I coach many writers all the time in creating e-books and printed books. One thing my students always ask is, “Should I get my book copyrighted?” The answer is, “it depends.” Why does it depend? It depends on whether you will lay in bed at night worrying about some one stealing your book.

The chances some one will take your material is slim. If you were a well known writer, thieves wouldn’t think your work was worth taking. But they don’t and they won’t. We all think our literary work is special and we would have an award winning book if we just got a break. The reality is….that will not happen.

Therefore, if you will worry about protecting your work get it copyrighted. If not, don’t worry about it. It is not a difficult thing to copyright your book. The government Copyright Office will charge you around $50 and you can navigate the confusing online forms to submit your book for copyright.

If you don’t want the hassle of dealing with the confusing government website let us know and we will take care of it for you. We will do the whole thing for you and you won’t need to worry a bit.

There is a little known secret to the creation of a successful sales letter website. After creating a compelling headline there is a formula that gets results.

First your copy must present “the problem” to be solved. Next you expand and elaborate the effects of the problem.

Second you present a solution to the problem that your book gives. Expand and illustrate the benefits.

Third you prove that your book solves the problem with testimonials and endorsements. These can be friends or people who had success with the book.

Then you start the same pattern again but using variations with the problem solutions and testimonials. Use this pattern as many times as you feel necessary. Give the reader plenty of times to order your book. Offer a 100% money back guarantee and remove any issue that will cause resistance to buy. Finally, offer many FREE bonus reports or books. The more the better. See the website www.keepyourmarriage.com for a perfect example. Use these elements for your sales letter website and you will sell a lot of your books.

One of the best ways to market your e-book is with what’s called a “sales letter website.” You’ve seen these kinds of websites. The only product being sold is an e-book. It is a simple website format. There are no navigation tabs such as About US or  Home. There is only one long home page just like a direct mail long sales letter.

You’ve seen this kind of websites selling e-books and other products .It will sell your book too. To make this kind of website work you need a dominate compelling headline that will get the reader’s attention. Shock them. You must get their attention within three seconds.

Next, the copy for the website must be promotional and appeal to the reader’s emotion like greed to make money. Use emotional language, and extreme adjectives. For an example go to www.keepyourmarriage.com. Part 2 will give you the secret formula to sell lots of your books.

After you choose a topic about which to write, you must start you research.

First: ask yourself what are the questions the reader will ask and want to know. Make each main question a chapter subject.

Second: create an outline using the questions and make them chapters.

Third: Create a folder for each chapter topic. As you find information to use put it in the corresponding folders. It is easy to become overwhelmed with all the information you find.

Fourth: Do research using Google and other online tools.

Fifth: Look for articles, publications and websites that contain information about your E-book topic.

Sixth: Create a book cover for the book and format the text pages.

General questions:

1. An E-book can be any length of pages, five to 55 and more.
2. The dimension of the book can be any size, from 8-1/2 x 11” to 6×9,” facing pages, any size.
3. If you need fluff to make the book longer use charts, graphs, or quotes.
4. Include plenty of hot links in the text pages. These allow the reader to go to more detailed sources. Adding links add substantial value to your book.

Today many people are writing E-books in order to make money. Selling information has become very popular. Some people decide to write a novel or a story that they have created. These topics are enjoyable to write but will probably no make any money.

Another way to find a topic for your E-book is to pick something you are passionate about. Perhaps you love yoga, or ceramics. Maybe you love sports. Find a topic about those subjects. What topic will people pay to read? Most of these E-books are about making money.

Another way to find topics for your E-book is to do what gurus like Robert Allen do. The big name book writers look to society to find their topics. What are people interested in? What are they afraid of? What are the trends or demographic shifts, or cultural transitions? Look out in society and you will find a topic. That is how Robert Allen came up with his best seller Multiple Streams of Income.

Many writers think that to make money with their book they have to sell it to a publisher or self publish. You need to widen your view. Think in terms of a publishing package for your book. Publishers and speaker’s organizations are much more impressed if you have not only a book, but a set of CDs or DVDs to go along with them. Perhaps even a printed booklet about some aspect of your book.

