I suddenly caught a nasty cold yesterday so I'm going to make this short. Also, my brain is running on 3 cylinders so I hope it makes sense.

My New E-Book

I finished my new e-book yesterday. It took a lot longer than I had anticipated, but I learned some lessons that I want to share. These insights apply to any large project that you have a personal stake in, so even if you're not planning on writing a book any time soon, hopefully you can take something valuable away from this.

It's Never Going to be Perfect

One of the reasons the book took longer than I though it would is because I kept making revisions. I read it over and over, analyzing every sentence and paragraph, questioning myself. Is this clear? Will anyone be offended by this statement? Is this part relevant? Should I move this part down there?

I've read lots of e-books and many of them are terribly written. The content is good but the poor structure and grammar is so distracting the value is half lost. It's really annoying to me, and I don't want my book to be like that.

On the other hand, the minutiae I was focusing on got to be ridiculous. I simply lack confidence, having never written a book for publication before. So at some point, you just need to stop, and say, "It's good enough."

It Should Look Interesting

At first the book was just a text document in basic portrait mode and Times New Roman Font. It just looked boring, but I didn't know how to make it look interesting.

So I went and looked at some other e-books that I had in my files, from people who I admired, and who are successful. There seemed to be a trend in the ones that appealed to me visually.

Most of the nice-looking ones are landscape format, with a wide margin on either the left or right. The margin contained snippets of interesting phrases or sentences from the content, kind of like the callouts you see in newspapers and magazines. It also contained a smattering of other nice visuals, such as diagrams and photos that enhanced the copy.

So I spent a day completely reformatting the book, and it made a huge difference. It was worth a day of my time to do that.

Include Some Promotional Information

This book is not going to make me a lot of money. That's not its purpose. The purpose is to generate interest in my company's products and services and attract new clients to my business.

In order to attract new clients, you need to tell the reader three things:

1. How great you are and why they'd want to do business with you personally.
2. What kinds of services you offer and how the reader can benefit from them.
3. How to contact you and/or get more information about you.

So there you have it. My three lessons learned about writing an e-book. If you have similar stories to share, we'd love to hear them!

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