My E-Book Production Process

Over at Christina Katz’s blog, I offer an inside look at how I produced my e-book, The Future of Publishing. Here’s a snippet: Writing an e-book that is high-enough quality…

Over at Christina Katz's blog, I offer an inside look at how I produced my e-book, The Future of Publishing. Here's a snippet:

Writing an e-book that is high-enough quality to charge money for is not an easy undertaking. You must have had some concerns at the outset. Would you be willing to share some of them?

Yes, I had 3 primary concerns.

1. Even if by reading the entire work you had a better understanding of the issues at play in the publishing industry, I was still writing humor. Humor is not something people often pay for, no matter how high quality it is.

2. People will pay good money for information that benefits them. But they rarely pay for speculation—at least in the publishing field! And since I was writing about the future of publishing, what else could my e-book be called except pure speculation?

3. I knew the work would be quite short, especially given the fast turn-around time. It ended up being 40 pages, and that’s with images and a generous design. (Still, though, it probably takes 20-30 minutes to read.)

Jane Friedman is a full-time entrepreneur (since 2014) and has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. She is the co-founder of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. Jane’s newest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018).