If your book is for work shops, locate a small recording studio around you. Many people have studios in their basements and they are inexpensive. When you are just recording voicing the quality will be fine. Record just as if you are giving your work shop. If you want to make DVDs of you giving a work shop do it with one or two video cameras. Find some friends who have digital cameras. Rent a room at the local library. Get a few friends to act as work shop attendee and show them you’re stuff.

If your book is a novel, create a recording about the storey, how you came up with the idea and what motivated you to write it. People like to hear stories.

Have the recording studio make master CDS or DVDs from which you can burn copies and look on line for plastic CD albums. You will have professional collateral material that will impress your contacts.

I have coached hundreds of people who try to write books and most, I’m sorry to say have little talent for writing. Sorry, but that’s the truth. However there are ways to write books and still have successful, profitable books. “No way” you say……Way!

A man named David Ballask was doing research in the city library a few years ago. He was looking for all of the professional association in the country. Organizations like the National Accountants Association and others. He quickly found that some of the information was in the documents section, some in the reference section, some here, some there etc. It took David a long time to gather the information he was looking for.

Suddenly he got an idea. Why not gather information on all of the associations across the United States and put it in one convenient book, and that’s what he did. He called it the Encyclopedia of Associations. He sold them to every library in the nation and many other places. Bingo. Best seller…information.

But that’s not all. Since each year some associations end and new ones are created, he had to print updated versions every year, year after year after year…Does this give you any ideas?

Every writer and author should have a website as part of their book marketing. If you want reader, book retailers, and publishers to find your website easily so they can review your book your website needs the right domain. A domain is the website address used to go to your website (www.yourbook.com).

Here are some tips to help you find the best domain for your website:

1. Generally the shorter the better however domains for authors are different. Use your name or the name of your book. Ex. www.billcherry.com
2. You may decide to use your book’s title. That is fine but when you have a second or third book create a separate website for each. Ex. www.billscherrytree.com
3. If you are creating a publishing company then pick a domain name that is easy to read, easy to pronounce, not a foreign language, not likely to be misspelled, and short as possible.

Lastly you need to research the domain you want to see if someone else has already bought it. You can do that at www.networksolutions.com

A “killer”, compelling book cover can cover the sins of a badly written book.

One of the most important elements of a successful book is a compelling book cover. If your book will be selling in a retail store the cover must stand out next to the books on the shelf. The cover for an e-book is important but not as critical.

Try this experiment this week. Go to a larger book store like Barnes & Noble and spend 20 minutes looking at book covers. Check out different sections of the store. What books stand out? What gets your attention? Brighter colors? Gold embossed lettering? Provocative illustration? Look at the books that stand out and the ones next to them. Why don’t the books next to them stand out? Blah colors? What?

Don’t forget to consider the spine art. Most of the time books are on the shelves with spines out. That means you also need  ‘killer” spine art to get a browser’s attention.

Now spend five or ten minutes watching people in the book store peruse books. How do they scan the shelves? What books do they pick up? How long do they review them? All of these behaviors give you clues about how to design your “killer” book cover.

Next go to Amazon dot com and search books like yours. What do their covers look like?

Have your book cover professionally designed. Go to www.elance.com you can get great cover design for very low costs.

I have worked in the printing and publishing business for many years and I have seen way too many inexperienced writers ripped off. Because of digital “print on demand” technology everyone can afford to write a book. As a result, printers can take advantage of these inexperienced writers charging them too much to print their books, or even worse, tricking them into signing away the rights to their books.

Here are some pointers that can help writers avoid getting ripped off.

1. Always get at least three printing quotes on printing your book. There is a huge difference between printer’s prices.
2. Make sure each printer quotes prices based on the same specs, compare apples to apples.
3. Ask the printer to show you different options of printing paper. You can save a lot of money here.
4. If the printer says he will print a certain number of books and store them for you, ask to see them. Sometimes a printer will charge the customer for a certain amount of books, but not print all of them. They print them as needed. Don’t do it. Take delivery on all the books you pay for.
5. If you have an important deadline you need the books for, tell the printer you need them a week earlier. Printers are notorious for missing deadlines.