Making Your Own eBook

Today I sold a copy of my eBook, My Homesteading Journey, on eBay. This was a test for me when I first put it up there. I wanted to see if anyone would buy it. I sold a copy of it, and a few of my Breads And More Cookbook eBooks. Haven't sold much since. It sells more on my website, Larry Gene Music.

One of the beauties of selling an eBook is that it sells over and over. Once you write it, edit it, upload it to your website, you can sell it forever. My husband designed the covers for the books. He used his graphic program in his computer. Nothing fancy. It sells even if you are not at home, and even if you don't check your computer daily. Once the buyer has paid for it, they receive a download link in their account. That's it. The link will be a zip file that they will have to unzip to view it on their computer.

Selling it on eBay is a bit different. I can sell it that way on eBay. But as a downloadable product only, it wouldn't be able to be listed under the book category. Just under the "Everything Else" category. To be able to sell the Breads & More Cookbook in the cookbook category, and My Homesteading Journey in the nonfiction category, they had to be a physical product. A product to be sent through the mail.

I had to put them on a disc to be viewed on a computer in a document software program. I had used Open Office to write my books, which is an "open source" writing software program. What is "open source" software? Why, FREE, of course! We have used all open source software for our websites as well. Once I had it all edited I converted it to a PDF file in Adobe. Most people have that on their computers and if not, they can get it free.

But wait! That's not all. If you are selling it as a digital product, you have to zip the file using a compression software program like WinZip or CoffeeCup. Then you upload that file to your FTP program, like CoreFTP Lite, which is the one I use. Then list it on your website. That is all there is to it. Once it sold, I saw how easy it was. My buyers would purchase and automatically get the link to download it. Occasionally the link didn't work correctly, and I had to send them the link in their email. But it works that way too.

It is a little different selling it as a physical product. I had to copy the book from Open Office and burn it on a cd disc. My husband made a label with our label maker. Some sellers don't include a nice label, but we thought it made the disc look more professional. I send it First Class mail in a bubble mailer, with the cd in a paper sleeve.

It was fun creating a book to sell and doing it myself, instead of paying someone else to do it for me. Puts more profit in my pocket. But it also made it my own design. I am working on some others now every chance I get. It is not as hard as you think, and especially if you are already writing a blog. Good luck with writing one of your own!

Copyright © 2011 Kathleen G. Lupole
All Photographs Copyright © 2011  Kathleen G. Lupole