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.

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.

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