5 ebook publishing mistakes to avoid

Ebook creation is time-consuming and laborious task. It is not difficult to make a mistake during the process. Various traps await authors not only all along: when writing and at the later stages of the process as well. Today we are going to discuss the most ebook publishing mistakes.

Ebook publishing mistakes – table of contents:

Unattractive title
Self-designing of the cover
Lack of link to the source
Neglecting the SEO settings
Lack of the review

Unattractive title

Author has only one chance to make first good impression in the internet. For this reason the title of an ebook has to be selected in order to attract reader’s attention. How to achieve it? At the beginning let’s discuss the rules of self-publishing for the title. Good title should possess three basic features – it has to be:

easy to remember,
easy to pronounce,
informative.

Informative character of the title should help the reader to assess the thematic range of an ebook. With this information the reader has a chance to decide if the subject of the book is matched with his interests.

The title of an ebook should not be too long. Some of the authors decide to use only one word as the main title and supplement it with the subtitle. This technique allows you to explain your reader, what your ebook is really about.

Other authors decide to use parallel construction of the title. For example, Jack Schwager compares the best salesmen to wizards – he has used such combination of words for his title and placed them on the cover of his book.

ebook publishing mistakes - Market Wizzards

The creation of the book title is not the easiest task in the process. The aim of the title is to touch the emotions of readers and at the same time attract their attention. Additionally it should be checked carefully if your idea wasn’t used by somebody else already.

It is not worth to copy existing titles, but they can become an inspiration to our own ones, especially if we don’t have any specific concept yet. We may browse among bestselling ebooks and analyze their titles and find out some interesting correlations that we could use for our project.

An author who already possess own group of followers on social media may ask them for their opinion. To do so, one may create a survey, in which all the followers may choose the best and the most interesting title. An author can also create a special space: a section of comments under the specified post, where the internet users may share their ideas and discuss them with each other.

Self-designing of the cover

Similarly to the title, the cover influences the reception of an ebook as well. Many creator decides to create their covers by themselves, but this option often brings negative consequences to the ebook publishing process.

Being an author you know, how to create written content, but it doesn’t mean that you have the skill and ability of an experienced, professional graphic designer. Designing a cover as the very important part of the project should be handled to a graphic designer. Qualified graphic designer will be able to match the size of the cover with the graphic project as well as to assure that the pictures and images will have the best quality possible.

If you don’t want to commission an independent specialist to make your cover, you may consider usage of ready-made cover projects. There are locations in the Internet, where graphic designers offer their mockup projects, both for free and for payment. Remember that, this option doesn’t allow you to show any originality of your piece since there is a high probability that someone else may use the same cover for their project.

Lack of link to the source

The reader, who downloaded your ebook usually forgets about the source of the publication. In such situation the reader may search for the information in the content of an ebook that should lead him back to the source of it – to you. If you forget to place such informative element in your ebook the reader may never find your website and you again. His search will be in vain and you will not build your heading position as an expert.

It is beneficial to allocate some space in the content of an ebook to place links to the blog website or to author’s profile on social media. To make such bookmark more visible the author may create separate page entitled “About me” or “About the author”.

Key ebook market trends and facts - ebook publishing mistakes

Neglecting the SEO settings

Neglecting the importance of the SEO settings is one of the most frequent promotion mistakes that authors, especially the novice ones, make. If you really care about the numbers of leads generated and better conversion you have to make sure that the position of your website is high in search results. How to accomplish this?

Select the right key words – when you know the subject of your ebook, check what are the most popular phrases entered in the browser by the internet users. Those phrases should be associated with your chosen topic. In the next step use them in the content of your ebook and on the landing page of the ebook. Remember that overusage of key words may have a negative impact on the readability of the text.
Title – try to place key words in the title as well.
Links – as it was mentioned before, having notes with links in your ebook is very important. Not only it allows the internet users to find an information about you, but it allows to redirect the internet traffic to the specific subpages of your website such as: questionnaire page, products page as well as other locations, where the user may share his opinion about your ebook.
Mailing list – even if give your away ebook for free it is not a bad idea to ask your readers to leave their email in exchange for downloading the file. This will help you to build up a mailing list, that can be of use when the need to inform your readers about your new project arises.

Lack of the review

Many internet users make their decision about buying or downloading of the ebook influenced by the reviews of the text. It is obvious that your brand-new project won’t have any recent reviews in the internet.

Think about it at beforehand and provide access to your ebook to some of the selected readers before the release date. Ask them to write their review in exchange. This review you can include on your landing page or in your ebook. To add to your advantage insert a link that leads your readers to the page, where they can leave their own reviews.

Ebook market major players - book publishing mistakes

Ebook publishing mistakes – summary

The mistakes described above are the most popular ones made by authors in the process of ebook publishing. Greater awareness of errors should help you avoid them and the same way to keep you protected from the negative consequences that follow them later. All this should stimulate you to create better final product.

Now you know what ebook publishing mistakes you should avoid. Follow our “Creating and Selling Digital Products” category to be up to date with more articles in this series.

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Author: Martin Sparks
E-commerce enthusiasts which constantly digs around the internet in order to make sure he hasn’t missed any important information on the topic of starting and scaling profitable online stores.
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