Probably a month back, I read Lisa’s article on her experiences writing her first eBook. That was all I needed to put a stop to all my ongoing projects, and start writing My First eBook!!!!!
Believe me, it was easier thought than done, I have never imagined myself writing more than a few pages, and the thought of writing several pages of the same topic, was like a nightmare. However much time I gave it, I couldn’t come up with what would be the best topic which I could write about and make a book out of it.
After several thoughtful sessions with myself, I decided on a “How To” guide for blogging, since that is the one topic which I am really comfortable writing about. So, here it is, after a month’s effort at writing, it is finally published and available “FREE” for all those who subscribe to my newsletter here – Subscribe to DMC Newsletter.
If you have read Lisa’s article on her experiences writing her first book, you should know the basics of writing a book and why a blogger would like to even offer an eBook. I second those thoughts and my experiences were somewhat similar.
Why this eBook –
I have a section dedicated to this in my book, hopefully you have already downloaded it and started off reading. I am having two blogs but have no products or services that I offer on either one of them. All I have is thoughts that I share, reviews that I write on various gadgets, guest articles that I accept from my fellow blogging friends, and sometimes an affiliate product that I promote.
I really wanted to have a product that I can boast about and say it belongs to me because I created it. Getting my book published gave me that immense satisfaction and I am pretty confident that I have shared some good tips on blogging in the hopes of helping out some new bloggers out there and also maybe motivate some friends who are hesitant to start a blog.
Treading on the Feared Path –
Yes, I was dreaded by the fact that I had to write a book, though it seemed easy at first, I drew a blank when I started out with my Table Of Contents section. My approach was first to identify the topics that I would consider appropriate for this book and list them out in my TOC. Then, address each one of them and explain them in detail, this technique actually worked good after I was done picking up the topics.
I spent considerable time, formatting my word document, adding headers, footers, images, links etc etc, and finally was done with my book which comprised of 30 pages!!!! Yayyyyy!!!! Pat on my back!!!!
I was little aware that the real challenge started after the fact that I finished my book 🙂
I accepted Lisa’s suggestion of publishing my book with Smashwords, and went ahead and created my profile and started looking at their publishing guidelines. Believe it or not, they have a book on how to format your ebook!!!!!!! But of course, if you send an email out to their contact person, you will be sent a list of professional ebook formatters and cover page designers. Now that was easy and I started getting in touch with couple of them to help me out with my publishing.
But I realized that the way I have written my book and the content of it demanded a heavy price to format it as per Smashwords guidelines 🙁 and I was back to where I started with an ebook in doc format with no publisher.
Hail Fiverr –
Of course if I had a budget towards my book, I would have gotten done at the exorbitant prices these professionals were asking, but my aim was to get it out there free to my readers, and wanted to do it at a minimum cost (who wouldn’t?)
That is when I read this article by Sue – How to Design your eBook Cover For Free. The tools mentioned in this article are just awesome, Paint.net is easy to use and anyone can design their cover page and side pages with basic knowledge of the tool. If you have an image that you can use without a need for licensing, you can use that on the cover and it should take just a few moments.
The 3d-pack.com site was a wonderful surprise for creating a 3-D image of my cover and side page. I was done doing that and at no cost!!!!!All that was left was the Smashwords formatting.
I resorted to search for the service in Fiverr, and ended up buying a gig for $5 to format my book and also include a 3D cover as my first page in the book. The job was done in an hour and I was excited at having found the perfect solution. Here is the fiverr profile of Nat who did the fomatting for me.
Then I realized that the cover page I designed myself was not professional enough and since this was my first book, I wanted it to be a little more attractive, and now that I was getting a hang of Fiverr, I searched once again, and found Sapizol, who helped me design my 2D and 3D cover pages.
So, there I was, spent $15 and got my cover page ( paid $5 for finding the image) and the formatting done for Smashwords!!!!!
Smashwords Publishing –
I was under the impression that once I submit my work to Smashwords, they will surely take a couple of days to review and edit some content, go back and forth with the author(me) before they actually publish it.
