When I decided back in December 2009 that I wanted to write an ebook on volunteering, I really had no idea where to start. I like writing but I’m no professional by any stretch of the imagination and, while I have a few volunteering stints under my belt, I’m no expert on that, either.

The Content

I knew I wanted to write an ebook but I wasn’t even sure of the general topic until I made this post on my blog. Volunteering seems like such an obvious choice that I’m surprised it didn’t pop into my head at the time. Plus, from what I can see, there isn’t really anything like it out there at the moment.

Early on in the process I was lucky to stumble onto this post Thirteen Steps to Write and Publish a Free Ebook in Thirteen Hours over on Problogger. I had a good idea of what sorts of things people wanted to read about but this list gave my efforts a bit of structure and direction. I was full of ideas but I wasn’t really sure how to get started and this post sent me on my way. There’s no way I could have ever done it in thirteen hours (try three months!) but each point is something that I addressed at some point during the process.

Before I started writing the actual content, I wanted to come up with a rough draft for the table of contents. Having things divided into logical sections makes the writing a lot easier for me and helps to prevent overlap. The table of contents evolved over the course of the writing process with entire sections being added, moved or removed completely as I continued to write. To get some initial ideas, I looked up volunteering books on Amazon and checked out their table of contents. Maybe cheating, maybe not but it was a huge help towards getting organized.

Writing the content was part fun and part painful. One day when I was in the mood to write, I hammered out about 20 pages of content. It was mostly the easy or interesting parts though and I left many of the dry bits until later. I found writing the less inspiring parts a bit of a struggle and these are what dragged on and on.

When the writing process came to an end I sent copies out to some friends who like to read and write and whose opinions I really value. They came back with some great feedback and advice and I revised the first draft based on it. Then I proofread it and started working on the final design.

The Design

I’m not a Photoshop wizard but I am artistic so I often get frustrated when attempting to get what’s in my head onto the computer screen. I downloaded all of the free ebooks I could find to see what sort of standard of design they had gone for. Some ebooks, like Chris Guillebeau’s, are done by professionals and it shows. Others were obviously just direct conversions to PDF from a basic Word document. I was aiming for something in between but the artist in me will always try to push it to be a bit above average.

In this case, I was lucky to have found a stock photo image (the hands) that I sort of accidentally managed to make work after a few different attempts. Black, orange and brown aren’t colours I expected to look good together, but they sort of just did. I would have liked to have made the header a bit nicer but ran out of time and was just fed up with looking at it by that point. I like how the footer turned out too. The best part is that it was all really easy to pull off.

I also wanted to take a bit of care with the layout, images and the font. I wasn’t happy at all with any of the fonts as they appeared in the Open Office document but once I converted it to into a PDF, the Arial font I was using looked much better. I tweaked the fonts and heading colours whenever I got sick of writing so this is something that was going on throughout the whole process.

Originally, the only photos I had were of the people I interviewed. I added more at the last minute and I’m glad I did. I would have liked to have added more still but my best photos are on a hard drive at home in Canada. I will be able to get them in a couple of months so I might add more to future edits of the ebook. Fonts and the layout are nagging little things but getting them right is essential for a polished-looking product, I think.

The Promotion

Marketing isn’t my strong point and when I see someone who can do it well, I’m usually in awe. With that in mind, I wanted to get as many people behind the ebook from the start in an effort to create a bit of a buzz outside of the readers of this blog, and my friends and family. So I reached out to blogs I read and people who I have interacted with in the past.

I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my efforts since I didn’t want to harass people with more than one email and I also didn’t want to lose track of people who wanted to accept guest posts, or do reviews or interviews. I also kept a simple list of email addresses of people who I interviewed or who helped me out in some way. I promised them free copies and this made sending them out easy.

I had a list of about 20 bloggers who were willing to help me promote the ebook in some way before I was ready to even launch it. Since then I’ve had a couple of guest posts published and one review, none of which were actually on my original list. I plan to follow up with the people on my list an add more people as I get time to approach new bloggers. I feel like reaching out to as many audiences outside of my own blog as possible will be key.

Because I’m donating 50% of the sale price to HODR, I have been chatting with their fundraising guy about promotion ideas. They have an Adwords budget to spend and they’ve decided to use that to help promote the ebook. I have no experience with Adwords so I’m looking forward to that. They’ve also added a link on their site to my guest post on Thrilling Heroics. Both of these things will help me reach an audience outside of the travel blogging world.

Distribution

I registered with E-Junkie for $5 per month and they automate the sales process. There’s not really much I need to do and that’s how I want it!

This is my first ebook and I had no idea what to expect. I will keep everyone posted on the promotion process and ebook sales will be included in my monthly earnings reports. I really enjoyed writing the ebook, I’m proud of it and I’m really excited to have what I consider to be a quality product for sale. Thanks again for everyone’s ideas and support!

My ebook The Underground Guide to International Volunteering is $14 with 50% of each sale going to Hands On Disaster Response.

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