How to create and sell an ebook, step by step

Choose one problem that people already ask you about, write the shortest book that solves it, export it as a PDF, put a price on it and send it only after payment. That is the whole job. The hard parts are the first and the last: picking a topic that someone will pay for, and getting it in front of those people. Writing and design take a few weekends. Finding buyers can take far longer, and many first ebooks sell very little, so treat the first one as a test rather than a plan to replace a salary.

An ebook is worth making when your audience keeps asking the same thing and a free post cannot answer it properly. It is a poor choice when you hope a book will create demand by itself. The table shows the usual order of work and where the time goes. The hours are rough guesses for a first, short ebook, not measured figures.

Open your last month of comments and DMs and write down every question that appeared more than twice. Those are your candidate topics, because someone already wanted the answer enough to type a message. A question like “how do I price my work?” is too wide. “A one-page price list for wedding photographers working in a small town” is something a person can picture buying. The narrower the reader, the easier it is to write a book that feels made for them.

Ask what changes for the reader after they finish. People pay for a result: a finished study plan, a month of meals planned, a first client booked, a spreadsheet that now works. They rarely pay for “information”, because information is free. If your book is mainly an explanation, ask what you can add that a search cannot: a tested checklist, filled-in examples, a template, or your own mistakes.

Here are the kinds of subject that tend to work for small creators, described as examples and not as predictions. A home baker could write a festival-baking guide with tested quantities in grams. A teacher on Instagram could sell revision notes for one board-exam subject. Someone who films short travel Reels could write a five-day itinerary with costs in rupees and a list of what went wrong. A spreadsheet teacher could write a book of ten worksheets and sell the practice files with it.

Tip: Test before you write. Post once saying you are putting together a guide on the topic and ask people to comment a word if they want it. A handful of comments is a weak signal; no comments is a clear one. Either way you learn it before spending weekends on the draft.

Start with one sentence: “After this ebook, you will be able to ___.” Everything that does not serve that sentence goes. Then list the steps a reader must take to get there, and make each step a chapter. Five to ten chapters is plenty for a first book. A short ebook that gets finished beats a long one that sits in a folder, and readers on a phone often prefer something they can finish in an evening.

1. Write the promise sentence and put it at the top of the document.
2. List the chapters as steps in the order the reader would do them, not in the order you learned them.
3. For each chapter, write the one thing the reader should be able to do at the end, and one example, screenshot or filled-in sample that shows it.
4. Write the first draft fast, in your own voice, without editing as you go. Use the words you use in your Reels and replies.
5. Cut a third. Delete the warm-up paragraphs, repeated points and anything that is true but not useful.
6. Add a short “start here” page, a one-page checklist at the end, and a contents list with page numbers.
7. Read it aloud, then give it to two people from your intended audience and watch where they get stuck.

Write only what you know or have done. Do not copy paragraphs from other books, notes, courses or paid PDFs, and do not paste in someone else’s images. Copied material can get your listing taken down and your payment account into trouble, and buyers notice when a book sounds like three different people. If you quote or build on a source, name it and keep the quote short. Where the subject is money, health or law, teach how things work and say plainly that it is general information, not advice for the reader’s own situation.

Most of your buyers will open the file on a phone, often after tapping a link in Instagram. Design for that. A portrait page close to A5, with body text large enough to read without zooming, usually works better than a dense A4 page. Use one or two fonts, plenty of white space, and headings that are clearly bigger than body text. Put the title, your name and a one-line promise on the cover.

You do not need special software. Word, Google Docs and Canva can all export a PDF, and a PDF keeps the layout the same on every device. The alternative, an EPUB file, reflows text to fit the screen, which suits novels but handles tables, worksheets and screenshots badly. For a practical, how-to ebook, a PDF is the usual choice. Selling through a bookstore such as Kindle is a separate route with its own rules and formats, and this guide does not cover it.

• Export the PDF and open it on your own phone before you call it finished.
• Check that links inside the book work and that the file is a sensible size to download on mobile data.
• Use your own photos and text, or images whose licence clearly allows use in a product you sell.
• Name the file clearly, for example the book title and version, so you can tell updates apart.
• Add a short page at the end with your contact details and what to do if the file does not open.

On ISBNs, India’s national ISBN agency describes the ISBN as a publisher’s identifier meant for monograph publications. The page I read did not say what it costs or whether an ebook sold directly as a PDF needs one, so check with the agency if you plan to list in bookstores. Selling a PDF from your own link is a different matter from listing in a bookstore.

There is no correct price, and no one can tell you what your ebook will sell for. Think about what the reader gets and what a comparable book, course or consultation costs. The prices below are only examples of how people think about it, not recommendations or averages.

Remember what comes off each sale. A payment provider’s fee is taken from every payment, and depending on your turnover and situation, GST may apply to what you sell. We have separate guides on GST and income tax for creators in India, and those rules are for an accountant to apply to your case. Work out what you keep per sale before you pick a price, so a discount does not leave you with almost nothing.

A free sample helps more than a lower price. Give the first chapter, or the checklist page, away for an email address, then offer the full book to people who read it. That also gives you a list of people who asked for the topic, which is worth more than followers you cannot message.

The cleanest set-up is payment first, file second. A person pays by UPI or card on a page you control, and the file or a download link arrives straight after. Never post the file link publicly, because a link that anyone can see is a link that anyone can share. Decide what you will do about refunds before the first sale, and put the policy on the sales page in a sentence.

Plan for the file being passed around. PDFs get shared, and you cannot fully stop it. Putting the buyer’s name in the footer is possible with some tools, but the best protection is to make the paid version worth having: updates, worksheets, answers to questions and a place to ask you something.

DMFast is our product, so weigh this section accordingly. For creators in India its store can sell a digital product such as an ebook, hand out a free sample in exchange for an email address and optionally a phone number, and take payments through Razorpay. DMFast takes no fee on sales, though Razorpay’s own fee still comes out of each payment. Its comment-to-DM feature can answer a comment such as “EBOOK” with a private message. That first message is plain text and asks the person to reply, because Instagram allows no links or buttons in it; the link follows once they answer. It works with Instagram professional accounts and Facebook Pages only, the store is for India only, and none of it makes a weak topic sell.

The common mistakes are quite ordinary. People pick a topic they like and not one their audience asked about. They write a long book when a short one would do. They launch once, in one post, and then wait. They price with no idea what they keep per sale. And they never ask the first ten buyers what they thought, which is the cheapest way to improve version two.

Tip: Do not announce the ebook only on the day it is ready. Show a chapter as a carousel, answer a related question in a Reel, and share one buyer question each week. People buy from someone who has been useful for a while.

• The topic comes from questions people actually asked me, and I tested interest before writing.
• One promise sentence sits at the top of the book.
• The draft is cut by about a third and two readers from my audience have tried it.
• The PDF opens well on a phone and its links work.
• Every image, font and quote is mine or clearly licensed.
• I know what I keep from each sale after the payment fee, and I have asked an accountant about GST and tax.
• A refund policy and a way to reach me are written on the sales page.
• The file is delivered only after payment, and the link is not posted publicly.