How long should your ebook be (and why)?
Go back to your survey and determine what aspects your audience cares about the most. Focus on those. If you have lots of extra ideas, great! Keep them in a separate place and use them for your next ebook. Or explore them in a detailed blog post.
Average Length & File Size of a Kindle Book
Authors who want to sell their e-books through the Kindle store have a common question: what’s the average size of a Kindle e-book? Maybe you’re talking about the size of the files you submit to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Or maybe you’re concerned about meeting reader expectations for the page count of your book.
The average Kindle book size is about 300 pages, or 75,000 words of text, and the average Kindle e-book file size is 2.6 MB. But that’s not exactly a one-size-fits-all answer. The size of your Kindle book will depend on the genre you write in and how many words (or images!) you need to achieve your vision. Let’s figure out what size your Kindle book should be.
Match your ebook length to the right business goal
#1. Short ebooks
The reason being, these short ebook types are chopped out of the above averages, yet serve a popular and powerful purpose in today’s digital marketing landscape — they make great lead magnets .
You can turn your short ebook into a free giveaway that you can offer your target audience in exchange for their email, which is a popular and effective way to build your email list .
If you’re a blogger, you’ll find at least one golden answer inside your Google Analytics reports . Just check out which articles and topics are the most popular among your blog readers.
#2. Medium-sized ebooks
If you want to sell a children’s book, novella, short story, or even shorter non-fiction book, this is a great ebook format to consider. The medium length is a natural fit for supplementing or replacing a print book version of work.
That’s the recommended price point range if your ebook is sold using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), anyway. This is a pricing strategy that’s based on the cost of sale (what Amazon charges the self-publisher for each sold unit) and Amazon’s sales commission for selling your ebook.
Match your ebook length to the right business goal
#1. Short ebooks
The reason being, these short ebook types are chopped out of the above averages, yet serve a popular and powerful purpose in today’s digital marketing landscape — they make great lead magnets .
You can turn your short ebook into a free giveaway that you can offer your target audience in exchange for their email, which is a popular and effective way to build your email list .
If you’re a blogger, you’ll find at least one golden answer inside your Google Analytics reports . Just check out which articles and topics are the most popular among your blog readers.
#2. Medium-sized ebooks
If you want to sell a children’s book, novella, short story, or even shorter non-fiction book, this is a great ebook format to consider. The medium length is a natural fit for supplementing or replacing a print book version of work.
That’s the recommended price point range if your ebook is sold using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), anyway. This is a pricing strategy that’s based on the cost of sale (what Amazon charges the self-publisher for each sold unit) and Amazon’s sales commission for selling your ebook.
Table of Contents: How to Write an Ebook Like a Pro (Don’t Do These Amateurish Things)
- Choosing a Topic You Know Little About
- Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”
- Thinking Like a Writer, Not a Publisher
- Picking Up Your Pen (or Laptop) and Starting to Write
- Trying to Make Your Ebook Too Valuable
- Starting at the Beginning
- Only Writing When You Feel Like It
- Letting Your Inner Editor Take the Lead
- Quitting Just Before it Gets Easy
- Trying to Keep Up The Momentum
- Throwing Your Best Work in the Fire
- Reviewing With a Microscope, Not a Telescope
- Telling Yourself You Don’t Need an Editor
- Hiring the World’s Worst Proofreader
- Indulging Your Inner Perfectionist and Procrastinator
- Assuming You Know the Best Format for Your Ebook Already
- Using the First (Yawn-Inducing) Title that Comes to Mind
- Designing Your Own Front Cover
- Forgetting to Link Back to Your Blog
- Completely Ignoring the Power of Social Proof
- Acting Like Your Ebook Isn’t a Big Deal
1. Choosing a Topic You Know Little About
If you know little or nothing about your chosen topic, creating a successful ebook will be a huge amount of work. You’ll have to do a ton of research on Google, interview experts, and perhaps even pay a real guru to get you up to speed.
What to do Instead
Write about something you actually know about — which almost certainly means tying your ebook idea to your blog’s core topic. You’ll not only save a ton of time on research, but you’ll also have a ready-made audience for your writing.
2. Writing the Ebook Your Audience “Needs”
It happens when you realize there’s an ebook topic you know your readers need, and you know you can write the perfect book that will genuinely help them.
End Matter
The index is not recommended for an ebook: the page numbers from a printed book’s index will be irrelevant and the e-reader’s Find function can fill the role of the index.
Footnotes won’t work in an ebook due to the absence of pages. They can be replaced by endnotes at the end of the ebook or at the end of the relevant chapter.
The back of the ebook is also a great place to sell so consider using it for discrete self-promotion of past or forthcoming books or related products or services you offer. But note the word ‘discrete’. You might find an ebook is rejected outright from important sales channels, such as Amazon or Kobo, if they think you’re promoting a competitor or trying to lure away their customers. After writing your blurbs, read the guidelines for each of your major ebook distributors to ensure that what you’ve written will comply.
References:
https://eliteauthors.com/blog/the-average-size-of-a-kindle-e-book/
https://www.podia.com/articles/how-long-should-an-ebook-be#:~:text=The%20Write%20Practice%20considers%20a%20short%20print%20book,519%20pages%20for%20long%20and%20meaty%20law%20ebooks.
https://www.podia.com/articles/how-long-should-an-ebook-be
https://smartblogger.com/ebook-mistakes/
https://digitalpublishing101.com/digital-publishing-101/part-2-preparing-source-files/formatting-the-ebook/