If you are reading this then you probably already have a manuscript or a book idea ready. What you want to know is what else you have to commit to before you can become an ebook author. Self-publishing is easier now than it has ever been before, making the hardest part about being an established author, figuring out what topic to write about.

You may want to write an ebook about mastering Windows 8, understanding photography, for sketching or design ideas, or cater the content for a particular group of people e.g. books for web designers, developers, or for photographers. The topic aside, writing and publishing an ebook run along a few important matters that you can’t escape from.

We’ll look into those matters briefly in this post, from cover design to which format to publish your book in. If you have published an ebook before and have more tips to add, please accept our thanks in advance and share them in the comments section below.

Recommended Reading: E-Book Readers & Managers – Best Of

1. Front Matter

Title Page: In print publishing this title page contains the title of the book, the author’s name, the place and year of publication, the publisher, and sometimes illustrations.

Copyright Page: This page contains information about your copyright notice, edition of the book (if there is more than one version), the ISBN, and illustrator’s name (if necessary). At times the title page and copyright page are combined into a single page.

Introduction: The introduction lets the author give an overview of the topic the book is about. In print publishing, this section can be broken down into several other sections, each with their own purpose:

• A dedication page records the author’s wish to dedicate the book (sometimes in a few lines, sometimes in a poem or prose) that was written to loved ones.
• A preface page – written by the author – explains how the idea for the book was perceived.
• The foreword, is a written introduction usually done by someone who is not the author but who is related to the author, topic or book version.
• The acknowledgements is where the author expresses his thanks and gratitude to informers, editors, publishers, friends and family for helping them start or finish writing the book – in novels this is sometimes placed at the end of the book.

For ebooks, there isn’t a need to provide all of the above, just the pages that you want for your book or which you find suitable.

Table Of Contents: This page is where you list all your chapters and the relevant page number. Consider it the floor map for your book. The good thing with ebooks is that you can hyperlink the chapters so that when users tap or click on the chapter link, they are taken straight to the corresponding page.

(Image Source: Content Strategy)

2. Back matter (End Matter)

Things are not as clearcut when it comes to the back matter. If you are writing a work of fiction then you might put your Epilogue (it’s like an extra chapter which tie up loose ends) here. For any other book, generally, an Afterword (it’s like an extended Conclusion section) will do.

All ebooks should contain a Bibliography or Reference section where all other books or contents that were cited or used for reference in the writing of the book are recorded. The details provided – author, title, publisher, year of publication, web url etc – should be able to lead readers to the listed reference, one way or another.

3. Body Matters

This is the part where most authors don’t generally have a problem with – if they do, then they shouldn’t be publishing a book in the first place. The plan is to start… with a plan. Or a topic, or issue or a general plot.

Breaking down content: Since writing a book is important both to the author and to the reader, it is essential to separate your book into sections – we usually know this as Chapters. It is also easier for readers to keep track of how far they have gone in the book.

Images: In many ebooks, images and illustrations are also as important as the written content. Ensure you use high-quality images when creating your ebook. While it doesn’t make much of a difference when viewed on screen, if a reader decides to print your ebook, high-quality images will make sure the book come out in tip-top shape. Be sure to clear copyright issues related to images and permission to use before the book is out.

Read Also: 10 Tips To Turn Your Ebook Into A Print Book

Writing deadline: Some authors can churn out a book per year, others take a decade just to get the characters right. Unless you work with a publisher, there really isn’t a deadline to adhere to.

4. Editing And Proofreading

This exercise needs a separate section because so many authors ignore its importance once too often. While an author can sit and churn out paragraph after paragraph and page after page, in the process they miss out on spelling errors, missing hyphens, inconsistency in writing, inconsistency in formatting, broken hyperlinks, wrongly captioned images, etc.

Errors like these will disrupt the reading process, and many readers who have read edited work from print publishers will have low tolerance to these mistakes. More importantly, these mistakes will turn up with ebook reviews that these readers provide, and will affect the views of potential readers who may or may not give your book a chance.

There are varying degrees of editing, some light, others substantive, but the trick is to find an editor who respects your work, rather than one who always has to have the final say. If you are lucky, you might find an editor who can give you constructive criticism that will help you further improve your book.

At the very least, have a friend read through your book for you – anyone can proofread.

5. Cover Design & Title

The biggest problem a budding author has if he/she takes the self-publishing route is that there isn’t a dedicated marketing team with all the right connections to help publicize the book. Discoverability being a issue that plagues new authors, you need all the help you can get to get your book out there.

Provided you have a budget for it, there are many freelance cover designers who can churn out a really striking and attractive cover design. There are many factors that go into determining the right cover design for your book, for example, a lot of work go into illustrating colorful and amazing-looking book covers for children, even those catered for the iPad.

