I'm sitting on the fence, deciding on whether I should write my first ebook myself or have someone else ghost write it for me. What suggestions can you recommend for someone considering writing their first ebook? Where can I sell my ebook? Can an ebook be converted to be readable on Kindle or other electronic readers? Thanks in advance for your recommendations and/or suggestions.
Writing your first ebook is going to be trial and error, if you are looking to learn then doing it yourself is an amazing way. If you are looking to sell it right away and make some money, you may want to consider hiring it out, but that wont be cheap. I wrote my first one in about a month, detailed step by step instructions on 10 businesses that make consistent money online...still sells today. I have also written some for others, not cheaply. Honestly if you are looking for quality content for you ebook the prices could get as high as a few hundred dollars. Go with what you feel is good, if you think you can get it done and feel it would be as good as hiring, then write it yourself and experiment. As far as converting it for external readers, it is possible, and some places that sell ebooks will do this for you. Best of luck!!
Depending on what topic your ebook is on, you can sell it in forums, ebay, other websites, your website and so on. Some electronic readers support PDF ebooks (Like the newer versions of Kindle) and/or conversion of PDF to other readable formats, while others don't.
I assume you are planning on using the ebook to sell something - either the book alone or a second product or service. Consider your topic carefully. How many people might be interested in the topic? How much would they be willing to pay for the information you have to share? How many are already offering information on a similar topic? If the topic is fairly saturated, will you have the personal clout (i.e. an existing following or recognition as an expert) or a unique enough approach to compete? If you pay for a ghost writer, keep in mind that you will have to sell quite a few ebooks just to break even. On the other hand, hiring a ghost writer could lead to a better product, assuming that you find a good one, and free you up to begin working on marketing strategies while the book is being written. I think I read somewhere that the new Kindles can directly read pdf files and folks with the older ones can convert pdfs to a format readable by the Kindles. It seems most ebooks are being released in pdf format, so that shouldn't be an issue. Good luck and happy writing!