I started writing the manuscript at the end of last year, but set it aside when the Spring semester of this year turned out to be a little more than I could manage. I finished a few chapters during Spring Break, and finished it up during my summer vacation. In the end, it came out at just shy of 20,000 words – not all that long for a book, but good for the kind of audience I’m trying to reach: young, academically-inclined but probably overloaded with required reading and other work, anxious to do well but not appear to be trying too hard, someone looking for some quick advice that’s direct and to-the-point.

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to be visiting some of the tasks that I performed in the writing of the book. Since the book is self-published (I figured it was too short to make it as a commercial offering, although if there’s enough of a demand I might approach publishers with a greatly expanded 2nd edition – the nice thing about writing for college students is that the market refreshes itself entirely every few years) bringing it to market involved writing it, editing it, laying it out, designing the cover, compiling the book in both an e-book format and a format that could be printed, selecting a POD publisher, and marketing it (which is where I’m at now).

At each step of the way, I’ve used a variety of different tools, including:

• Adobe Buzzword for the first draft.
• Word 2007 for editing and rough layout.
• Adobe InDesign CS2 for print/e-book layout.
• iStockPhoto for the cover image.
• e-Junkie for e-book distribution.
• Amazon’s CreateSpace for paperback production and physical distribution.

I want to write about why I chose each of these tools, how I used them, and the problems they presented (when relevant). This won’t be a formal series; instead, I’ll be writing loosely related posts on topics that arose in the writing, publishing, and marketing of the book, touching on various topics as they occur to me.

If you have any questions you’d like to see addressed, please feel free to email me or leave comments on this post – I’m sure I can’t anticipate every possible question that someone might have about this process.

I will, of course, be writing about the kinds of things I usually write about, as well. I have a bunch of tools I want to write up, and am wrapping up a series on capturing and organizing ideas that should go up in the next week or two. I’m also working on setting up a guest host for the site for a week or two while I move, probably at the beginning of next month.

(Speaking of which, a couple of people have written me about contributing a post or two; I’ve been so swamped getting this book finished, really pushing my freelance writing, starting a new semester as an instructor, preparing for the move, and doing everything else I’ve somehow taken on that I haven’t been really good about replying. If you haven’t heard back from me, drop me a line again and let’s see what we can arrange.) 

I’m also trying to think of some way of participating in National Novel Writing Month, which is in November. I’m not a novelist, or a fiction writer in any sense (someday…) but I’m a big fan of NaNoWriMo, and I’d like to come up with a way to take part in the excitement without actually writing a novel, since I don’t write novels (and have the whole “writing 50,000 words in a month” thing down pretty much pat already). If you have any ideas, shoot me a line. 

Enter e-Junkie. For $5 US a month, e-Junkie provides you with an online shopping cart, storage for digital downloads, order processing, inventory management, email autoresponders, and a lot more.

Let’s say you’ve written an e-book. You upload the file to e-Junkie, write a sales page on your own site, and insert e-Junkie’s code to place a “Buy it now” button on your page. When visitors click through to buy your e-book, they’re directed to your e-Junkie shopping cart, where they can pay via PayPal or Google Checkout (or a couple of other services) and instantly get a download link.

e-Junkie will also handle physical products — it works the same way, except that when an order is placed, you get an email with the details so you can fulfill the order yourself. You can offer several variants — say, a paperback and hardcover of the same book. e-Junkie will even calculate the shipping costs and sales tax (where applicable).

What makes e-Junkie especially compelling is the ability to set up affiliate programs so that other people can promote and sell your product. You choose how much you’d like to pay per sale — say, 20% of the sale price — and e-Junkie will provide your affiliates with a tracking code they can use to send sales your way. e-Junkie doesn’t administer the affiliate program; at the end of the month, you’ll get a tally of affiliate sales and you have to pay off your affiliates (via PayPal, usually).

Of course, you can always join the affiliate program of any of your fellow e-Junkie sellers. Signing up is easy — find a product you like in their affiliates directory (under the “Affiliates” tab), and click the link at the bottom to join their affiliate program. You’ll get a choice of either a text link to customize or a “Buy Now” button you can put on your site — the idea is, you write your review, sales page, blog post, or other copy, and the author pays you for your help.

Although e-Junkie allows sellers to market a wide range of products, it seems designed with e-books and software — downloadable products — in mind. Tough luck for everyone else, but good news for writers!

