Skip to Content
Publishing E-Books For Dummies
book

Publishing E-Books For Dummies

by Ali Luke
September 2012
Beginner
312 pages
7h 7m
English
For Dummies
Content preview from Publishing E-Books For Dummies

Planning and Plotting Your Way to Success

If you’re serious about writing and publishing an e-book, treat it as a business project: Have a plan for nonfiction or a plot outline for fiction. Even if you often write small, quick pieces (such as blog posts or short stories) without a plan, you need one in order to keep your e-book on track.

remember.eps Think of your plan as the itinerary for a journey. By mapping it out in advance, you ensure that you can do and see all the attractions you want — and you can spot potential problems well ahead of time. You don’t have to stick rigidly to the plan after your journey’s underway (you may well find that you need to modify it), but you know that you always have the plan to fall back on if you run out of ideas or if you get stuck.

Mind mapping

One useful technique for planning your e-book is mind mapping, or generating ideas based on a central topic. In case you haven’t yet come across this concept, Figure 3-1 shows an example of a mind map for an e-book about starting a blog. Notice that the provisional title of the e-book is in the center and that the ideas have been linked.

Figure 3-1: A mind map for an e-book titled Starting a Blog.

9781118352021-fg0301.tif

You can put your mind map on paper or use it with software such as XMind. The basic package is available for free ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition

Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd Edition

Martin Kleppmann, Chris Riccomini

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781118352021Purchase book