Here’s how to create an eBook, a relatively painless vehicle for content. Use it when an article would be too short for the topic and a white paper would be too long.

A few months ago I decided I needed to create an eBook.

The term “eBook” (or “e-book”) applies to two very different items:

• an electronic version of a book, for consumption in a reader or eBook device, like the Kindle or the iPad;
• a marketing piece that conveys information in the way that a white paper does, but with a more readable, easy-to-turn-the-pages feel.

There are several different file formats for the former; the latter is usually a PDF, which most devices can accommodate.

Anyway, I wanted to create it for a few reasons:

• to see how much work is involved;
• to have one as a portfolio piece to show clients and prospects;
• to use as incentive content in search engine marketing.

It took me under 20 hours to create (there’s a little fudging in that figure), and I’m pleased with how it turned out. Here’s the story of how I did it.

Starting point

I began with a document I’d cobbled together over the years called “How to Hire Writing Talent.” I’d pecked at it for a long time in a document/PDF format, gradually accumulating a dozen or more issues I thought marketing managers should consider in hiring a freelance writer. It was akin to a buyer’s guide.

I was never happy with the layout or feel of the document, but I did want the content published, so I chose it as guinea-pig copy for the eBook. The new format would be enough of a challenge; I didn’t want to complicate matters by having to author brand-new copy as well.

Next, I trolled the web for tips on writing an eBook. There are good resources on what to do with the eBook once you’ve written it, but few on the mechanics of putting it together.

Good and bad eBooks

I found four or five eBooks and studied them for things I liked and disliked about them.

Good eBooks:

• employ landscape layout, so that each page takes up exactly one screen and spares the reader the scroll-up-scroll-down common to portrait layout;
• have decent design elements that give the reader a feeling of light yet inormative reading;
• contain some interactivity – embedded audio, video, links – along with the text;
• can fit a topic/chapter/lesson/point on a single page.

Ugly eBooks:

• are obviously just Microsoft Word documents distilled into PDF;
• are glorified slide decks distilled into PDF;
• fail to capitalize on the reader’s expectation of a book;
• don’t print out well.

Which application to create an eBook?

The best eBooks I found were created in Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. I didn’t want to rent, buy or learn either of these packages, and I didn’t want to hire a designer for a project of indeterminate length and constant experimentation.

This obstacle delayed the start for several weeks, as I considered alternatives and examined more e-books. One day I stumbled onto an e-book from Marketo, and gradually realized that they had used Microsoft PowerPoint to create it. Although most pages did not take advantage of the eBook format, the overall result was more than a PPT warmed over. It struck me that PowerPoint, for all its deficiencies and general overuse, had potential as a modest authoring tool for a modest eBook.

Microsoft Office Online has hundreds of slide templates. I found a free one that provided a good point of departure, tinkered with the color palette and slide masters and came up with something workable.

To be continued…

This is getting long for a single post (although it is becoming the stuff of its own eBook), so I’ll finish it next week.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to the final product, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Content Marketing Writer” (alternative titles welcomed).

photo credit: brewbooks