Most guides to this are a list of tips. What people actually need is the order — because almost every stalled ebook stalled at a step that was taken too early or skipped entirely.
The nine steps
- 1Write the one-sentence promise. Who it is for, and what they can do by the end. Not a topic — a promise. If you cannot write this sentence you do not have a book yet, and every later decision is unanswerable without it.
- 2Pick the job the book does. Collecting email addresses, selling at $9.99, or proving you know a subject. Each has a different right length and a different format.
- 3Choose the length. From the job, not from ambition. A lead magnet is 5,000–8,000 words; a full guide is 25,000–40,000. The numbers by type are here.
- 4Build the chapter list. Every chapter gets a title and one sentence saying what it solves and what the reader can do at the end. Two tests: chapters must depend on each other, and each must end in an action rather than a fact. This step deserves more time than it gets.
- 5Draft it, in order, without going back. Editing while drafting is what turns a two-week project into a two-year one. One concrete worked example per chapter — this single rule improves a draft more than any other.
- 6Edit in three passes. Cut anything that does not serve the promise; add specifics wherever you generalised; then read each chapter’s last paragraph next to the next chapter’s first and fix the joins.
- 7Write the [front matter](/glossary/front-matter) and [back matter](/glossary/back-matter). Title page, copyright page, contents. Then, at the back, the review request and the offer. The back matter is the highest-value page in the book and it takes twenty minutes.
- 8Make the cover and the files. The cover is judged at thumbnail size, so: big readable title, one idea, high contrast. Then an EPUB for stores, and — for paperback — a print-ready interior at the right trim size, fonts embedded, no cover bound in.
- 9Write the [metadata](/glossary/book-metadata), then publish. Subtitle, categories, keywords and blurb. Half an hour here does more for sales than another chapter would, and it is the step most people rush at midnight.
The three steps everybody underestimates
Step 4, the chapter list, because it feels like admin and is actually the book. Step 7, the back matter, because it is last and everyone is tired. Step 9, the metadata, because it is not writing — and it is most of how anybody ever finds the thing you wrote.
How long the whole thing takes
| Step | Writing it yourself | With BookArc |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 — deciding what it is | 1–2 hours | 1–2 hours. Nothing changes here; it is your book. |
| 4 — the chapter plan | 2–4 hours | ~20 seconds, then you edit it |
| 5 — drafting | 30–60 hours | Minutes per chapter |
| 6 — editing | 10–20 hours | 10–20 hours. Still yours. |
| 7–8 — matter, cover, files | 1–2 days | Cover generated; files exported |
| 9 — metadata and upload | 1–2 hours | 1–2 hours |
A worked two-day version of this, with an hourly schedule, is in how to write an ebook in a weekend.