Go check out e-Junkie. As far as I’ve seen, they’re the only ones offering this kind of service, and they do it very well.

Turns out, very hard. Indexing is not a simple exercise in any way; each entry has to be thoughtful and necessary, the best way to find a specific piece of information. You have to imagine who might use your book and what kind of information they might seek, and then predict how they might seek that information. You have to weigh every keyword — every name, theory, book title, event, place, organization, etc. — to decide whether its use in the text is significant enough to direct people to it. Like I said, it’s hard work, and much more an art than a science. (Incidentally, indexes are copyrighted works, which reflects their status as an original expression of thought.)

In the end, I did the index, and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I started by using index cards (that is their name, after all) but that got old really fast, so I developed my own system using a notepad, Excel, and Word. Here’s how:

1. Go through each chapter of proofs, writing down each word you feelcould be in the index, followed by the page(s) on which it appeared. Use a pen and paper for this, and allow plenty of latitude on whether or not a term should end up in the index –you’ll winnow later.
2. After an initial pass through the book, make a second pass to catch any terms you don’t decide to include until a later chapter.
3. One chapter at a time, copy the word lists into Excel. One column for each keyword, and another for the page numbers (multiple instances separated by paragraphs). For subheadings, put the main heading, followed by a dash, followed by the subheading, like this:
   

   Steward, Julian — as Columbia professor

4. After each page is entered, sort on the keyword column. All the subheadings sort together because they share the same first part (the heading).
5. As you enter each page, check to see if there is already an entry for each term and add the page numbers to that, or add a new entry at the bottom if this is the first time the term appears. If you make a mistake and add a duplicate, no big deal, because when you sort, the duplicates will end up next to each other and can be easily identified and combined.
6. Enter a page, sort, enter a page, sort, and on and on until done.
7. Check to see if there are any duplicate entries and combine them: cut and paste the page numbers from one into the other’s entry, and delete the now-empty row.
8. Now, edit. For any entry that has more than 5 or 6 page references, consider adding sub-headings. For any entry that has only one or two page references, check to make sure the mention is significant. Review each entry and decide whether it is the best way to find the information it points to. Add cross-references (“Anti-communism, see McCarthyism”; “see also Columbia University”). This is real editing of real writing– you have to be sure that every word adds to the value of the piece, just as you would if this were a novel, short story, or essay.
9. Once all the entries are in order and you’re satisfied that your index is both thorough and accurate, copy and paste the two columns into Word. Use “Paste Special” to paste as unformatted text (otherwise it will paste as a table).
10. Clean up the formatting, adjust the text size and font, make everything look nice, and you’re done.

Several free programs have appeared in the last couple years that take advantage of the relationship between the PDF format and printing. These programs install a virtual printer on your PC, allowing you to “print” to a PDF file instead of to a physical paper-based printer. All you have to do is select “Print”, and when the print dialog opens, select your PDF printer from the drop-down menu. A save-file box will open, allowing you to select a folder and a name for your PDF; when you hit “Save” the file will be saved as a perfectly formatted PDF file.

There are dozens of free programs to create PDFs. I recommend PDF Forge’s PDF Creator because it’s open source (meaning nobody “owns” the code and anyone can develop it further or modify it) and works well. To edit PDF files directly, you have to use commercial software like Adobe Acrobat, which costs several hundred dollars — instead, make sure you keep your source files (the original word processor file) and make any changes in them. Then, simply generate a new PDF for free.

First of all, make sure it’s featured prominently on your site. Write a post about it, making sure to use all the important keywords you think people doing a Google search might use to find information like yours. For a while, at least, it’s a good idea to put a blurb about your e-book at the bottom of every post you write, too — make sure our existing readers know about, and keep telling them about it!

Contact anyone you have any connection with on the web and ask them to link to your e-book, too. Send them a copy and ask them to review it. If it’s for sale, offer free copies for a giveaway on somebody else’s site. If you’re using e-Junkie, set up an affiliate program and give people a piece of the action in exchange for their promotional efforts.

Insert a link to your e-book into your signature block on your email and in any forums you frequent. Add a link to your profile on any social networking sites you belong to. If you’re giving it away, add it to directories of free e-books (Google “Free e-book directory” for some ideas).

