| Whenever I think about writing an ebook, I write out twenty blog post titles. If I can't get to twenty titles, I don't have enough knowledge or passion to write a whole book. Then, the one time I wrote an ebook, I blogged each of those twenty titles. I set up a mailing list. I participated in forums on the topic, with my signature linking to the blog posts/email signup form. Then, after I'd written the blog posts, I used leanpub to pull in the RSS for them. Then I edited them and expanded where needed. That worked for me once, that's the path I'd take in the future. Things to realize: * writing a book is hard. I remember spending an hour on one sentence of my book (just testing to make sure I was correct about a statement). * technical books have short lives. Tech moves on. That said, people are willing to spend money to save time. * marketing is at least as hard as writing the book. Prepare to spend time doing this. * If you aren't using the tech in your work (or won't be in the future) you better love the tech or your book will need changes and you won't want to put in the time. Here's more about my book launch: http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1339 |