So now that you have your outline filled in with all the important information that you want to display to your customers it's time to format what you have, and make it look like something worth the time they'll spend with it.
You have a lot of options for how you'll present your product, and now's the time to decide what style you'll use for your current project. Different styles include book, audio, video, and software. There are others of course. As a matter of fact you may want to take this project, and package it in a number of those available styles over time.
But I've directed this series mostly toward creating a book, so in this article I'm going to stay with that style. That way things won't get too complicated.
Formatting your information into book style is easy enough. You already have your content entered into your outline. Now separate it out into title, topics, sub-topics, and paragraphs.
You'll want a cover graphic to place on the first page. You can create this yourself. Plenty of cover creator software packages for that. Or you can go to fiverr (or a similar service related site) to have one made. Having a picture of your book as the front page makes your product look more professional.
Your second page contains any legaleze, and income disclaimer announcements that your book needs in order to keep you out of trouble with the authorities. Look at other books to see how they word their disclaimer pages, and model yours after those.
Turn your basic outline into your table of contents. That will be the next page after the copyright notice, and legal disclaimer page.
Next you'll form the body of your book.
I like to present my title as a “Heading 1”, my topics as “Heading 2”, my sub-topics as “Heading 3” – all in Tahoma font. My paragraphs I use a Times New Roman font for. And any content that I want to stand out and be sure to grab attention I'll turn into a Courier New font.
I also use Header text to place the title of my book at the top of every page – after the first page, and Footer text to identify the page number.
That layout works well for me.
Once you have that all configured, proofread, and edited (you want to be sure you clean up all the typos and misspellings), then you'll convert your document into a PDF file.
Why? Because PDF files can be read by any computer where sometimes a normal text or word type format will open up scrambled.
You can use any word processing software for the formatting process. But you do want the ability to convert to PDF. Last time I checked Microsoft Word didn't have the ability to convert documents to PDF.
I recommend using the Open Office suite. By going to the menu File tab you'll find an option to Export As PDF. Just click on that, tell it what you want your document title to be, and Open Office gives you a nice PDF to offer anywhere on the web.
Open Office is very similar to Microsoft Word, and there's no charge to download the software. That's mighty attractive in my mind.
If you'd like a book of mine to use as a creation guide go here:
http://discoverhowtoworkfromhome.biz/MeasureAndChartYourSuccessesInLife.pdf
No charge.
Do please make sure use your own words, and don't just copy my content. But you're welcome to use my book to see how I lay out my PDFs.
Okay. You have work to do. Get your book formatted into a PDF file. You'll want that standing by in wait for my next article. Because that's when I'm gonna give you some know how when it comes to profiting from all the work you just did.
We'll talk about how to sell your book.
Don't miss it.