If you’re selling your e-book, make sure you add it to Amazon’s Kindle store through their Digital Text Platform. You’ll have to reformat it for the Kindle’s screen (which is black-and-white and about the size of a pocketbook page), but you’ll get your title in front of thousands of Kindle users — a number that’s hopefully going to grow a lot. You can charge whatever you want for it — the average price at the moment seems to be $9.99 US — and you get 35% of the sales revenue.

Be creative with your promotions. Make up business cards or bookmarks with the URL of your e-book’s page prominently featured, and hand them out wherever you can. Put up flyers on bookstore bulletin boards. Buy Google Adwords or advertise in literary magazines. Obviously, don’t spend a fortune — and if you’re giving it away, it’s probably a good idea not to spend anything at all — but if you think you can make it back, putting a little money into promotions isn’t a bad idea.

Well, that depends on your ultimate goal. Are you planning to give your e-book away, or do you want to sell it? Let’s look at both options separately.

Giving it away

If you’re going to give your e-book away, you could just upload it to your site, add a link to the sidebar, and be done with it. We’ll talk about promoting it in the next post, but for now, make sure it’s clearly marked (the word “FREE” in all caps, bold-faced, in giant red letters never fails to attract attention!) and why people should want to read it.

A better bet might be to give it its own page. Write up a short description, add some testimonials if you have them (and update the page if you get any), and add the page to your site’s main menu.

Or maybe you want to give it away but still get something in return. You could offer the e-book as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter, if you have one — attach the file to the automatic reply they get when they sign up. Or you could use it to drive subscriptions to your RSS feed — Remarkablogger shows you how to add a link to your e-book that only shows up in your RSS feed. Tell them they’ll get the link once they’ve subscribed.

Selling your e-book

Selling an e-book takes a little more work — it is, after all, a business endeavor — but, of course, you get paid for it. If you already have a shopping cart on your site (we’ll talk about that in a future post), you could sell it directly. That’s probably more than most writers are willing to deal with, though, so here are a couple of third-party services that can handle some or all of the details of the sale for you.

• PayPal: If you don’t mind doing the order fulfillment yourself, you could add a Paypal “Buy Now” button to your site. Every day, log in, see what new orders have been placed, and email them a copy of your e-book.
• Lulu: If you expect to sell more than a few copies a day, you’ll want order fulfillment along with payment processing. Lulu is a print-on-demand service that also offers e-books; you’ll need to create an account, upload your e-book, and charge enough to cover Lulu’s per-book fee and commission. Your buyers will receive their e-book directly from Lulu. Lulu does paper copies, too, so you can offer your work in both formats if you like.
• e-Junkie: It’s not free, but for $5 US a month, e-Junkie will host a shopping cart for you and handle the order fulfillment, providing your buyers with a download link to get the e-book from after they’ve paid. E-Junkie offers other useful services for that $5/month, including the ability to create affiliate links so other sites can sell your e-book — for a cut, of course.

I’m sure there are other services I don’t know about, but beware, too — for some reason writers have always been seen as likely targets for scams. Make sure that a) you don’t have to pay for services you don’t need (like editing or layout), b) you aren’t turning over any copyrights and you retain full ownership of your e-book, and c) you aren’t required to pay for a certain number of sales until they’re actually made. Thoroughly research any e-book publisher or distributor; Googling their name plus “scam”, “fraud”, and similar words will likely turn up what you need to know about any shady dealers.

Instead, I suggest saving your file as a plain-jane pdf file. While you could use professional layout software like Adobe’s InDesign and Acrobat to produce your final text, these programs cost hundreds of dollars and are difficult to learn. Instead, I recommend using your word processor of choice and a free pdf creator(I recommend PDF Forge’s PDF Creator; some word processors, like Word 2007 (using the “Save as pdf” addon) and OpenOffice.org can save pdfs themselves.

You’ll need to set up your pages with the end result in mind. Wide text columns can be harder to read, especially on screen, so set your page sizes to something more book-like. I set my pages at 6″ wide by 9″ tall, with a 1-inch margin all around. This allows me to easily use the files with print-on-demand publishers like Lulu, and allows my readers who’d like to print the e-book to print 2 pages per side in landscape mode without hurting the layout — saving paper and retaining readability.

