The Challenges Of Writing An eBook

I reported about a month ago that I was pushing off from shore and beginning my quest to pen an eBook worthy of your collective attention.  I believe I have made some great progress along the way, and learned many lessons, but I must admit that it has not come easily.  Many financial bloggers have recently released eBooks and most have claimed it was pretty difficult – now I understand why.

25K-30K Words Wasn’t That Tall A Mountain

Believe it or not, the actual writing is the easiest part of the whole operation.  I personally love organizing an outline and bringing a document to life.  I enjoy the challenge of trying to take personal finance topics and make them somewhat entertaining.  The topic I chose (don’t worry, all will be revealed soon) was fairly easy to write about for me.  It is something I feel passionate about, and I had a pretty strong sense of what I wanted to write going into it.  The research was very interesting and it solidified my prior convictions, so that was definitely worth it, and was intrinsically motivating.

Strengths vs Weaknesses

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The real slog has been the editing and review process.  I tried to do a lot of the image work myself, or do it piecemeal on Fiverr.  Next time, I will definitely outsource the entire project all at once on oDesk or 99designs.  I also severely underestimated how many “little things” there were to take care of.  Tasks such as organizing affiliate offers, creating disclaimers, and putting the finishing touches on the resource page all take valuable hours out of my day.  I don’t mind doing a little proofreading myself, but I have to admit that I sometimes slack at it (as many of you have no doubt noticed).  I have found numerous gigs on Fiverr where people will proofread ridiculous amounts of writing for five dollars, and it just isn’t worth my time at this point to do that (especially when I don’t do it very well to begin with).  These lessons will come in handy for the next eBook I take on – that’s right crew, I’m a glutton for punishment ;).  The overall moral of the story I’m taking away from this is to leverage the things you are good at and outsource the things you’re not.

“I Get By With A Little Help…”

I am very fortunate to have made some great friends in the blogging community.  They volunteered their time to help me out with the project and give me their thoughts.  Big shout out to Sustainable Personal Finance, Invest It Wisely, Young and Thrifty, The Financial Blogger, Financial Uproar, and Boomer and Echo.  Your feedback was invaluable!  The only drawback to receiving suggestions from all of these authors that I respect so much is that some of it was contradictory.  I tried my best to accommodate as many changes as I could (since every comment obviously had solid logic behind it), but at some point I simply had to decide what I wanted to do and just go with it.  So thanks once again ladies and gents!

Help Me Give It Away

The final step ahead of me is the promotion of the book.  This is yet one more stage where I have asked for support and received it from the veterans of the PF blogosphere.  I hope to get the book out there to as many people as possible, and I think most will find it a decent value considering the ultracompetitive cost of $Free.99 that I decided on as a price point.  If you would be interested in doing a review on the book, or allowing us to plug it on your site (maybe with a free chapter, or brief write up on the topic) please let us know immediately.  Most of the feedback I’ve gotten from people a lot smarter than me leads me to believe the book is definitely worth reading, if not exactly perfect, so I feel confident in saying that it is worth promoting to your readers.  Wish me luck, as I embark on the final leg of my literary journey into the unknown (for me anyway) world of eBooking!