Read Also: 15 (Really) Beautiful & Creative Book Covers

If you prefer to do the cover design yourself, there are plenty of tips and advice available all over the Internet on how you can go about designing your own ebook cover. Also available are tools, tutorials and Photoshop actions to help you speed up cover design.

(Image Source: Hol Art Books)

Also as important is the title of your book. Unless you are a popular author, most readers looking for a new book to accompany them on their flight won’t give your name a second look. However, with a good cover and a catchy title with the right keywords, you might just get lucky.

Read Also: Beginner’s Guide To Book Cover Design

6. eBook Format

Print publishing turn raw manuscripts – handwritten or typed – into an actual printed book, and that’s it. When it comes to ebooks, however, the final format your ebook is in will determine how accessible your book is.

The safest route is to export it to a PDF format. Most web browsers can open a PDF file without third-party apps and you can publish your ebook on multiple platforms. However, the PDF format keeps the text static and you need to do a lot of zooming to get the best reading view (based on the screen size you are on).

(Image Source: Covert PDF To Epub)

An alternative is the EPUB format which lets you reflow the text to suit your device’s screen size. You can produce an ebook in EPUB format if you know XHTML but if you don’t, there are plenty of software that can convert content from various formats like PDF, MOBI, LIT, LRF, DOC, HTML into EPUB.

Read Also: Convert More Than 100 File Types On Browser With CloudConvert

This means that you can use Microsoft Word or Open Office to create your work then convert it to EPUB when it is finished. Alternatively you can work on free software like Sigil which lets you write your book in EPUB format, even if you don’t know XHTML. This gives you more control over your content and makes your last-minute changes easier to manage.

Read Also: Publishing A Book – 7 Cost-Effective Self-Publishing Services

7. Getting Your Book Out There

The online publishing landscape is changing every day. It is easier now more than ever to make your book more accessible to readers out there. You can try with an online publisher like Amazon.com or with any of these 10 online services to sell digital wares. Note that they take a cut from the sales of your book for featuring your ebook in their online store.

Recommended Reading: 20 Websites To Sell Your EBook

Alternatively, you can create a website that is dedicated to your book, like what these book authors have done for their book. If the costs spent to create your ebook is not too great, you can also consider giving your book away for free, or as a way to generate more traffic to your blog. Once you have established yourself as an established author, you can start pricing your subsequent books.

In today’s world, advertising is everywhere: on billboards, banners, bus stops, even buses — there’s always someone trying to sell you whitening toothpaste, engine oil or luxury-line clothes that make you look like a superstar. After a while, we develop the ability to filter out the white noise. So advertisers have to take things up a notch.

We see this in creative airplane ads. Airplane ads compel you to travel, and are aimed at consumers who have cash to spend (or don’t have it but don’t mind spending it) and who are increasingly difficult to influence via traditional media like television and newspapers.

These ads play with our emotions, our need and desire to travel, to see the huge, amazing, beautiful and mother-nature-given world. Some of these ads make you laugh, some make you want to pack up and go, others make you look twice, but they are all set to grab your attention and perhaps book a ticket out of the country!

Recommended Reading: Showcase Of Beautiful Airline Logo Designs

Interjet: Curve by Z México. Did you know that Mexico’s filled with curved roads? That’s why it’s better to fly by plane. Interjet offers low-cost tickets that allows passengers to do just that.

Vivaaerobus.com: Takeoff by RT&A/ R.Treviño & Asociados. Featured here is the house of a passenger of the airline that has just returned from his trip. No matter the finanicial situation, with Mexico’s low-cost airline, they can buy a plane ticket anywhere.

Norwegian Airlines: From Cold To Hot, 2 by Kitchen Leo Burnett Oslo. With airplanes, the globe is now smaller. You can fly from a cold region to a hot one in no time faster than switching your wardrobe!

The Lengths We Go To by TBWA\Singapore. No longer focusing on their iconic 'Singapore Girl' Singapore Airline's latest campaign is a step towards a more contemporary feel. The airline wants to give off a feeling that their customers needs are being looked after.

Emirates Airlines by Chase Jarvis. Travelers are big kids at heart; the world is their playground. Why not let Emirates look after you while you get there?

Turkish Airlines: Valentine’s Day by McCann. Romance is in the air. With Turkish Airlines, you can fly to your loved one, wherever they may be, and spend Valentine's day together.

American Airlines print ad. Whether it’s the customers or their own internal staff, American Airlines has always embraced the African American culture. This series of ads is dedicated to African Americans that supports their businesses worldwide.

