mac, just choose, "print to PDF".
8. If you don't have a Mac, go buy one and repeat the previous step, or, if you must, figure out how to do that step with a PC or a Commodore 64 or whatever it is you're using. [Easy tip: visit http://www.openoffice.org/ it is free and has print to PDF built in].
9. Your eBook is now basic, but done. 
10. If you open it in Adobe Acrobat (not the Reader, but the for sale version) you can add hyperlinks. Recommended.

As for the issue of copyright and distribution, concerns then use a creative commons license. For those living in the EU or the US, copyright will automatically cover your work on publishing. Distribution could be by blog or email (make sure file is small), whatever takes your fancy; you should also let people know that they may re-distribute by any means as long as it gets to those who will read it. 

Now that you know what to do, what are you waiting for? Come on now, get writing and share your thoughts.