This is another post that is meant to give me a sense of how difficult it is to blog only from my iPhone .

I looked in to downloading software, paying for a designer on eLance, buying Adobe PHotoshop and learning how to do it myself.  I opted out of these because they did not meet my KISS criteria.

There is a time to focus on content, a time to focus on marketing, and a time to focus on bells and whistles. For now my focus needs to be on finishing good content and getting the distribution in place.  I can always improve on a cover later, but the priority has to be getting the little book ebook piggy to market!

I amy spend an hour reviewing this eCover for such things as color, downloading an image, etc, but the essense is there.  Name of the book, my name and title, and thats about it!

Don’t make your eBook cover a barrier.  Get it done, and get the book up and running to a distribution system. Improve as you go but don’t get bogged down!

There is a certain anguish that comes with writing, and deciding when you are done.  Is it complete? Can it be improved? 

One thing that I need to be crystal clear on is that sometimes it is more important to get a good product out there quickly then a perfect product out never, because effectively if iIwait for perfection then I will never get an eBook out the door. 

I am going to ask myself these questions.  Does my eBook offer a reasonable value to my target customers?  Is it easy to read? Can i honestly say, Buy it and it will be worth it to you?  If I can answer these questions then I am done.  It is time to go to the next step which is marketing. 

Anyway, time to get back to work……

As I am writing I am coming up with a lot of ideas about how to format my eBook,  include video, link to external web pages, embed photos, link to screenshots on my website etc.

EEK. Wait.  Tehre are two good rules during the writing of the eBook. One we have already touched upon – Keep Focused.

The second rule, perhaps more important, is K.I.S.S:  Keep it Simple, Stupid! Look there is always time in the future to get things complicated, but for now, I am going to try to keep things As Simple As Possible! Just right the content down in an organized fashion and don’t get overwhelmed or sidetracked by formating yet. K.I.S.S.  !!!!

One thing that I am finding is that when I am in the flow of writing ideas are coming fast and furious to my mind.  Every time they do, I take a moment to write jot them down in my iPhone in my To Do list under a file called Ideas – tis way they are safely recorded for future review.  What I don’t want to do is get of on a sidetrack during a critical period for my eBook development.

To meet my goal of idea to income in one month I basically need my ebook fully written by Tues Oct 12.  Given my work schedule, this will give me 4 full days to write, edit and format my eBook using my word processing document and Adobe Acrobat ( which I still have to open from its case). If all goes according to plan, all I will have left to do is create a cover for my book next week.

Here is something that will be very important for me to keep in mind.  This will be version #1 of my eBook and ebooks are editable so this ebook doesn’t have to be perfect – particularily in it’s format.  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want any typos or grammatical errors, but it doesn’t need to have embedded videos, perfect graphics etc.  It just needs to be really useful.  Where I need to put my emphasis is on content for the reader, and in my case the readers will be bloggers who have the wherewithal  to download content, search websites, and modify web pages.  These type of readers have the experience to  quickly search for the content that they need, so I don’t need to spend an extensive amount of time on formating.  For me it is more important to create useful information quickly and just get it out there.  Time for future editions later!

Finally, in regards to where to put my effort, I will try to remember this: there are 3 broad aspects to making money with eBooks.  1) Creating the Product. 2) Marketing the Product, and 3) All the technical stuff behind the scenes.  Thet key is to have 33% on quality product creation, 66% on marketing, and 1% on technical stuff behind the scenes.  Why? Because that’s where the money is!

Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, and Market Your Ebook

A quick quote:

“Ebooks are the perfect information product because there’s no inventory, near-zero overhead, high profit margins, no printing costs, no shipping costs– ebooks are delivered as an electronic .PDF or .EXE file over the internet–, and they’re quick and inexpensive to produce.”

I wrote my preliminary outline using my particular word processing software programming software called PAges. I could have equally well used MSWord. Basically what I did was just write out the outline in outline view mode.  This gives me the option of very easily moving topics up and down the outline by dragging them, and promoting them to higher level topics or lower level topics.  To learn how to do this takes about 30 secs.  Note: What I didn’t do was spend 4 hours playing around with all the bells and whistles in my word processing software.

Look, this is a key point in going from ideas to income quickly.  When in production mode – learn about the tools you need when you need them - no more and no less, then move on! This is really a mantra.

Think about it.  I could spend hours or days playing around with all of the capabilities of my word processing software program, but it doesn’t take me towrds my goal, which is eBook income, fast.

Keep you eye on the ball. No distractions!

This particular outline was based on a tutorial from the search engine website that I am going to write my eBook about.  However, instead of just taking the tutorial and learning, what I did was think about my eventual customer ( bloggers ) and ask myself, what is it about this section that would be interesting and useful for THEM.  In other words, what I am trying to do is create an eBook that isn’t based on what I KNOW, but instead based on what my eventual customer WANTS TO KNOW.

My outline is really a listing of what I want to know and do quickly s a blogger, not as a physician.  I am extracting out things that are of use to a blogger, but am using my experience as a physician to do it.  The value is in the synthesis of my strengths, and my mantra in writing and editing the eBook will be “how will this help my reader?”

I just received my Adobe Acrobat Pro by Fed Ex, and I am so excited to dive in and learn it.  Now the tough part – I have an early draft of a product, but I will be needing to learn the software in the next week to actually create my eBook.  Which one do I focus on next, cleaning up the outline and writing the book, or learning the software?

I learned one key thing from the book “Eat That Frog”.  It’d the harder thing, the thing that must get done, that should be your first focus, because that’s what is generally holding you back.  One of my greatest weaknesses is that I get so excited about all the new knick-knacks that I lose track of the key step, which right now is writing the book.  So, with some  difficulty, I am going to leave  my new software toy in its envelope and push through cleaning and organizing my rough draft as fast as possible.  Chow!

I have defined my market.  PubMed users that blog.  I selected PubMed users because there are lots of them (millions per month), because PubMed is difficult to use, and I believe I can add value. I narrowed it down to bloggers initially because they will be comfortable with eBooks and I think it will be easier to network to them. 

I have an initial subject/Title for my eBook. PubMed for Bloggers. Note well. This is preliminary. Before I select the final title I hope to do a quick keyword search and a quick keyword A/B testing study to see which one sells better.  More on that later. 

Already I am having one challenge.  I stat to generate lots of new ideas as I begin brainstorming.  How about eBook called PubMed for Doctors? Why not design an app for PubMed? How about the PubMed bible?  The list is endless.  I don’t know about you, but one of my greatest weaknesses is to get distracted. 

I am using two resources to conquer this based on some business reading that I have done. The first is called Eat That Frog, by Brian Tracy.  This little book emphasizes the need to do first things first. The second book is from David Allen called Getting Things Done. This book, athough very practical, is about the Zen of organization.  The idea is tht you can get a lot more done, and done better,  if you  have one point focus, and you achieve this by having aplace holder within arms-reach  for everything in your life,including ( and especially ) great noew ideas. 

So what’s the plan today?  I have the day off so it is a great day to generate content. My plan today is to generate a very preliminary outline of my eBook.  I plan to do this by going over all of the PubMed Tutorials in sequence and taking notes as I go, with a specific emphasis on what information would be of help to a blogger.  

This won’t be particularly fancy.  Just my favorite pen, and a piece of legal pad, mixed with some focus and patience. 

Wish me Luck!

This is a key investment for me. Although I know that I can convert files into PDF format from my other software programs, I want to be able to customize my ebooks quickly.

We will see how it works out.

(as an aside, I am posting from my iPhone to practice my mobile blogging skills).

A good first day.