Ready to start creating the content for your ebook? Well, welcome to Step 3 in my BUILD AN EBOOK series. If you’re new here, I’m building my own ebook as we work through these steps together. I want you to learn how to build an ebook yourself – so that you can tell your amazing personal and/or brand stories.
If you missed the Intro and Steps 1 and 2, just click one of the buttons below this article to find those and get caught up.
Step 3 is focused on Content Creation. It’s time to write your content or adapt content you already have to the ebook format.
Writing and creating content that people want to read is hard work. Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part. But you can make that process easier if you make good choices before you begin.
Choose Your Writing Tool
If you like to use a pen or pencil and write on paper, then I’ll give you extra credit for your labor! But at some point you’re going to have to convert your written content into a digital format. So let’s talk about which apps, software and tools to use.
The essentials for a good writing app or software are simple.
- Easy text flow from page to page, and
- A good quality spelling and grammar tool.
Text flow is important because you need to be able to write out your content without worrying about adding new pages. It’s also very important that you have a way to do spelling and grammar checks before you place your written content into your publishing tool.
My Favorites
If you have lived as long as me, then you may have experienced the early versions of “word processing” software like WordStar. It was a hot mess. Even MS Word was difficult to handle in the early days, but today we are blessed with reliable tools that will help you write with a good flow.
Based on my professional experience, I would recommend either Google Docs or Microsoft Word. They both meet my requirements of easy text flow and spelling/grammar checking tools. They both also give you different levels of spelling and grammar suggestions as you write.
I would also warn you here to not do your original writing inside of the publishing software you choose. That software’s job is to provide a platform for layout and design – not just writing. These apps just don’t provide the same quality of writing tools. You’ll also want to keep your original writing in separate docs so that it will be easy to repurpose for other uses like social media or maybe a website article.
Get Organized Before You Start
Remember in Step 1 when I talked about beginning with the end in mind? That applies to organizing your draft content, too. To save yourself time when you actually start putting together your ebook, make sure you have set up a folder system to hold all of your book’s content.
You probably already know what works best for you in terms of organization, so get started with one folder for all the content and then break it down into grouping the different elements into other folders. Focus on what will save you time later on.
Don’t Pay Attention to Fonts & Paragraph Spacing
Because font choices usually don’t transfer from word processing docs to a publishing app, don’t take the time to set these. This choice can be applied when you have compiled your text in your publishing app.
This also applies to the set amount of line space between paragraphs. Just hit Return at the end of your paragraph to establish that and then adjust the spaces between paragraphs later.
Do Pay Attention to Capitalization & Word Spacing
Capitalization does carry over from a word processing doc to publishing software. So take care of that here in the early stages. The same goes for the spaces between letters, words and sentences.
If most of the writing you have done so far has been for academic papers, then I need to alert you to an important publishing rule. Do not put 2 spaces between sentences. In publishing and commercial copywriting, the rule is for there to be just 1 space. All those extra spaces will waste space on the page.
As I create ebooks for clients, I’m still surprised at how many business professionals still just automatically hit space-space at the end of every sentence. So now you’ve been warned. Just don’t.
My Content Creation Progress
I’m still in the process of taking my original content from the 52 weekly emails that I used in the One Story Wednesday program. But here’s a look at one of the emails so that you can see what I’m working with. I wrote the original text of all my emails in Google Docs. I’ll be making copies of those docs and moving them to my new folder where I’ll be editing a bit for this new format.
In my next post, I’ll tell you about Step 4 where you’ll clean up your text content before moving it to the publishing software.
How are you doing so far? If you have any questions, please contact me at rebecca@roseandbird.com. I would love to hear from you and find out how I can be more helpful.
Until next time,
You can follow this process right here on my site or in my social feeds:
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