does anyone publish e books?

[rainbowmoon]

just wondering about this. I have a cousin who does this and he keeps telling my mom to tell me to look into it or get ahold of him. (we haven't spoken in years and are on opposite coasts so just hear about each other through our moms) anyway I was just wondering what does it entail? How much do you make? what are your ebook subjects?

ETA- my cousin writes e books for other people to sell.

[StormySar]

You can write about anything yo uwant with an ebook. Typically they're in pdf file and may or may not include security features. There are programs yo ucan buy or subscribe to that will include more security features to prevent piracy, but if someone is determined to make a ton of copies of your book or pass it out to all of his friends it seems no matter what they'll get around whatever you've tried to include. And for the honest folks, too much security stuff can really make it hard to enjoy your ebook.

I have a few ebooks... My main one, The Cloth Diapering Handbook I just put into ebook form to see how it does. I also have a free homebirth book for children in an ebook format available for downloading and a free -book directory on cloth diapering businesses. I think I might offer the rest of my publicatons as an ebook also because I know people like the discount and the lack of waiting on the mailman (and i like not having to package books and deal with the possiblity of lost packages and damaged packages!).

You could write a book in whatever program you have for word processing and download a free pdf converter to convert that file to a pdf. This prevents the formatting from going blah on another persons computer and helps keep your project intact without people screwing around with the original document. I have actual adobe program but before it, I made all of my books in Word.

You can also download programs that you use to write your ebooks, but I was never happy with the end result (didn't seem professional to me).

Anyway like I said, you can write ebooks on whatever you want. I stick to natural family living topics but you can do whatever floats your boat!

[slvsquared]

I ghostwrite ebooks and web content. I have a site that I do business from, and promote in an internet marketing forum - www.warriorforum.com and www.digitalpoint.com are two good places to get started. Because I ghostwrite, I generally am given a topic and a 50% deposit. I outline and write the book, which someone else then markets.

If you're any good with web design, or know someone who is, you might want to consider writing your own, and selling it as a product from your own site. It could be on any topic, really.

HTH

[PJsmomma]

how do you make the e-book "look nice" rather than just a document?

[jmreinke]

Originally Posted by PJsmomma

how do you make the e-book "look nice" rather than just a document?

Good question... I was wondering this too.

I found this tonight and it looks pretty good so far: Write That Report - a short ebook/report on how to write short ebooks/reports and make a little bit of money from your own content.

What appeals to me about this is the thought of writing an ebook seems so daunting, because of the word "book" I think. I can write a 15-30 page report on a topic I love, and then figure out how to market it.

slvsquared - Interesting you should post the link to warriorforums.com. I just found that tonight and it is really great! It really made my creative juices flow in terms of writing and sharing with others.

[slvsquared]

A lot of people who sell ebooks on their own hire a graphic designer to do a cover for them - both for the actual document and a "fake book" looking cover for the website they sell from.

Since I ghostwrite, I add a title page, lots of white space for readability, a table of contents, and bump the font up to 14 pt. Then I call it done If I ever start to sell my own, I happen to know a great graphic designer, so I'm set. Not sure how much it would cost to outsource, though.