Amazon has a place that you can publish your book. You need to have an account at Amazon, but it is free and takes just a few minutes to register. You go through the publishing process at Amazon’s Digital Text Platform site. Here are the steps to get you going.

• Download the .pdf Amazon DTP Quickstart Guide. It is a through document that gives you all the details you need.

• After you create your account information at the DTP site, you will see an “Add New” button at the top of the page.

• Once you click this button, you will see a screen that shows you the four steps you need to complete to publish. Each one will have a red “X” until you complete it, and once you are done, it will change to a green check mark.

• The first step is to enter the product details. You will add things such as title and product description. The more descriptive you are, the greater the chances that consumers will find your work. You can also upload the cover image, and remember, people do judge a book by its cover.

• The next step is to confirm the content rights. This section is simply assuming you have the rights to what you want to publish.

• Then comes the process of uploading your book. Amazon is very clear that HTML works the best. MS Word is second best, but a PDF is a “no-no”. If you are using MS Word, you can save the manuscript as an HTML file.

• The last step is entering the suggested retail price for the ebook. If you are a new author, you have to accept that you may not make a lot of money off your book. The 99-cent book niche in the ereader realm is quite popular, and you may get a lot of downloads if you choose to price it low.

• Once everything is complete, you can click “Publish“. It takes between 24 to 48 hours to see it as a listing.

Amazon has a lot of support forums and FAQs about self-publishing electronically, sble to do this without any hitch. Don’t skimp on getting the word out there. Use social sites like Facebook and Twitter to get the word out that you have an ebook ready to be purchased and downloaded to any Kindle.

A vocal skeptic of ebooks, John Grisham has finally allowed his numerous best-sellers to go electronic. Random House announced that 23 of the author’s backlist titles will be available anywhere ebooks are sold. Amazon wasted no time in offering ebooks from Grisham, and you can get titles from “The Firm” to “Ford County” from the popular author who was a lawyer and politician prior to his book-writing career. Grisham’s titles range from $5.99 and $9.99 at Amazon.

Random House of course expressed their excitement about the author finally allowing his books to enter the ebook world.

Sonny Mehtha, editor in chief of Random House division Knopf Doubleday said, “This is one of our most exciting e-book initiatives to date and is certain to usher in a new generation of Grisham readers and e-book adopters.”

Random House has not given any details on the deal with Grisham, and Grisham didn’t release a statement about the announcement that was made on Tuesday, March 17th.

The surprise comes from the fact that Grisham has expressed his dislike of ebooks in a Today Show interview. Last October, Grisham’s “Ford County,” a short story collection was once of the books involved in the ecommerce price war. This war involved retailer giants, Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target. Grisham disagreed with the heavy discounting which knocked “Ford County” down to 9 bucks.

In that same interview with the Today Show, Grisham said, “The uncertainty comes with the e-market. Five years from now, how many of us are going to be reading books on Kindles and all these Sony readers, these beautiful gadgets and devices, that are going to get better and better and cheaper and cheaper? If half of us are going to be doing it, then you’re going to be wiping out tons of bookstores and publishers and we’ll buy it all online.”

In his Today Show interview, Grisham also said, “If a new book is now worth about $9 then we have seriously devalued that book.”

Is this technology devaluing books? We are obviously still spending. According to statistics released by International Digital Publishing Forum, wholesale revenue from ebook sales in the United States went from $16.6 million in 2008 to $55.9 million in 2009. It seems that with the rising popularity of devices like the Kindle, Mr. Grisham’s bank account is going to be okay.

Last March, the ABC board and the Newspaper Association of America created an industry task force to study the evolution of newspapers and the growing numbers of media channels that were available to advertisers. These channels included ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle. The task force was created to specifically determine how ABC should measure, audit, and report the expanding audience due to technology.

“ABC’s action is good news and a timely step forward for both publishers and advertisers in advance of the iPad launch,” said Brenda White, senior vice president of publishing activation at Starcom and an ABC board member.

“It’s encouraging to see magazines expanding their brands and taking advantage of new technology. It will take some time, but I’m confident that e-readers and other mobile devices are going to become important channels for marketers to engage with their audiences,” she added.

