Definitely make sure any rights are spelled out. I do this right at the beginning - if you're doing something involving making money, you may also need to include an earnings disclaimer. While ideally, sure, you'd have a lawyer look at things,if it's just a copyright notice you're talking about you can do that yourself - it's automatically protected by copyright when you create it, so you don't need something fancy there. If you have Photoshop or another program that will let you manipulate images, you can do the cover yourself pretty easily. To oversimplify, you create the image as a flat rectangle, and then you skew it to get that 3-d effect so common. You can find lots of templates; some free, some paid. So if you're trying to save money, that might be the best route.
OK, I'll type up the disclaimer now, thanks. I'm not into graphics, I'm pretty awful at it to be honest. I think that if I'm going to have a cover then I'll get it to be fairly clean, as I personally think the majority of ebook covers make the book look "cheap", which is the exact opposite of the image I'm going for. Is it worth putting screenshots in to explain my points better? The book I'm currently writing is basically a noob's guide to blogging, and one of the sections is all about setting up the blog. I'm imagining I'm writing it for my gran, trying to make the instructions really clear, but I'm unsure whether screenshots of what I'm doing on cPanel will really add to the book?
I agree - a lot of the covers out there just look spammy. My first was plain. I haven't even done one for the new e-book yet, but when I get to it, it'll just be a play on the actual cover of the e-book (which is very plain). The screenshots are a tough call. While it might help those using cpanel, if someone's using vdeck or something else with their host, it may royally confuse them.
Very good point on the screenshots there. I've given advice as to what type of hosting packages to go for, and have included that this ebook is written with cPanel in mind, so it's pretty clear for them. Also, at the moment the page is looking really dull, and I'm sure that if I tried to read my book my eyes would glaze over from all the text (), so I think it might be good to break up the text if nothing else. Well, I'll give it a try to see how it looks, and post up my results when I've decided.
Go for it. I'd mention the cpanel thing on the sales page too, just so people know that before buying. As long as you make it clear, I doubt you'll have any problem. Otherwise, I do think screenshots can help with things like that. Lord knows I've tried explaining blog setups to people, and they often just don't get it. Pictures certainly can't hurt.
Yeah, I'll mention it. Should I write a sales page for the book then, even if I intend to just sell individual copies? I think I will sell the book with MRR so it get's out there, so should I then include a sales website as well as the actual letter? By the way, I tried the pictures and it works really well. Splits up the text, makes it more attractive and helps me explain my point better.
If you're selling to multiple people, yeah, it's a good idea. If you're selling full rights to one person, you may not need to. And your sales letter / page might be all you need (you don't always need a full "sales website" unless you have a lot of supplemental info - affiliate page, pages with a sample chapter or something, etc.).
Well, for my first book I was going to sell individual copies, but I'm not sure whether to simply get affiliates or sell MRR. If I use affiliates then I can keep a track of the sales figures and refer to it when I sell full rights in the future, whereas if I give MRR to buyers, then, although I can get my book out there a lot, I wont know how many people actually have the book.