Gol Airlines: Balloon by AlmapBBDO. As a kid, we’ve all had the dream of flying. This ad tugs on your heart strings, bringing back those memories as well as the realization that planes can now make our dreams come true.

Turkish Airlines: “Far East” Print Ad by McCann. The airline uses storytelling and the curious minds of travelers to attract them to visit particular places. In this series of ads, Europe, Far East, Africa, and America are highlighted.

Lan Airlines: Tarapoto by Y&R. This print ad uses a more symbolic approach to show us what good lies within people, as well as the airline. The world is a peaceful and beautiful place, go see it!

Ukraine International Airlines: Statues by kaFe. This Ukrainian ad depicts the sculpture of Jesus from Rio de Janeiro and the sculpture of Lady Liberty from New York. The world is closer than you can imagine.

TURKISH AIRLINES: 150 Destinations by alametifarika. Here Turkish Airlines uses recognizable icons from some of their 150 or so destinations around the globe — highlighting how easy it is to get from one to the other.

Tame Ecuador Airlines: Fly Galápagos by La Facultad. Spread your wings with Tame Ecuador Airlines. Wherever it is you want to go to, you can do it with ease.

Southwest Airlines Print by Tim Delger. The Southwest Cargo Ad below works on a simple visual level to convey the message that your package can be delivered within a day. The importance of the visual can also be seen in their regular airline ad.

American Airlines: Apple by Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. This ad cleverly uses a ‘Big Apple’, which is known as a New York symbol, to form Sydney's opera house. The ad shows that you can fly from New York to Sydney and back in no time.

Merry Christmas delivered by BRASIL Airlines by Brasil Warsaw, Dominik Tomasik, Kacper Kornelak, and Łukasz Nosek. An ad tailored particularly for Christmas. Brazil airlines will deliver your holidays to you, whether in presents or flight.

Turkish Cargo Ads by Efe Kaptanoglu and Atilla Karabay. Not everyone is where they want to be sometimes. Turkish Cargo helps you move to a new home.

Airline: “JETTY” Print Ad by BETC Euro Rscg. The connection between the airplane seat number is subtly linked to getting you to your ultimate destination. Air France can take you to the best place on the earth if you fly with them.

Experts Fly The South African Way by Staudinger + Franke. South African Airways experts here are animals such as flamingos, hippos and ostriches. Using humour, this ad shows that these experts know which airline to fly with, in comfort.

Turkish Airlines / New Year Print Campaign by Tugba Akin. Why not spend Christmas somewhere tropical? Thanks to Turkish Airlines you can now spend your Christmas holidays anywhere you want.

Are you a fan of Firefox add-ons? They make your life easier by automating a lot of things you do with your favorite browser. In fact, there are actually collections that Firefox users have put together to benefit other Firefox users. These are called Firefox Collections.

Firefox Collections make it easy to keep track of your favorite add-ons and share them with the world. You can follow any collection to keep track of updates (newly added add-ons), try out recommended add-ons and even test out brand new ones. Most of these collections bear the ratings for the add-ons to help you decide, and these collections are often better-targeted and more actively curated by the collection owners.

Here are just some of the Firefox collections that I have come across that I’m sure will help you out one way or another.

Recommended Reading: 10 Firefox Plugins For A Safer Browsing Experience

Web Developer’s Toolbox

Firefox has a great selection of Web development add-ons and this collection brings the best of them together. So far there are 14 add-ons to help you troubleshoot, edit and debug Web projects all from within Firefox.

Top Add-ons: Firebug, Greasemonkey, Stylish, iMacros, User Agent Switcher, Web Developer.

Reference Desk

Looking for the best way to document useful Web pages, links, text and images? This collection is great for students, researchers, writers, bloggers or anyone else who does a lot of Web research or maybe those who just like to save things for later.

Top Add-ons: Evernote Web Clipper, Pocket, ScrapBook, StumbleUpon, SimilarWeb.

Family Organizer

As the name implies, this collection is aimed at families. The add-ons listed can be used to create a “safe and fun online experience” for mothers, fathers and children. So far there’s only 6 on the list, but let’s hope that it is actively updated.

Top Add-ons: Web of Trust, ReminderFox, Integrated Inbox, FoxFilter.

Traveler’s Pack

If you travel a lot and usually plan the trips yourself, having add-ons to help with the process (planning, booking, documenting) can help tremendously. That’s just what this collection aims to do.

Top Add-ons: Self-Destructing Cookies (useful if you’re planning a surprise trip), Forecastfox Weather, FoxClocks, Simple Currency Converter.

Firebug Add-ons

Firebug is a very popular Web development tool that integrates with Firefox. You can use it to edit, debug and monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript for any Web page. If you use Firebug frequently, this collection is a great way to keep up with add-ons to help extend this amazing tool.