The new reports on media technology will include:

• Ereader distribution averages;
• Mobile app purchases;
• Total paid and verified subscriptions emanating from multiple newspaper products;
• A new “Publishing Plan” executive summary box on the first page, noting frequency, delivery platforms, and distribution methods across a publisher’s various print and electronic editions.
• Continued use of Audience-FAX, the 2007 initiative that allows U.S. newspapers to report print and online readership figures, as well as Web site and audience data from comScore, Nielsen Online, Omniture, or other sources audited by ABC Interactive.

These options will be available to publications beginning October 1, 2010. This is an important change because up until now the ABC has not audited digital magazines. Some advertisers won’t consider placing ads with magazines that aren’t audited by the ABC. This is a positive step in the right direction for the support of ereader technology and ebook readers like the Kindle and Sony Reader are right in the midst of the industry’s progress.

Publishers select books on their commercial merit and that makes sense as they do want to make money off of the book. But the choosing process is subjective. In most cases, you have to get an agent to show interest in your book because most publishers don’t except unsolicited manuscripts. This process is not easy, and is fraught with rejection. In actuality, one-single person decides what the public gets to read, and if it has money-making qualities.

Because of the evolving ereader and ebook technology, authors now have the ability to upload their manuscripts to publishing sites like Amazon Digital Text Platform, Smashwords, Scribd, Lulu, and Sony’s Publisher Portal. Ebook publishing may eventually become a rival for traditional publishing models. Why? Because ebook creation is cheap. The biggest cost saver is the fact that there are zero distribution costs with ebooks. Additionally, the turn around time is faster as the authors can upload their work quickly, and the buyer can simply download it to their Amazon Kindle or other ebook reading device.

But while authors can bypass the frustration they usually experience in taking a traditional route, they face different setbacs when using ebook publishing platforms.

The truth is the author may not make any money off of their work. Although, they can say that they are a published novelist, the count of ebooks on the internet is high, and the book may not get the desired hits because of the lack of advertising. Most ebook authors sell their books for free or at low prices to entice the buyer, but the author may suffer financially from this habit, and not see any profit off the book.

On the flip-side, an author of an ebook determines the level of restrictions applied to the book. For example, the author can control how many times an ebook can be downloaded for a single purchase, and the amount of devices to which the ebook can be transferred.

With the Amazon Kindle at the helm, the popularity of ebook readers is growing and aspiring authors may turn to the ebook self-publishing platform. Although it does present another set of frustrations, authors may find that this new route is much better than the traditional publishing route.

Many people know about various methods of making money online, but very few understand that they can use the Amazon Kindle to make money. In essence you can create special reports and ebooks especially for the Amazon Kindle and their customer base.

With regular ebook writing there are many obstacles to overcome. You need to have the ebook created, edited and written for a specific market. You then need to drive traffic to the website in order to make sales.

After all this work, there is no guarantee of sales or of finding a large readership base. In many cases, people try creating ebooks to sell online and fail, as they don’t have a target market in mind, and find it very hard to get enough visitors to their site. Maybe you have experienced this yourself in the past?

Well, now there is another way to make money with ebooks and PLR books without needing your own website, traffic, autoresponder and hours of time to find traffic and customers.

You can use the Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is the hottest ebook reader sold by Amazon and it has become a raging success. Many people who love to read have bought the Kindle as it lets them store hundreds of complete books on one small device, and they are highly mobile.

The Kindle is directly linked to the Amazon’s Kindle store so that users can download ebooks in seconds. This is where you can make money. The Kindle store allows anyone to create and upload an ebook for sale. You can use the Amazon brand, the Amazon traffic and the huge number of readers that are just waiting to find and download new ebooks.

If you have any PLR ebooks or ones that you have created in the past, then you can simply upload them to the Kindle Store in minutes. Within a few minutes you could be making money, once people download your ebook. It’s really that simple.

One of the best parts of all of this is that people with a Kindle don’t need to have an Internet connection. With a Kindle, they have access to the Kindle store via a cell phone signal. This means that your ebook is available to all Kindle users 24 hours a day no matter where they are.

This is a huge mass of traffic that is just waiting to be tapped into by you. You can really start to make money right now with this simple concept. This is much easier than anything else out there. Many gurus give you courses and tips on how to create a website and get traffic, but you don’t need any of that with an Amazon Kindle.

At the moment this idea is fairly new and very few people are taking advantage of it. Now is the time to get in on this opportunity before the competition gets too fierce!

