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I finished my first ebook a few weeks ago. It’s a how-to manual on how to quit smoking. I’ll write a post about the book itself very soon, so I don’t want to repeat myself here. What I do want to write about is the sequence of events that lead to the idea of writing ebooks and selling them on the Internet.

I’ve written in some form or fashion my whole life. When I went back to school to finish college (mid thirties), I elected to complete my degree in English Lit, as opposed to Mathematics (my major twenty years earlier). Writing comes very naturally to me. At base, I’m sure that’s what attracts me to blogging–I can write and publish instantaneously.

I’ve also always wanted to be a writer, but, you know, life just got in the way. (It doesn’t have to, and that is part of what this blog is about.) About a year ago, I decided to write a novel–something that I had wanted to do for years. I started the book in March of last year and finished the rough draft sometime around the end of August or the beginning of September. I’ll never publish it. It’s not that good, but I’m very proud of it, and as I get my online businesses going, I’ll return to novel writing.

Since I work full-time (and have a wife and two great kids), finding time to write was difficult. So, I just trained myself to get up in the mornings at 4:00 am, and I wrote for an hour and a half then got ready for work. It’s completely amazing how much you can do if you do it consistently.

During the summer, while I was working on the book, I found Joe Vitale’s The E-Code. I read the book and was fascinated by it’s possibilities. There was only one problem, though. I didn’t know where to start.

I love to surf the web. I googled Joe Vitale and came across several of his sites. About this time I learned of Yanik Silver, one of the most successful internet marketeers around. I read an article about Yanik in $1,000,000 Blueprints magazine. I also read about him in one of Dan Kennedy’s books. Dan had helped Yanik make millions from selling information online.

Wanting to make money from writing, I decided to write an ebook. Since I was a teacher (still am, although hopefully not for long), I decided to write a book about how to manage your classroom. I finished the book, but I felt a little negative about it. So, I didn’t want it to be my first ebook.

Casting about for another idea, I hit on a really great method for quitting smoking my dad invented thirty years ago. He had tried to quit smoking several times, but had not been successful. Finally (as the result of a prayer) the idea for his method came to him. It worked the first time! Dad always wanted to write it as a booklet he could sell, but he never got around to it.

I decided that my first self-published ebook would the the How To Quit Smoking book, which I called The Harold Cole Method.

I started writing the book December 13, 2006. I finished it by the end of the year. January was devoted to learning how to sell it. I’ll tell you more about all of this in eBook Part II.

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Also, if you smoke, now's the time to quit! Buy my book, How To Quit Smoking: The Harold Cole Method! It's 100% guaranteed!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 2:13 pm and is filed under Self-help, eBooks, Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.