Thinking Of Writing An Ebook? Read This!!

appreciate the tip - good advice!

Honestly, at $3/article spread out over different outsourcers charging this rate, it sounds like you're going to wind up with a bunch of crap content that doesn't flow together into a coherent ebook.

Personally, I'd rather spend a few extra dollars to have the whole thing written by one person than put in the hours of edits necessary to make a group of disparate articles work together

(Not saying that this technique won't work - it's just worth keeping in mind that you're going to have to put some effort into making the content flow nicely!)

You could just use the same article writer for every article, then you are going to have the same style throughout.

Once you locate a great writer stick with her or him. John maxwell's released 60 books because of having a great writing team.

Sarah, love you're new services. Good luck!

Good luck selling anything put together piecemeal like that. And if you do sell it because you come up with a slick sales page, good luck avoiding refunds. LOL

This is exactly how NOT to go about putting your 1st ebook together.

I have to agree with Frank and Sarah.

This seems like a shortcut. And it can even seem like a good way to save a lot of money. But paying $3 for each article would likely result in some pretty bad content.

Think of it this way...

The idea behind writing a book isn't just to compile 50 pages of crap and sell as many as you can before the negative reviews start coming out and the refunds come in (sort of a churn and burn strategy).

Instead, a product is designed to solve a customer's problem(s). And if it does a good job of solving a problem (which only works if the product is readable), then you have a happy customers.

Happy customers are repeat customers. Happy customers write good reviews/testimonials, which in turn further boost sales. And happy customers tell their friends.


In sum...

I certainly understand the reason for going this route. I've had tighr budgets before. But I'd suggest that anyone who's considering doing this look at the big picture. You may just find a $3 writer who does a decent job, but it will take a LOT of time to uncover this gem of a writer. And it will still take a LOT of time to edit the articles to create a coherent ebook.

That's the best case. Worst case is as stated above (poor writer = poor product = unhappy customers).

Just want people who're considering this strategy to go in with their eyes wide open. It may be better to raise the money needed to hire a good ghostwriter. (Sell stuff on eBay or something -- whatever it takes so that you end up with a good writer and a good product.)

Becky

I did this once in the past for a longish report rather than an ebook and it worked great.

• I did use the same writer for consistency.
• I asked for more words knowing that some of the first and last paragraph fluff in each article would end up on the cutting room floor.
• I wrote my own introduction and conclusion to the report.

Peggy

If they were to find out, it would be insulting.

I just don't know why you would want all different article writers...Not having consistency is quite obvious.

Oh, I wrote this new speech everyone...

"I....have a dream..."

In my opinion, if you do not have the money to pay one reliable writer, then you should wait and look for other venues to make some money and not by selling a digital product that doesn’t make much sense.

This is not like a puzzle game; you'll end up spending a lot of time trying to patch the product. You could spend that time much better by building a site or something else that is more straightforward.

I don't know why everyone is saying lots of writers, you can use the same writer. The point I'm trying to make is that by merely splitting it up into articles rather then having one whole project can work out cheaper.

yes i agree with sarah and frank,it is good to get the job done by one person or else you will end up confusing yourself.

To add an extra dimension search the Warrior Forums for what niches are hot, and you know what ebooks to write about ...

online gaming guides for example

I know it sounds like a great idea if you're just thinking of trying to get x amount of words to fill a book.

But writing a good article and writing a good chapter are not the same thing.

For the book to have a sense of cohesion one chapter needs to build on the next.
Chapter one: Why start an internet business.
Chapter two - eleven: Step by step directions to take your business from beginning to full-time income.
Chapter twelve: Where to go from here - Summing it all up..

Okay, not a great example, but you get the idea. To keep people reading, the book needs to lead them somewhere. To an ultimate goal.

This is why a lot of non-fiction writers read fiction. Though the writing is different, there's still a lot to be learned by the people who write page-turners.

However, you could put together a group of interviews and sell it as such: "Learn What These Ten Internet Marketer's Claim to be the Secret of their Success".