Yesterday night, I filled out their Publishing form and attached my word document along with the 2D cover (they do not accept 3D) and hit the Submit button.
I got a message, that mine was #12 in the queue for review, I was about to switch over to another browser, when I noticed that the page auto-refreshed, and I was #2 in queue and in a flash, my document was getting converted into all their publishing formats. In maybe around couple of minutes, my ebook was reviewed, converted and published!!!!!!!!!
Well, there I was, a proud author of my first eBook, written and published successfully. My sincere thanks to all these service providers and of course many other blog articles which provided me a source of inspiration as well as information to find a place for my book.
Subscribe & Get it Free –
As a note of thanks to all my readers, I will send you a coupon code when you subscribe to my newsletter using the link – Subscribe to DMC Newsletter. I appreciate it if you could keep your copy for yourself and not distribute it or make it available online. A word of recommendation to your friends and followers would work great!!
Hope you find my book useful and informative. I would love to hear from you about any suggestions for improvement or if any mistakes in my writing. There is always room for making it better, and I will look forward to your comments.
Thanks for reading!!!
Congratulations Praveen!
Awesome indeed! You really did it 🙂
Oh yes, I did read all about Lisa’s eBook and how and what all she did, which was an eye opener for me too. But you really went ahead and wrote one in such a short period of time – commendable indeed!
I need to gear up myself and get down to writing one – soon now. I know we all tend to make excuses for lack of time, and that’s my major hurdle, but it’s one I need to cross, and I will. You are all great people to get inspired from.
Wishing you great success with your eBook, and I would surely head over and read it really soon too.
Thanks for sharing this with us, and congratulations once again. I’m indeed very happy for you dear friend 🙂


Harleena Singh recently posted…Ways of Dealing with the Loss of a Loved One
Harleena – Thanks for all the wishes and actually YOU are the inspiration for many of us bloggers around here.
I would love to read a book from you, so get it going soon!!!
I hope you dont mind me mentioning your blog in my book, let me know. Thanks once again.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
I expect more from your blog, in order to go forward together.
Kang Jum recently posted…Adsense Style Untuk Blog Anda
Wow! That’s super awesome Praveen! Lisa’s eBook turned out so great! I can’t wait to check out yours! Woohoo! Congratulations!
Bren recently posted…Opinions Are Like Nipples, Everyone Has One
Bren – Thanks for stopping by and do let me know what you think about my book.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Great!!

I just downloaded this book of yours and will surely get back to you with my feedback after I finish reading it!
Meanwhile, thanks for sharing all this information with your readers. And that too for free! 🙂
Wishing you all the success with the book.
Ambika Choudhary Mahajan recently posted…40 Cool Cursive Fonts Using Free Cursive Font Generator
Ambika – Welcome to DMC and glad you downloaded my book. Do share your thoughts on the same when you find time.
Hope the info helped you and all my other readers which was the purpose of this post.
Hope to see you around.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Many Congrats on your first E-book launch. I have subscribed to your newsletter and eager to download your E-book. I just want to tell that there needs to be small correction in the article where you mentioned 3D pack website, you have placed the dash after 3, instead it should be placed after d. By the way good luck 🙂

Nizam Khan recently posted…Internet Download Manager Review
Nizam – Welcome and thanks for subscribing and downloading my book. Yes, Harleena also mentioned that mistake and I have updated the link. Thanks for pointing that out.
Let me know what you feel about the book.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Good luck with your ebook Praveen and why not, keep them coming!
Radu recently posted…Success; Fact or Myth, Take the Test
Radu – Thanks as always for your support and wishes.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Congratulations, Praveen! I am so very proud of you and your wonderful accomplishment. Many people will benefit from your publishing this book. I am absolutely thrilled for you!
Carolyn recently posted…Gmail Undo Send – Saving You from Your Mistakes
Carolyn – Thanks a lot for the wishes and for being a part of my ebook. I hope you like the book and what it has to offer.
Have a good week ahead.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hi Praveen, congrats with your ebook! I know how much work this takes. I can’t wait to read it! Nico
Very cool Praveenu ! look forward to more !