The first thing to know is the subject that you are going to be writing about. Unless you have personal experience with this subject, then you need to start researching. Alternatively you can find an expert in this area and interview them. You need to have the content written in such a way that people can understand and implement the advice.

Remember that your readers want to solve their problems and have bought the ebook for this reason. Ensure that the chapters are clear and provide real ways for them to get huge benefits from the advice that you offer.

Write the ebook in a word processor, as this the best way to ensure it is formatted correctly. This will also allow you to remove any spelling and grammar errors that are present. I also recommend that you create an attractive front cover for the eBook, as many people buy based on this fact alone. You might need to pay someone to design a graphic for you. This is a worthwhile investment if you are unable to create it yourself. Once the ebook is complete in the word processor, you need to convert it into a PDF document.

A PDF documents is a file format that can be read on nearly all computers and handheld devices. It also provides extra security for your ebook and stops people from infringing your intellectual property.

In order to convert it into a PDF document you will need to use a PDF converter program. Sometimes these can be expensive, but there are a few free ways to do this. I recommend that you download a free version of OpenOffice or Word 2007, as these allow you to covert a word processing file into a PDF document free of change. The feature is build into the software.

You then need to create a website in order to sell your new ebook. Use Dreamweaver to create the website. You will need a sales page that give the benefits of the ebook and why people should buy. You also need to have a PayPal button on that page. This will let people send you money. You can find this button inside your PayPal account. You then need to paste the code into your sales page.

Once someone has bought the ebook, you need to deliver it to him or her. For this to work, you need a download page which links directly to your ebook. When someone orders and pays via PayPal, they must to be directed to the download page in order to download the ebook immediately.

Once you have all these steps taken care of, you have a complete ebook publishing business established. You are ready to start sending traffic to the website and making sales for years to come.

One of the best ways to bring people to your website is via Google AdWords. Although you have to pay for this method of advertising, it is a very fast method of getting sales and results. You can determine how well your sales message is performing and then adjust it accordingly.

Another great technique is to offer visitors a glimpse into your ebook. You can offer the table of contents to readers. Alternatively, you might want to give away one free chapter to all your readers. This will show them the value inside the ebook and encourage more and more sales.

Offering a bonus with your ebook has been proven to increase sales. Creating a short report to accompany your main ebook should not take very long. You should focus on one core issue with your bonus report. It does not need to be very long but it must solve a problem.

In order to get more visitors to your website you need to spread you message far and wide. You should approach other people in your marketplace who also sell ebooks. Offer to endorse their product in exchange for a personal recommendation of your own. If you able to partner with other big players in the same market, you can create a flood of traffic to your website.

As you know, the best form of marketing is a personal referral. As such, I would encourage you to ask for referrals from your current customers. Once they have purchased your ebook, ask them to tell a friend. This is a great way to bring in more profitable readers to your website.

Also, ask for testimonials from customers. Once the customer has finished reading the ebook, send them an email and ask for their feedback. Once you have their testimonial, paste it on your website so that everyone else can see and read them. This is a great method to create social proof and trust with other people. Remember that many people are very sceptical of ordering online, so this is a great way to ease their worries.

You should also create articles and submit them to the article directories. Many webmasters will find your article and post it on their website. When they do, a direct link will be given to your website and you can expect many visitors from this.

I would also think about joining forums and setting up social profiles on the big web 2.0 sites. Give away free content and demonstrate your knowledge of the market. This is the best way to gain a following and encourage people to buy your ebook.

If you implement these strategies then you will be able to create a flood of sales.

In order to overcome this first hurdle, I have put together a number of tips that will help you to find a profitable market to base your ebook around.

In order to find hot topic, the best thing you can do is find where money is currently being spent. The best method of doing this is to find the best selling books and ebooks. You can look at Amazon, clickbank and also lists of the top searches online. Lets look at Amazon first.

Amazon is the number one book selling site on the internet and virtually everyone has heard of it. If you ask the average man or woman in the street, they know about Amazon, even if they don’t know about the Internet. Amazon is the best place to get started when looking for new ebook ideas. You can sort their list by the top selling books. This is a treasure trove of information and tells you what is currently selling well.

