A Virtual Assistant Can Help You Write and Publish Your e-Book

You are giving some serious thought to producing a well written, informative e-book that will raise your credibility and trust ratings with clients or customers. You want to get your message out about your niche services to help you create ongoing, lifelong multiple streams of income for your online business services. You have the idea for your first e-book. In fact, you have more ideas than time or the necessary technical skill to get it done. However, in this electronic age, newsletters and ezines are not the only things that you can publish without recourse to a big name publisher. Now anyone can publish their own book. But…. And here is where the list of reasons why it doesn’t get done takes on a life of its own.

1. You are too busy.
2. You have little or no confidence in your writing skills and find just blogging on a regular basis a chore.
3. You have no earthly idea how to format an e-book to deliver it to your market.
4. You don’t have a list to market the book to.
5. You don’t have a PDF maker and even if you did, you wouldn’t know how to make hyperlinks clickable in your document.
6. You don’t work in Adobe Photoshop or another graphics editing program so making those terrific books covers has to be outsourced.
7. And what about Creative Commons licenses? What are those and why do you need one?
8. You don’t know how to distribute the book and don’t have any real techniques for doing so once you decide where you want to distribute, and whether it is a free or paid download.
9. Your social media marketing strategy is not fine-tuned to handle this.
10. And on it goes…

Even with this list of potential roadblocks, if you’ve never thought of yourself as a book author, then my question to you is – why not?! You are passionate and knowledgeable about your business. You have great ideas and unique insights to share. You already know your audience, its needs and problems. In short, if you are not putting your hard-ea ed knowledge to work in an e-book, you are missing out big time both in terms of positioning yourself as an expert and building an additional stream of income. But you undoubtedly know all this already. More than that, you might already have an outline or even a draft of your e-book stashed somewhere on your computer’s hard-drive. And you would’ve probably published by now if not for one or more of the issues listed above. Most business owners have way too much on their plates. Their to-do lists are endless and oftentimes frustrating. And frankly, launching an e-book, even if the draft is ready, is no small task. But do you know that you can outsource much of the e-book creation and distribution to your Virtual Assistant? Yes, a highly competent and technically savvy Virtual Assistant can help you with every step of creating and launching a successful e-book. Step 1 – Virtual Assistant Takes Care of Research You can employ all sorts of marketing tactics and PPC tricks, but if there’s no interest in your topic, your e-book won’t sell. So if you haven’t written it yet, it would really be in your best interests to have a Virtual Assistant do market research. Additionally, she can take a snapshot of what’s already on the Internet. This way, you will know what your competitors have to offer and, more importantly, what it is they lack in their e-books. Don’t ever let competition stop you. Your voice is your own and that is what you have to offer. Step 2 – Virtual Assistant Helps You Write Content If all you have time for is an outline, then you can find a Virtual Assistant who specializes in content writing to ghostwrite the e-book for you. Many VA’s have unique backgrounds and previous work experience that might prove to be an ideal fit for your project. The VA will also be able to pull together the content you already have – articles, interviews, blog posts, even e-mails – to use in your e-book. If you prefer to do your own writing, you can have your Virtual Assistant edit and proofread your draft; verify all the facts and figures; confirm that all the resource links work; and compile information for the resources section. Step 3 – Virtual Assistant Builds Your Audience You can spend thousands of dollars buying banner ads and running pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns to promote your upcoming e-book. Or you might build a loyal audience ready to pounce on your offering. If you choose the latter, your Virtual Assistant can help you set up a blog, write content for it, and build the buzz about it by harnessing the power of social media. (This is a topic that I will go into much deeper in future articles.) Step 4 – Virtual Assistant Manages Your List You’ve heard it many times – your e-mail list is the single most effective tool to convert your blog readers into buyers. Whether you are starting from scratch or already have a sizable list, a Virtual Assistant can help you set up and manage all the opt-in forms, autoresponders, newsletters, blog broadcasts, and other e-mail communications. Step 5 – Virtual Assistant Helps You With the Big Launch Going beyond your e-mail list can send your e-book distribution literally through the roof. That is, if the launch isrndone right. Of course, doing things right usually means quite a lot of work upfront. Once again, your Virtual Assistant is here to help you. She can take care of pre-launch announcements; create a stream of content on blogs, forums, in social media; coordinate your appearances on blogs and podcasts and take care of many tasks required for a successful e-book launch. Plus, by working with a Virtual Assistant who has web development experience, or who is otherwise highly technically savvy, you don’t have to worry about setting up squeeze pages, sales pages, shopping cart software, etc. And if you choose to run a pay-per-click campaign to boost your sales even further, a Virtual Assistant can help you set up and run that campaign as well. Don’t let lack of time stand in the way of publishing an e-book. Your Virtual Assistant is here to help you transform your valuable knowledge, experience and unique insights into a money-making authority-building e-book.