Now, What Do I Do?
First of all, you need to reach your arm up over your shoulder and pat yourself on the back! You’ve just accomplished something that very few people ever do … you've written your own e-book! You have your own product now! Welcome to the big leagues!
Your book still needs a little polishing, but you’re nearly finished! All you need to do now is go back through the entire book and READ IT OUT LOUD! That may sound really stupid to you and you may feel REALLY stupid doing it, but just do it! Here's why: The average reader actually “hears” the words in their head as they read. If what you’ve written doesn’t sound right to you when you read it out loud, it probably won’t sound right to your readers either.
So, don’t skip this step! Read it out loud and change things that need changed. One of the things I do is use a LOT of contractions. I’ll instead of I will…don’t instead of do not. You get the idea here. Think about how you talk and try to write like that…as we discussed in the last chapter.
Make sure you check your spelling. Word does a pretty good job of this, but has some built-in errors. For example, if you forget to put an “r” on “your” and write it as “you”, Word won’t display that as a spelling error because “you” is spelled right. That’s the second reason for reading it out loud … to save yourself from some embarrassing spelling errors.
Now’s the time to watch for paragraphs at the bottom of a page. Try not to split a paragraph between pages. Our testing over the years shows that this REALLY bugs readers! Just slide that last paragraph down to the next page and your readers will thank you for it!
If you have links in your text that you want to be clickable, now's the time to check them as well. Word will make anything you tell it to into a link … even if it's spelled wrong! Nothing is as frustrating as wanting to click on a link that your book has gotten me really interested in and it doesn’t work! Check them!
What you’re working on here is the reading experience. This is a HUGE issue! Your goal is to write a book that people will buy…that’s a given. But, what you REALLY want is for those initial buyers to become long term customers … your long term customers! If your books are pleasant to read, are laid out well and are written in a way that sounds like you're talking with them … you WILL make them long term customers…and have a long term business! This is an important lesson for you to learn right now, during the preparation of your first book. Put some time into it, it’ll pay you dividends for years!
Okay, you've read your book out loud, changed sentences that didn’t sound right, checked ALL of your spelling, checked your links if you have any, and paid attention to where the paragraphs land on the page. You’re ready to transform your book into a format that will allow your readers to easily enjoy and learn from it.
There are two major formats for distributing an e-book to your customers … PDF and EXE. I’m very partial to the PDF format for one big reason. In all of the books I’ve written, I've done only one EXE book … and gotten the absolute MOST customer complaints and requests for customer service of my writing career! EXE books just don’t work on some computers…EXE books cause people’s computers to throw up all kinds of warning windows they’ve never seen before… and, just guess who they ask about that warning…you, the author!
For that reason, I’m going to suggest that, at least for your first book, you decide to use the PDF format. If you're dead set on distributing your book as an EXE, then I’ll recommend you take a look at Dave MacGregor's product, EasyEbookPro http://www.easyebookpro.com/ It’s about the simplest I’ve seen and works well. It’s inexpensive at $47.00 and is well worth it. Just remember, EXE books have some built-in problems that aren't very much fun for a beginning writer!
When it comes to turning your Word document into a PDF document, Adobe Acrobat is the gold standard of the entire PDF field. Two things stand in the way of everyone using it. Its cost…expensive… and its learning curve… pretty difficult! If you already have Adobe on your computer…good on you, just use it. If you don’t have Adobe, then try this great FREE solution that does what you need done without a lot of hassles.
PDF 995, www.pdf995.com , will do everything you need done to your book simply and easily. Take a look at that site and then we’ll talk about how to make your PDF a real winner!
So, have you got a PDF converter all ready to go? The PDF995 solution isn’t hard to figure out, but before you start converting it you need to do a few things first.
Go to your Table Of Contents page, highlight it and copy it to your clipboard. Now, open a new document and paste the TOC onto the new page. Save it with a name like “MyEbookTOC” and set it aside.
Do the exact same thing with the introduction to your book. You remember, the chapter where you wrote your motivations, your goals, what you hoped the reader would get from the book … all of that. Highlight that, copy it and paste it into a new document. Save it as something you can find.
So, what you end up with are 3 different documents…the entire book, the Table Of Contents, and the