This is the eighth article in the series Publishing Your Own eBook series.
At this point, we have a WORD document with chapter titles, words on a paper, and maybe even citations that have been formatted into a document. In essence, you have a great looking research paper that you would submit to any college professor. Please hold loosely any formatting that you have done to this point because it could all change.
I assume that you, the reader, is a writer of content. You may have your own blog and have designed your website, written some code, and then posts several quality posts. Great. But to try and be a jack-of-all-trades is going to hurt the timeline of this document, may impact your brand, and annoy you in the process. No “design tips” will be given, you can find that elsewhere.
- Must Haves Every eBook needs to have some parts to it, regardless of what the topic is and the length of it. This includes a cover page that will wow the reader, a further contact one-pager that describes you the author and any other quick bits of information that you want to display, titles for different pages or sections of your document, headings, and page numbers. Each of these receives some kind of design aspects, but will compliment the design theme and not influence it.
- Do NOT Do It Yourself Formatting an eBook can be a very laboring process that takes as long as writing the actual content. Unless you have all the time in the world and/or a strong design background and sense, it would be unwise to do this yourself. In fact, there are some amazing designs you can simply purchase out there that are affordable and a smart idea. If you are writing a series, buy that theme and then just change the color from eBook to eBook. Another more pricey alternative is to have someone design it for you. Again, let them do the job and hold on loosely to the design. You are a writer, not a graphic designer.
- Think Big Picture I already hinted at this, but know what the whole scope of this is. Congruency and branding is vital at this point. Have your logo on here and know that this document will reflect the brand. At the same time, know that you are creating a product, even if it is free. A poorly designed document now WILL reflect later on documents you may want to sell, so give this priority and importance. When you finished, you may have a near completed document.
What designs have you found out there?
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