Top Add-ons: Firebug, YSlow, FirePHP, CodeBurner, FireQuery, Firefinder.

The Paranoid Kit

There are quite a few privacy/security collections, but I really like this one because the collector has taken the time to write a useful note for each add-on featured. The selected security add-ons are said to be “relatively passive and produce minimal disturbance in typical day-to-day browsing.”

Top Add-ons: Adblock Plus, NoScript, LastPass, User Agent Switcher, BetterPrivacy, Lightbeam.

Online Shopping

This collection will really come in handy for any special holiday when shopping deals are at their best. Whether you’re a shopaholic or just like saving money when shopping, these add-ons can help you to do just that. Now you’ll never miss out on those great sales!

Top Add-ons: CouponsHelper, Ciuvo – Price check in your Browser, PriceBlink, Boo.ly Shopping, The Amazon 1Button App, InvisibleHand.

Add-ons for Google Products

Do you use all or most of Google’s products like YouTube, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google search? If so, this collection can help make using these tools even easier. The add-ons on this list can extend the functionality of Google’s most popular services.

Top Add-ons: Video DownloadHelper, Feedly (a Google Reader replacement), Gmail Manager, SearchPreview, Google Shortcuts, Shareaholic.

Social Circuit

Are you a social networking addict or just like sharing cool things on to your social networking accounts? Then this collection is for you. It includes social networking add-ons to help make sharing easier, and to give you easy access to the most popular social sites.

Top Add-ons: ChatZilla, StumbleUpon, Facebook Toolbar, Yoono, Thumbnail Zoom, Shareaholic.

Sports Fanatic

The name says it all. If you’re a sports fanatic, the add-ons in the collection are sure to help cater to your sports addiction. These add-ons can help you get the latest scores, highlights and news for your favorite sports team.

Top Add-ons: FootieFox, Are You Watching This?! Sports, Pickemfirst Fantasy Sports.

Privacy

In case The Paranoid Kit collection doesn’t meet your needs, this is another privacy collection that is also useful. The add-ons listed are more geared toward making you anonymous on the Web as well as covering and erasing your tracks.

Top Add-ons: Adblock Plus, anonymoX, NoScript, Ghostery, Web Of Trust, BetterPrivacy.

Gmail Add-ons You Must Have

Gmail is a great online email service, but you can make it even better with the add-ons in this collection. Whether you want to get notifications of new email messages, bring all your favorite Google services to Gmail or add a cool email signature, this collection is perfect for the job.

Top Add-ons: X-notifier, Gmail Manager, Integrated Inbox, WiseStamp.

Web Application Security Penetration Testing

This is definitely an interesting collection; it is said to include “Web hacking tools” for Firefox. Besides the usuals like Firebug, Greasemonkey and User Agent Switcher, you’ll find add-ons on the list to help you debug JavaScript, view and modify HTTP/HTTPS, view JSON documents, test for SQL injection vulnerabilities and much more.

Top Add-ons: Firebug, Greasemonkey, iMacros, User Agent Switcher, Web Developer, FoxyProxy.

Web Pro

The earlier mentioned Web Developer’s Toolbox is a collection just for Web developers, but this Web Pro collection is for Web developers and designers. Some of the add-ons listed may overlap, but you’ll find a lot of useful add-ons for designers and even some different ones for developers.

Top Add-ons: Video DownloadHelper, Firebug, DownThemAll!, Greasemonkey, iMacros, Flagfox.

Firefox Accessibility Add-ons

This is a really thoughtful collection to say the least. The add-ons listed have been tested by the Collector and are found to be very helpful for people with visual impairments. The collection has a focus on “a user’s interactions with sites and Firefox.”

So if you have some type of visual impairment (partially sighted, low vision, legally blind), or just have a hard time seeing specific Web pages, these add-ons should be able to help you see better in Firefox.

Top Add-ons: Adblock Plus, Stylish, Tab Mix Plus, Web Developer, FireGestures, ColorfulTabs.

Now that you know more about Firefox Collections and the best ones to check out and/or follow, let us know which collections you’re following or plan to follow.

What do penguins, pandas and hummingbirds remind you of? If you own a blog or a website, these are the "animal" updates to Google’s algorithm that help mold the state of content you see online today. So much can be said in regards to SEO that you’d probably be able to fill countless books with the information available.

IDF Marketing has produced an infographic that touches briefly on the ever-evolving state of SEO today. Check out the influence On Site Factors, the strength of your Content, Outreach and Social Signals have on your site’s SEO. Should you go with video instead of articles? What about infographics instead of blog posts to secure high ranking and/or higher traffic? Find out about this and a lot more from the infographic below.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide To SEO: Best Practices – Part 1/3