You’ll probably also want to put page numbers, chapter headings, the title, and your name into the headers and footers. Since this is a full book and not just a manuscript, you’ll need a title page, copyright announcement, and table of contents at the front. If you have any graphic design skills, you could also add a nice cover, though that’s not essential — your e-book will never be sitting on anyone’s shelf in need of a cover to attract attention. You can also sprinkle graphic elements throughout your text to give it a professional look and make it nicer to read.

When your text looks the way you want it, do yourself, me, and the world a favor and proofread it. Remember, you don’t have an editor — this is a one-person show you’re putting on. It’s a good idea to have a few people read it and give you their opinion, and take their feedback seriously.

Finally, save the file as a PDF. If you have the option, add thumbnails so your reader can easily select specific pages. Make sure you say “yes” if you’re asked to embed fonts, to be certain your e-book looks the same way on your reader’s screen as it does on yours. You can choose to password-protect your file, but I think that only adds complexity for the reader without adding any real security to protect your content. Accept that some copies will get copied and sent to people who didn’t pay you; learn to find satisfaction in the fact that people are reading your stuff.

One thing to pay attention to is structure. Readers won’t be able to easily flip to the table of contents to see what’s coming up or where they’re at in the grand scheme of things, so it pays to reiterate the table of contents periodically, for instance by outlining each chapter on the first page of the chapter. Use clear subheads throughout your work, too.

Although this won’t apply as much to literary works, in non-fiction you’ll want to use shorter paragraphs that can be scanned easily. Use boldfaced text for key points. Organize multiple points into bulleted lists. Generally keep in mind what the experience of reading on-screen is and cater to it as much as possible.

One thing you can do in an e-book that you can’t do well in a paper book is to add interactive elements. Use links to web content to extend your document — you can link to definitions and encyclopedia articles, other books, and of course your own website. You can also embed short videos, sound files, and other interactive elements, but make sure they add to the value of the e-book — don’t do it just because you can!

As with any other writing, make sure you plan your work, outline, do your research, and so on. Even if you intend to give your e-book away for free, make sure you hold to the same high standards you expect of all your work.

Lots of writers have written and distributed e-books, for various reasons:

• To make money: Since an e-book (unlike a website) is a discrete unit, it can be sold.
• To offer samples: Many writers give away a few chapters of their work to get people “hooked” and convince them to buy their book.
• To build awareness: Authors have given away e-books to win fans — hopefully they’ll buy your next book.
• To spread information: Sometimes you have a topic that you want to write about that isn’t worthwhile to publish — it’s either too short to make a full book worthwhile or the audience is too small. E-book costs are lower (often zero) so publishing via e-book often makes better sense.
• To show reader appreciation: Some writers publish e-books as freebies to thank their readers for their patronage.
• To promote other products: E-books can be filled with links to your website, to your other books on Amazon, or anywhere else on the Web.
• To get numbers: An unestablished writer looks good if s/he can go to a publisher showing that they’ve sold 10,000 copies of their e-book.
• To have control: An e-book allows a writer to control the presentation of their work in a way that posting it on the web doesn’t.
• To self-publish cheaply: With their low investment, e-books are an attractive alternative to traditional self-publishing.
• To supplement paper publication: Many authors offer the choice f an e-book alongside their traditional paper copies, for readers who use e-book devices, prefer to read on their computer, or just want the instant gratification of downloading a book instead of waiting for it to be mailed.

I’m sure there are other reasons I haven’t even thought of, too. The main point is that producing and distributing e-books is fairly cheap, and can make you some money either directly (through sales) or indirectly (through promoting your “brand”).

Just as there are a lot of reasons to write e-books, there are a lot of things to write e-books about. Of course, you could just transform any unsold book-length manuscript into an e-book (I say “unsold” because you probably don’t want to compete with the publisher of your paper books — and may no have the legal right to according to your publishing contract). But the e-book format is ideal for shorter works, too — a 30-page “how to” book, a sampler of short stories, a short personal narrative, or a collection of travel photos.

An e-book is an opportunity for you to establish your expertise in your field or niche without replacing your “bread and butter” writing. Think about the things that you do well and offer up a representative sample. Just like writing a traditional book, the choice of topics is limited only by your knowledge and taste and the demand you are trying to fill. If there’s a topic you’ve always thought about writing on but couldn’t imagine filling 250 pages with it, consider writing an e-book instead.