Writing Ebooks

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A whimsical view at life as an e-book entrepreneur I have the perfect job. I don't work at all, at least according to my friends. When I do work, I work at home. I get paid every day. And I get paid more than just about anyone I know. I write and sell e-books o­n the Internet. I'm writing this little article to inspire people that are looking for the same things I was looking for just a couple of years ago: financial independence, a work-at-home option, some prestige, and oh yeah, that little thing we need called a creative outlet. When I go to parties and tell people that I write and sell e-books they almost always say "what's that"? But that's OK, that's just part of being an "e-book publisher". My story started out in 1996, when I was a Microsoft Certified Trainer and Network Engineer, flying around the world in a "monkey suit". I dreamed of a way that I could sell some study guides to some of the guys I was training and other people o­n the Internet, and so I wrote six documents in Microsoft Word that I began to sell at $24.95 each. I started a web site, and eventually I had a 140 links to it and a nice search engine ranking (a luxury today). I sold my study guides o­n my web site, even producing an income of up to $1,500 a month. I didn't know it but I was selling e-books. At that time I didn't have the freewheeling "semi retired" lifestyle that I have now because e-books at that time took a little bit more work: I had to get a merchant credit card account. Trusting engineers would send me their credit card info in the e-mail and I would process each order by hand every night. If people wrote checks, I processed those too. I handled customer service and "order fulfillment" for my orders: I would e-mail each engineer their study guide and sometimes make printed out copies of them, selling the printouts and processing those orders too. I dreamed of a day when I would be able to sell e-books automatically o­n my site, charging the credit cards and e-mailing the books all in o­ne seamless process. At the time there were some electronic services that would do this for $1500 a month or more. I deemed this too expensive but eventually my vision came true: Paypal was born. Paypal was a dream--I was able to sign up with no money down and Paypal would accept and process all credit cards and checks automatically. A couple of years later Google Adwords was born, and I was able to market o­nline to all the users of the Google search engine, a huge audience with a good income. Now, my significant other with two jobs laments to friends: "she gets up at 10am, logs o­n, makes a bank deposit, then gets back into bed at 10:45". More than a few people in my life have noticed that I seem to be doing well and have loads of time for leisure activity. I am and I do. And it's all because of that phenomenal invention called the e-book. I've written 10 e-books and I am coming up with more titles all the time. My o­ne piece of wisdom to impart: coming up with a winning ebook is kind of like playing "Berry Gordy"--you learn to recognize the "hits". When you get an idea and it gives you gooseflesh, that's the o­ne. Copyright it, write it and market it o­nline. If you want any advice o­n how to do that, I wrote an e-book Paycheck in 30 Minutes that talks about the steps to getting your e-book sold. Sure I plug my e-books from time to time, but mostly I'm out with my boxer dog in the dog park, or riding down the freeway in the RV to visit an out-of-state friend. If you see a woman with a boxer dog in an RV with Oregon plates, wave. It's probably me. Noelani Rodriguez is the author of Paycheck in 30 Minutes. She is a Harvard Graduate in Economics, a 4 time Book Author with Macmillan and IDG and has been an E-Commerce Consultant for Xerox and Frito Lay. She has hung up her "monkey suit" for good and is now an E-Book Publisher, Consultant, Musician and Loaf.