This time last year, I was preparing to create my first ebook with the help of Blogchatter. I have dreamt of publishing my work since forever, but find the entire process of sending samples of publishers, waiting for a revert, and dealing with rejections too much to handle. I honestly don’t have the bandwidth to take so much on my mind. So does that mean I will never be a published author? I’d thought so.

Until I became a part of Blogchatter Ebook Carnival. Hesitatingly. Because, the entire idea seemed too good to be true! And like many of you who have joined the carnival the first time, I was very excited to see this take shape. I was apprehensive, yet calm because I knew the people behind this and knew that they will see me through till the end with this.

I published by first ebook Write. Edit. Promote. with Blogchatter and it got a delightful treatment over the next two months. After two months, I published the ebook on Amazon and have published another ebook since then, with the third one due next month. In this post, I wanted to share with you all my learnings from the entire process. I will be one of the mentors this year, so do not hesitate getting in touch if you get stuck anywhere with the process!

• Decide the topic of your ebook very careful. You will need enough number of chapters to create a book, and they will all need to be related. This is specially important if your ebook is going to be a non-fiction.
• Designing a cover is easy and there are many apps to help you with that, the most common one being Canva. A word of caution here, a book’s cover is the first impression a reader will have of your book, so design it well. When I say design it well, I don’t want you to learn designing. Just make a simple, attractive cover. Canva has a host of other tools and templates, or like me, you can not use any of them and just create your cover from scratch. Use colours that are pleasing to the eye, fonts that are professional and not fancy or kiddish, and keep the font size readable yet not too big.
• Edit well. Use apps if you wish, or take help from knowledgeable friends. A book must be edited, for readers to appreciate and enjoy reading it.
• Make sure you number the pages in your manuscript and create a table of contents which has the page numbers mentioned too.
• Many authors don’t get into a acknowledgements but gratitude is a wonderful thing. Nothing is possible without a little direct or indirect help from the universe and its people, so thanking them is never too much.
• Don’t forget to include the about the author section. Don’t brag too much here, yet talk about yourself in the best way possible. Don’t make the author bio too long, as well.

Be a part of Blogchatter’s eBook Carnival and your journey to becoming an author would be full of fun and pride. I wish you all the best with your journey of becoming an author from a blogger.

If you are a new author, download my e-books meant specifically for you: