With the hurdle of niche selection behind you, we can move on to greener pastures. With your E-book theme calling you to fulfill your destiny, you can move with less abandon through your E-book compilation. The first thing you will need to have is a word processing program. There are many on the market and most computers come with some type of word processor or other built-in. Windows even has a program called MS Wordpad that would work in a pinch. Wordpad has all the features you’ll need to complete your Informational Odyssey, and it won’t cost you any money. If you are thinking of buying something with more zip, then MS Office is a complete package with one of the most popular word processing programs ever, MS Word. Word has all the bells and whistles you’ll ever need, but it’s a reliable and well-supported program, so if you have to spend some money, Word is a safe bet.
I want to take a brief moment on Rabbit Trail and talk about a specific product that will help you, should you decide to use it. If you have a Gmail account, you can access a web-based software program developed by Google called Google Docs. There is a word processor, slideshow builder, spreadsheet, and form builder in the package. What Docs allows you to do is create documents that you would normally store on your hard drive on your computer and save them to a web-based hard drive that only you can access. You can create articles, e-books and many other important documents that you will use in your e-book business and you won’t even have to worry about packing your laptop or USB stick to do it. All you will have to do is access the Internet. You can even upload MS Office documents and backup all of them online.
The best way to start compiling your ebook is to formulate a summary of the information you plan to cover, in a simple, flowing organization. A great way to establish your outline is to make a list of the 8 most important steps to do whatever your topic is, and then to make a list of the 8 most dangerous or fatal mistakes a person can make when… do whatever your subject. You probably shouldn’t use every item in each list, but it will help you eliminate any writer’s block and move forward with your project.
After establishing a rough outline of your topic, we’ll then call it your table of contents; I want you to list 4 aspects of each subtopic. In other words, if you are writing an ebook on real estate development, your subcategories can be;
1. How to finance your projects
2. How to find land to develop
3. How to form companies.
Now I want you to set the next detail layer. If I were to expand on the “how to finance your projects” chapter, I could say a. hard money b. conventional business loans c. Joint ventures. Keep doing this until each chapter has its own set of various subtopics that expand on its informational content. On the other hand, do it one more time until you have a very solid idea of what each chapter will look like. This will allow you to make sure you’ve included all the information you plan to include, as well as put it in the right context to make it useful.