Question on Ebook creation

by izee
22 replies
I am looking to write or outsource a short Ebook to offer free. When I put the job out for proposals, how many words on a page in an Ebook? Would it be safe to assume about 500-600 words so about 25,000 word ebook could be about 50 pages???
#creation #ebook #question
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  • Profile picture of the author WeavingThoughts
    You need to specify the total word count yourself.
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  • Profile picture of the author izee
    Sorry, wrote it very fast.
    I want to have an Ebook written of about 50 pages. I have no experience with Ebooks. If I put the job out there, to outsources, is it safe to expect 500-600 words per page? I do not know how many words are common on an Ebook page. Granted font size and all, but I want the pages to be content rich. Advice?
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Originally Posted by izee View Post

      Sorry, wrote it very fast.
      I want to have an Ebook written of about 50 pages. I have no experience with Ebooks. If I put the job out there, to outsources, is it safe to expect 500-600 words per page? I do not know how many words are common on an Ebook page. Granted font size and all, but I want the pages to be content rich. Advice?
      Open up word, put it on 12 font, Verdana, copy and paste an article from anywhere, see how many words are on the page. This will give you a good estimation of roughly how many words will appear (I thought it was about 800-1000 words myself per document page but I may be wrong).
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  • Profile picture of the author mstrmindmktg
    I've seen ebooks that were 80 pages and crap and ones that were 25 pages and absolutely great. Your content has to be relevant to your audience and valuable. You could have something written that is 500 words a page and 80 pages, but it has to be good.

    Adding resources for people to use regarding what you are writing, visuals to verify what is written, and anything to enhance it but that makes it even more valuable. It isn't all about how many words are on the page - it's about what they say.
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    • Profile picture of the author 24hours
      Originally Posted by mstrmindmktg View Post

      I've seen ebooks that were 80 pages and crap and ones that were 25 pages and absolutely great. Your content has to be relevant to your audience and valuable. You could have something written that is 500 words a page and 80 pages, but it has to be good.
      That's the best advice right there.

      I downloaded a free e-book that was in PDF format. It was 24 pages long, but the font was huge, and at least a third of each page was white space. Just for ha-has I cut and pasted the PDF into Word with a 12 point font and 1.5 spacing and it came out to 8 pages (barely). Think I felt cheated?

      Suffice it to say, I never went back to that website.
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      • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
        Originally Posted by 24hours View Post

        That's the best advice right there.

        I downloaded a free e-book that was in PDF format. It was 24 pages long, but the font was huge, and at least a third of each page was white space. Just for ha-has I cut and pasted the PDF into Word with a 12 point font and 1.5 spacing and it came out to 8 pages (barely). Think I felt cheated?

        Suffice it to say, I never went back to that website.
        LOL. I laugh when I see this... Huge fonts = big page count.
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      • Profile picture of the author LarryC
        Originally Posted by 24hours View Post

        That's the best advice right there.

        I downloaded a free e-book that was in PDF format. It was 24 pages long, but the font was huge, and at least a third of each page was white space. Just for ha-has I cut and pasted the PDF into Word with a 12 point font and 1.5 spacing and it came out to 8 pages (barely). Think I felt cheated?

        Suffice it to say, I never went back to that website.
        Well, when it comes to information quantity doesn't necessarily equal quality. In the above case, it does sound like the author was trying to make the "book" seem larger. On the other hand, sometimes valuable information can be condensed into a few paragraphs. You also said the e-book was free, so I don't know why you felt cheated.
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  • Profile picture of the author tpw
    The average word count per page is 500-550 words, depending largely on the font and font size selected.
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  • Profile picture of the author GailTrahd
    Again - it will depend upon how it is formatted - landscape or portrait, double, single or 1.5 spacing, illustrations and graphs etc.

    I would start with the word count you are looking for instead. How many words will be needed to cover the topic that you believe most readers would sit down to actually read?

    I personally think that one of the reasons these little $7.00 products are doing so well is because we are all so over stressed with obligations that it's all we can digest in one sitting. Think about the person who will be downloading the product and not about how much you'd like to give them. Think about WHAT they WANT and not what they NEED to know. Tantalize them with a smaller report and keep them interested with the remainder of what they NEED in an autoresponder series.

    On the other hand, you may be in a niche that will sit and devour a 50 page book in an evening - you know the niche best.

    Which brings me back to the original - go for a word count that will cover your bases - the length can be manipulated in so many different ways.
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  • Profile picture of the author LilBlackDress
    Originally Posted by izee View Post

    I am looking to write or outsource a short Ebook to offer free. When I put the job out for proposals, how many words on a page in an Ebook? Would it be safe to assume about 500-600 words so about 25,000 word ebook could be about 50 pages???
    It depends on the font size as to the number of words on an eBook page but for the most part with an average size font it is 250-350 words per page.

    And Amazon uses that range for it's word count estimation on Kindle pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author jenmidas
    We are leavin in an 'Instant' generation mindset.

