How do I sell an ebook from my website?

You’ve written an ebook! Congratulations!

I am often asked “How do I take what I’ve written and make it an ebook to sell on my site?”

The good news is – this is generally SUPER simple, if you’re only looking to sell a PDF download! If you want to make it available on Kindle and Nook and other ereaders, the process gets a lot more complicated, so consider what it is that you need. You may want to start with a pdf download and move into more complicated versions later down the road.

If PDF download is the way forward for you, this is exactly what you do:

1. Please have someone proofread or edit your work so that you know it is high quality! Don’t sell a book that people will regret buying.
2. Make it look pretty! You can write it in word or google docs, but do some things to make it pretty. (And by pretty, I mean, easy to read.) Add some images (that you OWN the rights to, naturally!) Make some headings and subheadings to break up the text. Make it visually appealing, or hire someone to do this for you.
3. Create an image for the cover. You can do this really easily over at Canva – create a simple, yet appealing cover, and download as a pdf and jpg.
4. Convert it to a pdf. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat, you can print it to a pdf. (make sure you have the cover image added if you don’t have Adobe.)
5. If you have Adobe Acrobat, you can combine PDFs right in Adobe and add your cover image at the beginning of the book. If you do NOT have Acrobat, add your jpg image of the cover to the beginning of your book when it is still in the word doc, and then export (or print to) pdf.
6. You have several options for selling. You can either simply add a sales landing page* with a PayPal buy now button, that directs them to a page where they can download the book after purchase, add some other type of shopping cart, hook up your email provider that will be set to send it automatically after purchase, or use a service like Sendowl (aff link) that will take care of all of it (payment processing and delivery) for you. Plus, Sendowl offers you the opportunity to set up affiliates if you want others to sell on their website for you.**
7. Promote and sell!

*If you need help setting up a paypal button for your website, I have a quick and easy tutorial for you here.

** If you choose to set it up with a PayPal button and redirect, you will need to create a page on your website where you can redirect people after purchase and they will download it there. It can be a simple page with a thank you for purchasing message and the PDF uploaded directly for them to download. Alternatively, most email systems, like ConvertKit, allow you to include an attachment to send. So you could make part of the process be for them to enter their email address, then pay, then it sends. Either way, you have options!

All of these topics and more are the types of things I cover in my Write|Publish|Sell Academy. If you need help with the details of #allthethings involved in writing, publishing, and selling your books, print and ebook, you should check it out! Try your first month for $1 with the code tryme1.