Several final steps with regards to the ebook.

First:  Editing.  No matter how many times you read your own writing, there are problems.  Having edited my book five times I felt pretty confident when I sent it out.  But my editors disagreed with me.

Guru.com produced nearly 40 people who offered to edit my book.  Selecting the person to do it was tough.  But, as I stated before, I wanted a quality product to go out the door.  Especially if my name was attached to it.  In total, editing took about two weeks.

Second:  Appeal.  I studied a number of ebooks before putting mine together.  eBooks are horrible.  Just because anyone can produce one, they do.  And they don’t give any real thought about the look-feel of the book.  Usually it’s a boring black and white page, with 3 inch margins, and the text is exactly what you see on the website.

Lord Google introduced me to Charlie. Charlie talked on his website about making eBooks look fantastic.  I hired him to do it, along with some improvements to the site.  In the end, I was very happy with what he did and felt that not only was the quality there but it looked good.

Third:  Integration.  Selling any book usually requires the author put the first chapter for free on the internet.  OK, done.  But usually when perusing books at the book store, I flip through more than just the first chapter.  The middle and the end also get some scrutiny.  So I decided to put an excerpt from the mid-point of the book.  In this case, Chapter 5.  This section was deliberately picked because it’s something that anyone can use even if they don’t buy the book.

Next week I’ll be chatting about the software for the iPhone app.  That’ll be fun.

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