Thanks Rashmi.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hi Praveen, congrats with your ebook!! I know how much time it takes to create one ;-). I just added it on my “to read” list! Nico
Nico Julius recently posted…How to Insert / Edit / Delete a Hyperlink in WordPress
Nico – Thanks for your wishes and I hope you like my book. Do share your thoughts and of course I will take up your idea of generating traffic as maybe my next post 🙂
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hi Praveen,
Sorry to be late at the party. And wow this looks like a rocking party. First of all, my heartiest congratulations on your first ebook. It is a lot of effort and I would say one who completes an ebook has crossed a major milestone in his life.
I am very much honoured to feature in your ebook and I feel so great. I have downloaded the ebook and I am going to read it soon :). Also I am planning to put this on facebook page of my blog and write about it in the next blog post:).
Thank you so much and I am really proud to have another ebook author as my friend :).
Best regards,
Ashvini
Ashvini recently posted…Avoiding “Yes Men”
Hi Ashvini – Thanks a lot for the wishes and all the shares. I really appreciate it.
It will actually be my honour to be featured on your blog and I will look forward to that.
Good to know you and your blog, and all the good things every other blogger has to say about you and your technical skills.
Have a good day.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
So when you said you were working on a project, I had no idea it was an e-book – that’s quite an accomplishment!
Leora recently posted…Identifying a Painting with Google’s Search by Image
Leora – Yes, this book took quite some time and I just couldnt get to anything else. I hope you like the book, am waiting eagerly for some feedback from all you bloggers 🙂
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Congratulations Praveen!I will check it out. It is more time consuming than you first imagine. It is fun to see it finished though. Mine just made it to Barnes & Nobles from SmashWords. I wish you the best of luck with it.
Lisa recently posted…Page Speed – Which Website Formats Have The Fastest?
Lisa – Your article inspired me and made me write this book, so thanks a ton for writing that.
yes, it did take some time, but the end result was satisfying, I liked how it turned out. I hope you will like what I had to share.Let me know what you think.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hey Lisa – My book has been Premium catalog approved, so does that mean it will automatically be published on B&N, Apple etc. or do we need to do any additional steps?
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Thank you! I have downloaded your first ebook for free. It will be much useful for me.
Arjun – Good to know you have downloaded, hope you will find it useful. Thanks.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hi Praveen,
Thanks so much for the mention and I’m really pleased my article helped.
Many congratulations on producing your first eBook – I haven’t read it yet, but it looks absolutely great – excellent title and lovely cover. You’ve inspired me to get back to finishing mine, which has been in production for months!
Way to go, Praveen!
Sue
Sue Neal recently posted…Why Your Writing Sucks!
Hi Sue – I referred to your article while I was trying to design my cover, and it did help a lot. But I wanted a little more of a professional touch and so I hired it.
I am glad you liked the cover 🙂
I will look forward to your book for sure, so make it happen soon.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Great Praveen. Loved the book. thanks for very kind mention in that. hope you will write more books
Atish Ranjan recently posted…Image Optimization: Optimize Images For Search Engines
Atish – You were the first one to download 🙂
Thanks and glad you liked it.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Congratulations Praveen, way to go. Sounds like a lot of work and I remember Lisa sharing this route with us as well. But looking back wouldn’t you say the experience was worth it! I mean you have your book, you’ll be able to share some great information with your readers and make a little mula educating others. I love that.
I also love the cover, great job with that too.
Way to go!
~Adrienne
Adrienne – Yes, I loved the experience, looking back I should say that I am pretty satisfied with what I came out with. I am not so sure about the “moolah” part though 🙂
Thanks for your wishes and glad you liked the cover design 🙂
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Hey Praveen,
Bravo bro 😉 Excellent and congratulations on publishing your first ebook successfully.
Isn’t it wonderful when someone can inspire us? 😉 Lisa did it here and Sue has been helping you with cover too. Mmm… Wonderful friends around 😉
I’ve read Lisa’s ebook and now I’m looking forward to read it too mate 🙂 Haven’t heard of SmashWords until Lisa introduce it and now it has been helpful to you too.
