Last time, I talked about how ebooks are still a great way for entrepreneurs and small business owners to turn expertise into dollars. Best of all, you don’t have to spend a lot of time or money creating an ebook to give away or to sell.

Here’s a fast, easy and relatively inexpensive way to create one based on a process I use with clients–which is perfect for those who hate to write.

All you need are is some way to record: a no-cost teleconference line, digital voice recorder, or USB headset for your computer with a downloaded version of Audacity (it’s free). Then here’s what you do:

1. Decide on a topic to talk about. About 60-90 minutes of talking will give you an ebook with about 20 finished pages.
2. Outline your call ahead of time, based on the template I give below.
3. Start recording and talk through the outline or have someone interview you based on the outline.
4. Send the mp3 out to a transcriptionist–I’ve hired a few on Elance for $25 an audio hour before (the Elance minimum payment is $50 though, so you may want to have some other audio file transcribed as well).  They can usually turn it around in 3 days or less.
5. Create or have someone create an ebook icon/image.
6. When you get the transcription, just take out the questions (if you used an interviewer)and edit the transcribed document so it flows well. Formatting of the document doesn’t have to be very fancy. What people want is the content.
7. Add your offer, bio and disclaimer page at the end and convert to PDF.

Quick Ebook Template

Here are the content parts you typically see in an ebook:

Opening–Welcome and congratulate them on making a smart choice or kick things off with a compelling story.

The Problem–Why you wrote the report and what problem you’re trying to help them solve (or desire to achieve.) and what will happen if they don’t take action on this.

Your Story–Why should they care what you say? This part essentially tells why you do what you do today and how you got there.

The Solution–The meat of your ebook. This is where you give your tips or steps to solve the problem and why each is important, along with examples and stories to illustrate your points.

The Next Steps/Your Offer–What should they do next after reading the ebook? Don’t forget to tell them where to go or how to contact you.

Sign-off–Like a letter, you need a signature and a P.S. You may want to include a plug for your ezine here, in case your ebook gets passed along to non-subscribers.

Bio Page–Instead of working all your credentials into your story, you can add more of a real bio at the end for people to find out more about you.

Legalese Page–Unfortunately we live in a sue-happy world. So if your ebook has anything to do with money or someone could possibly take one of your suggestions and go hurt themselves (with say, fitness training or making coffee), cover your rear with a legal disclaimer.

And there you have it–a quick and easy ebook with minimal writing required!

So what are you writing your next ebook on?

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