Yes and no. You can convert blog posts into an ebook but you cannot just copy and paste for some digital storefronts based on their rules. I did this a number of times for a few of my 100-plus ebooks on Amazon, Selz and Gumroad. But you need to know the particular terms of service for the digital storefront where you will sell the ebook. Amazon is super strict with their rules. For example, the e-book has to be 90% unique content for you to sell it on Amazon. Only 10% can be word for word from your blog, or from an individual blog post.
I snagged about 10 of my blog posts from Blogging from Paradise and simply expanded each into a long form ebook. I suggest you explore this strategy. But again, this is depending on the digital storefront. You have to be careful about following the rules and ensuring that all of the content or most of the content is unique. However, some digital storefronts may allow you to simply package a series of blog posts into an e-book. You have to do your homework on the research guys. I recall Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul as basically being a collection of Ezine articles that he wrote, with some dressing up, of course. Not a bad deal. Create content and repurpose it into a book that becomes a bestseller and all-time self-help classic. I like it. But this would not fly on Amazon because of that 10% content rule. Only 10% can be copied while 90% needs to be created unique.
As for ideas simply begin scanning your most popular blog posts. These posts emit a loud and clear signal that folks enjoyed the content. If they enjoyed the free content they will likely enjoy the premium content as well but make sure the e-book is not just a 5000 word, pillar style post that you copy and paste. Why would somebody buy the e-book if you already wrote a free blog post? See what I mean? Bundling blog posts into a large ebook could work but I’d add some unique content for the e-book as well, just to spice things up. Even Jack Canfield tied the chapters together and wrote some content for his book.
Your main job as a blogger and self-published author is to fill the gaps between chapters AKA blog posts or by expanding the blog post itself with genuine content that you write just for the e-book. This means you will be writing a decent portion of the e-book in addition to adding content you already created through your blog. I know some bloggers just want to copy and paste blog posts into a Word document or PDF file and publish that sucker but this won’t work. If it were this easy to write ebooks that yielded profits everybody would do it and we’d all be millionaire authors. But you need some writing skills and you also need to add unique content to the ebook itself for flow, continuity and to make it stand out from your free blog posts. Especially if you have a decent-sized following who reads all of your content, these folks won’t be happy if they simply bought something you already published for free through your blog. Or if a new follower of your blog buys your ebook first, when they read your blog posts and see you’ve already published this for free, you will lose credibility in their eyes.
I guess what I’m trying to say is you will be spending a decent chunk of time writing an e-book and then you will add content from your blog, if you so choose to go that route. Personally, I would just extract a little section from a blog post or two and then write the entire ebook. Go with a short read. 5000 to 10000 words or maybe a little bit longer fits well into Amazon’s short reads category for 30 minutes to 45 minutes as far as reading time. I have hit the sweet spot nicely with my 100 + ebooks.
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Are you a bit confused about where to start with writing an eBook?
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