Then no one would expect it to flow like a book.

Just my thoughts.....rose

Another option, for the cash-strapped is to use PLR articles and EZA (for inspiration, not copying!) and bundle them into an ebook that way. Probably just as much work as having several writers write it and bundle yourself, but probably quite a bit cheaper.

If you have a good plr article pack of say 10 articles plus you use EZA to research a few more articles for filler you could easily package up an ebook and it might flow much better since you will be doing most of the writing.

Just an idea. I personally like to either outsource the whole project or do it all myself. I have used plr articles for a jumping point for ebooks in the past though.

Good Luck

Isnt it better to have 1 consistant style from 1 writer?

The style of the writing, from a bunch of different writers will be different.

Wicked! And, you will get twelve different versions of English at the same time, including twelve lots of jargon and uses of words....!

there is something called flow and there is another lil something called writing style.

in any writing piece there are different levels of communication, if you put together an ebook with this method you will create a mismatched mess, and it will affect the image the clients have from you even when they can´t figure out what it is.

but... to each its own...

If I have done all that I have completed 90% of the writing. I might as well finish it myself. I know everyone composes/writes differently. When I write what you just described is what I spend the most time doing. Once I have done all that brainstorming the rest comes very quickly.

I agree completely with those who are saying to have the whole ebook written as a complete work, as opposed to individual incongruent articles.

However - there is a way to produce a certain type of ebook by using random, disassociated articles. That would be to have a collection of "tips", such as, 101 tips on how to train your dog" or other collection of individual tips.

Thank you for sharing this valuable info.I just recently made my first eBook and wish I would have had this info.then.Much appreciated!

Yeah I agree! There a lot of gig there offering services as a freelancer. But it would take days just to finish them.

I use this technique myself some times (I pay a lot more than $3 an article though) and it does work, however the thing is that you need to be prepared to do a lot of editing and some writing yourself in order to get the book to flow properly.

I personally don't mind doing this, in fact I prefer to because then i can put my own personality inside the book.

However, one thing to be cautious of (and especially with the lower priced writers) is that you might end up with a lot of repetitive information in each article which could cause you to have to scrap a lot of the articles.

There is some general information on any given topic that a writer might put into many of their articles in order to make the article more informative not realizing that the article is intended to go into a book that already has that general information.

Bottom line is that when it comes to putting out good content be it a book, an article or whatever, there really arent any shortcuts.

Lee

I've done this not only to make it less expensive, but to actually make a better product.

For instance, if you write a book about reducing stress, one chapter may be on meditation, another on yoga, another on diet, etc...

You can often find experts that have experience and can write on the freelance sites - instead of a writer scraping the web for the same old info you can actually get more unique content by outsourcing your ebook in chunks.

We write most of our books ourselves, but do outsource for certain markets and certain products - there are other methods of obtaining content as well.

Jeff

I think Becky and others have said what I really wanted to say here.

Do NOT think that paying a few dollars an article to build an info product is going to get you great results.

I've paid $1000 and still not got results I could put my name behind.

I tried doing it chapter by chapter before - paid $600 and ended up rewriting the entire thing myself.

Yes outsource if you can't write - but do NOT try to do it on the cheap - you get what you pay for and if you're trying to build your business - wait until you can afford to pay to get it done properly or you'll be wasting your money and possibly harming your business.

Andy

If you're a marketer and think that $100 for complete product creation is too much, and you need to haggle and get so called "articles" for $3 a pop...i think you should stop marketing.

The same is valid for people who think that spending $150 for a complete web site from scratch is already too much. Or those ****ards on fiverr who want complete books (30+ pages) written for $5.

Looking at the thread..it looks like someone is wanting to create/market a product which SUPPOSEDLY should generate some income in the long term.

So you think its a good idea to go with the cheapest, low quality crap to get "some" product since you are not even willing to spend $100?

You don't see anything wrong here?

@poster,
its not a bad idea but i think articles from different sources can ruin the book.