I’ve notice today that Lisa’s book has gone over to Barnes and Nobles too 🙂 Awesome, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing your experiences on writing and publishing your ebook too mate 🙂 I’m sure there’s lot to learn and apply if someone wanna go for an ebook too. Even while being cost effective 😉
Keep more comin’ and rockin’ Praveen 🙂
Cheers…
Mayura recently posted…How to Spam Like a Rock Star
Mayura – Thanks for all your wishes and motivation. Yes, blogging is a nice way to gain trust and make good friends who are always around to help you no matter what.
It was a good experience and I cherished every moment writing this book. It is nice to know that lisa’s book has made it to premium publishers, she must have a lot of downloads 🙂
I am not sure about mine yet, I do hope it picks up some speed in the coming days 🙂
Thanks once again.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Why I Love My Samsung Chromebook
Praveen,
That’s really awesome news and congratulations..! 🙂
I just remember our 2011 days, where we use to talk about a ebook and that comes true now 🙂 Great..!
I have not yet downloaded the book and surely come back with my updates. Again, my heartfelt wishes for your great blogging journey.!!! Thanks.
Manickam Vijayabanu recently posted…YouTube Introduces A New Redesign – One Channel
hello praveen,
i always like to read ebooks specially related to blogging but when i am clicking on “subscribe to DMC newsletter” it is showing a blank pagge can you mail me the book
prabhat recently posted…Top 5 Best Rainmeter Skins 2013 Download [Windows PC]: iEatTraffic
Hi Praveen,
Congratulations on completing your first product, I know the feeling and it’s fantastic Congratulations my friend.
I love the way you went about it as well, I haven’t seen Lisa’s post but the way you’ve gone about getting everything together shows others that it doesn’t need to cost the earth.
It takes time, confidence (which grows with each chapter) and the determination to complete it, all of which you have in bundles 🙂
I’ve downloaded your creation and will take great pleasure in reading it. Thanks Praveen, congratulations once again mate.
Barry
Barry – It is a great privilege to hear such words from a professional like you. Thanks for all your kind hearted wishes.
yes, it is very satisfying and a true fantastic feeling when we are done with our own creation !!!
I hope you like my book and will look forward to hear your feedback about the same.
Thanks once again and have a good weekend ahead.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Best Lights for Working Late on the Job
Need to check that ebook of yours Praveen! Thanks.
[…] My First eBook – FREE for You!!! (dailymorningcoffee.com) […]
[…] My First eBook – FREE for You!!! […]
Congratulations on your publication on your first ebook. I had a quick look and looks great. I hope you get many sales. I will also be publishing soon and I also hope to use smashwords.
Shalu Sharma recently posted…Cow dung is still used in India for cooking
Shalu – Thanks a lot for all your wishes and good luck with you book as well.
Praveen Rajarao recently posted…Spice Up Your Life with a Cooking Class
[…] in the screenshot below, I have chosen my latest ebook which is in a Word format to be […]
Praveen,
I did downloaded the book and did wonderful job on your first attempt.
Simple and easy subject narration and informative. I believe most of the visitors would love it and make use of the book. Congratulations.
Manickam Vijayabanu recently posted…Interesting Smart Apps For Smart Android Devices
Congrats for your first eBook I will download this eBook. Keep it up.

Prakash recently posted…Hike Messenger Download for Symbian, Android, PC, iPhone, Blackberry
[…] There are lots of stories of “successful” bloggers out there. But if you want to learn from a real blogger, then you should take a look at “How to Stop Worrying and Start Blogging” from Praveen Rajarao (pssst… it’s free when you subscribe for his newsletter!) […]
I look forward to reading the book. You’ve inspired to finally start writing my own eBook. Thanks.

Chloe recently posted…Will 21 Day Sugar Detox Work for You?
Really a good day for you when you would have ended with your first ebook and now also offering to your readers here, congratulations on this launch and now I would sneak peak inside.
Great article and wishing you the very best in 2017 and beyond.