The first thing you need to do is grab a pack of PLR articles on the niche that the ebook is going to be about. There are many PLR article sites on the Internet, go to Google.com and do a search for: “topic + PLR”.

Choose a pack that covers the areas of your niche that you want covered in your ebook. Take a look at the titles of the articles and see if they cover what you want. Some packs will cover the basics of a topic and some will be more advanced. TIP: if you want a very comprehensive ebook grab both types of packs.

Use OpenOffice (free download from http://openoffice.org) so you can convert your ebook into a PDF file. OpenOffice is similar to Microsoft Office, it will even let you open Microsoft Office files and edit them, as well as save files in the same format as Microsoft Office (if you already have Microsoft Office 2007 and above, open Word and use that instead as there is a PDF converter add-on for Word).

After you’ve downloaded OpenOffice open Writer and start organizing the PLR articles the way you want them. A good tip here is to take a look at other ebooks and see how they’re set out. Duplicate any style elements that you like.

Another great tip is to change the titles of the articles so they sound more like chapter titles. You can also change some of the wording of the articles and swap sentences around so the articles are just that little bit different from the original version.

If the ebook is quite large, a contents page can be helpful for the reader. Adding page numbers and headers and footers is also a good idea as it helps the reader navigate. If the topic is very technical, medical or scientific, it’s a great idea to add an index at the back of the ebook.

To make the ebook more visually attractive you can add images from websites like istockphoto.com, bigstock.com, etc. (but make sure you purchase the right license if your ebook is going to have resell rights).

Outsourcing the website design and ebook cover is a good option if you don’t know how to do these things yourself. And make sure you do do it, don’t leave things undone simply because you’re not sure how to do them. ASK… then outsource if you can’t do it yourself.

Make sure the domain name matches your ebook title as that will make it easier to promote the website. You can also re-write some of the articles to use for marketing, or again, outsource – hire a ghostwriter if you prefer original content for marketing purposes.

After you’ve completed these steps you should have an ebook that you can sell from your own website, plus some marketing materials. Good luck!

Ta
Kristy