Next you should look at clickbank. Go to the marketplace and use the search feature to find the best selling ebooks in all categories. Just looking at this list can give you a host of ideas for many different ebook hot topics. The key here is to find what is already selling well and then create something that can accompany it or partner with it.

This will give you a huge advantage over everyone else, and you will be able to tap into an existing marketplace that has thousands of buyers already. This is what the most successful ebook marketers do, and why they keep making more money than everyone else.

You can also use a number of online tools to find what is currently hot and what people are searching for. I would suggest using the Google trends tool in order to find out what the most searched phrases have been. You can also find out what people are interested in right now. Creating an ebook about a current hot topic is the best way to ensure a profitable venture from the start.

Another place to look for hot topics are blog sites. You can find the most visited blogs on the Internet by using the Google tools. Because blogs are so popular and updated daily, they give you a strong indication of what people are interested in and what they are buying.

If you combine all of the ideas above, you will be able to brainstorm a number of very profitable topics that can make you a lot of money. The market research might take a little longer than you had hoped for, but the time is well spent.

Failure to conduct proper market research will only cost you money in the long term. There is no point spending hours on ebook creation unless you know that it’s going to be successful. The best way to guarantee this is by first finding profitable markets and hot topics.

This cuts out a lot of overheads and reduces your workload significantly. If this sounds like something that you would like to experiment with, then here are the top 5 tips to creating an effective eBook.

1. Find a Profitable Market

The first tip is to find a profitable market. If people inside a particular market do not like to spend money then you are just wasting your time. Always find out if the market is profitable before writing. You can do this simply by finding other competitors in the marketplace. If they are advertising, then you know they must be making a profit.

2. Ensure the eBook is Well Written

The second tip is to create a well written ebook. Many people think that they can write about anything, without taking care of the spelling and grammar. This is a mistake. Although the ebook does not need to be perfect in terms of English, it should be well laid out, easy to read and contain zero spelling and grammar mistakes. You have no excuses if you are using a word processor, as the job can be done for you.

3. Write Fast

When you are creating the content for the ebook, you should get all your ideas on the page first. Once you have written everything down, then you can start to edit and fine-tune the ideas into chapters and sections. A big mistake that many people make is to edit the written work as they write.

4. Keep Ideas Short

People want to read an ebook to find a solution to their problem. For this reason, you need to keep the ebook short and get to the point. Don’t try to be clever and speak around an issue. Give the reader what they want.

5. Make the eBook Attractive

Add some images and pictures into the ebook in order to give it a more attractive look. Images draw the eye, so you can keep readers interested if you use this method. Don’t fill the ebook with too many images, but don’t make the ebook dull and hard to read either. You need to create a balance between interesting and attractive.

If you keep these 5 tips in mind when creating ebooks, you will be much more successful and make more money as a result.

Why Should Publishers Care About EBooks?

A stubbornness to embrace this digital age is costing industries millions of dollars. Take a famous book series like Harry Potter; since those novels were not available online because they refused to consider digitalizing their content, many pirated versions of the book stole their potential sales.

The music industry fought a long hard battle against allowing people to purchase music online. They wanted people to buy their cds, but it wasn’t happening as often as they liked because music tracks were being leaked all over the Internet. Once the music industry hopped on the digital bandwagon and offered their music through sites like iTunes, where consumers could pay a fee to download each song, they began recouping their losses and the high rate of pirated music tapered off.

Supply and Demand

Supply and demand is one of the simplest rules of business, yet book publishers around the world are ignoring it every day. The demand for products has been taken to the Internet, people of all ages spend countless hours online every day, and if they can’t find what they want online, they will often substitute it for something else that is available and convenient.

By making more book titles available online, and compatible with eBook reading devices, publishers can open up a whole new supply line to the demand of their customers. Books that were previously online offered as printed versions in the United States can now be offered to readers worldwide at a reduced price, producing more sales.

It is So Simple

It is so easy to make a book digital. With a small investment, publishers could easily make their books in both printed and digital form. Many publishers have hesitated to offer online eBook versions of printed material, because they feel that the market is too small. It is true that eBooks and reading devices are a relatively new trend, but just like iPods and iTunes, they have the ability to skyrocket online book sales.

Publishers can continue to ignore the fact that more and more products and services are being offered online, and that the majority of their customers are purchasing digital products. However, if they continue to drag their feet, they are only hurting their business.