    Create something that 'easy to chew and digest'.

    50 pages of ebook is just nice
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    • Profile picture of the author LarryC
      As people have already stated, it all depends on things like font size, white space and images. If you're creating the ebook yourself, you can obviously set it up the way you want.

      25,000 words would be a dense, single-spaced ebook with 500 words per page. Double-spaced with more white space and a larger font would be more like 10,000 to 12,500 words. That's why it's always best to discuss word count as well as number of pages if you outsource any kind of writing project.
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  • Profile picture of the author WeavingThoughts
    Many freelancers assume an avg of 250 words while many assume 500 words. You need to specify.
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  • Profile picture of the author izee
    Thank all....your answers were all extremely helpful.
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  • Profile picture of the author izee
    So when I put this out there, I really do not need to put it out there as an Ebook project, just that I am looking for "topic" at 25k words more or less. Meaning, receiving the document in Word and then transferring to the correct format is fine...no?
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    • Profile picture of the author Gonzosan
      I don't think you should count on font size or words per page but overall content the ebook offers. I've written one ebook before that is currently on just about every distribution platform out there. While I could increase the font size and get more pages out of my book I realized that the content was still the same. When I was using Smashwords they won't allow font sizes bigger than 12 so my ebook that was once 120 pages long suddenly dropped down to 105 or so.

      My ebook was around 25k words and was somewhere around 100 pages long but I also had a few images in there and when each chapter ended I started the new chapter on a new page so there was plenty of white space at the end of some chapters.

      Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author PolicyMaker
    Here is your Solution:
    https://www.freelancer.com/projects/...age-EBook.html

    You can also check what others doing...you can check more similar case studies by using google...

    Wish you Good luck...
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  • Profile picture of the author izee
    This Forum is so incredibly rich with knowledge. It is a pleasure to read all of your responses and I thank you kindly.
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  • Profile picture of the author DIG006
    Hey Izee,

    I actually have looked at various ebooks and compared plain text with no formatting to the finished product and this is what I have found.
    1 page un-formatted text (single space Times New Roman 12pt) = 5 Pages Formatted in the final ebook. I know this sounds a little high, but once you add pictures and increase the font size and add other elements like bullet points you get the pages pretty big pretty fast. Here is some average word count I use when I get things written for myself also, 1 page single spaced unformatted = 300-400 words


    On a side note, Mstrmindmktg makes a very strong point. The first ebook I ever had written was about 10,000 words and 30 pages long. It was the absolute worst piece of content ever. There was so much fluff I needed to cut out and just absolute non related information. When it comes to your own products your providing clients, I suggest taking the time to write something quality yourself. Freelancers are just there to get payment. They don't care about your customers or how your customers will like the overall product. Very few freelancers provide work and accept payment later, so its hard to gauge work without spending money. I'm not saying you shouldn't freelance some of your content out, but for major pieces that will make or break your business I feel that its much better to create it yourself and your customers will love you for it and buy again and again.


    Just for the curious this is how I produce my major content pieces:


    - List everything out that I want to talk about in my report, and I mean everything. You will probably trim it down later.


    - Organize your list of topics into related groups. Everything that is related goes together or if your product describes something that can be taught in sequences, group things that way.


    - Create a table of contents with major chapters/headings and sub-chapters/headings from your organized list.


    - Write about two paragraphs or until properly explained for each heading/sub-heading. Say you have a list of 7 major headings + 3 sub headings, you'll end up writing about 48 paragraphs. That right there is a good 9 pages of un-formatted content (40 formatted) if you have a lot to say. If you don't have so much don't sweat it just move on to the next headline.


    - Go back and proof read everything and beef up/cut down sections as necessary.


    This may sound hard or like a lot of work, but trust me once you sit down and start writing you will knock this out in only a few hours. On top of that you'll have a piece of content that is very personal to your style (it will match your emails and sales copy style) and a very valuable piece your customers will enjoy.


    Hope that helps out a little.


    - Jman D.
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    • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
      Specify the number of words, and ideally the style of formatting when you outsource it. What you could do, is either give an example of the formatting, or create a dummy document (cut and paste some random text in) to demonstrate the style of formatting you want.

      If the out sourcer doesn't get the formatting right, it usually be relatively easily to adjust the formatting yourself if you wanted to.

      On the other hand, if they don't get the text right (too little, too much, wrong content, etc.), it probably requires a re-write or major editing job - so lots of work - to fix that.
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  • Profile picture of the author rjames
    Originally Posted by izee View Post

    I am looking to write or outsource a short Ebook to offer free. When I put the job out for proposals, how many words on a page in an Ebook? Would it be safe to assume about 500-600 words so about 25,000 word ebook could be about 50 pages???
    My honest opinion is to write it yourself...you are the expert, not the guy you outsource it to. Also, don't concentrate on a particular word count...just say what you need to say and make it valuable...
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