How to Create and Sell Your First E-book (part 2)

In this guest post, counselor and consultant Clinton Power share how to put the finishing touches on your E-book and how to get the word out and sell your book. (Read part 1 how to create your first E-Book)

Use a graphic designer to make your E-book stunning

If you're planning on creating a PDF version of your E-book to sell through your website, you definitely want to get it professionally designed. Your designer can then employ visuals, highlight quotes, and use attractive fonts and graphic design elements to draw the reader in and make reading your E-book a pleasure. Your designer will also create a compelling cover page, which is essential as it will make a big difference whether people are attracted to your E-book or not.

If you're going down the Amazon route, you won't need a designer to design the inside, but you will need an awesome cover design so you stand out from the thousands of books in Amazon.

One other consideration is to make sure you have your e-book proof read once it’s complete. I employed a professional copy editor to make sure my book was grammatically sound with no spelling errors. This was a good investment.

Create a dedicated landing page for your E-book

It's worth creating a dedicated landing page on your website for, or creating a stand-alone website just for your E-book.

Even if you're selling it through Amazon, it's helpful to direct people to this page to read more about your book.

Include attractive images of the cover (3D preferably), testimonials and a bio of you, the author.

Options for selling your E-book

I chose the Amazon route and more specifically, a product called KDP Select. If you use KDP Select you have a 90-day agreement with Amazon that you won't sell your E-book anywhere else on the internet.

KDP Select also allows you to have up to 5 promotional days within the 90 days where you can give your book away for free on Amazon. This was a great strategy for getting more exposure, and helped me get over 2000 downloads. In fact, over 1,800 downloads happened in one weekend during one of my free promotions when my book went to the top of the free list for its category.

If you want more flexibility, you can just join KDP and then still sell your E-book in other places.

If you're selling your E-book through your website, I recommend using E-Junkie or Gum Road. E-Junkie will allow you to have affiliates so other people can sell your book and earn a commission, and Gum Road is very simple software where a beautiful pop-up appears on your website and guides the purchaser through a checkout.

Begin promoting your E-book

Now your E-book has been created, it's time to start promoting it. That's probably a whole other post on it's own, but one tip I'll share is I sent advanced copies to readers on my newsletter list for free, in exchange for Amazon reviews.

This was very helpful in getting reviews on Amazon just as I started to make sales. And the more positive reviews you get, the more Amazon will promote your book in its marketplace.

Don't forget to talk about your E-book on a regular basis on social media and get creative about sharing your message.

Another strategy I used was I created attractive images in PicMonkey with tips from each chapter and shared them on social media and on my blog.

Track your results

Finally, you want to track your results to see how you're doing with your sales.

Amazon makes this easy through Author Central, so make sure you create an account there. You can track the ranking of your book in the Amazon Marketplace and read all your reviews, as well as edit your author profile.

If you're selling your E-book on your website, use Google Analytics to see where traffic is coming to your landing page, and then increase your marketing efforts in those areas.

Creating an E-book has never been easier, so what's stopping you? Get writing!

Clinton Power is a Gestalt therapist and the owner of Clinton Power + Associates - a private practice dedicated to helping singles and couples move out of relationship pain in Sydney, Australia. Clinton is the author of the E-book 31 Days to Build a Better Relationship, which is available in the Amazon store. He is also the founder of Australia Counselling Directory, a free directory for finding counselors and psychologists in Australia. Follow him on Twitter @sydneytherapist

Pregnancy in Private Practice: 4 Key Questions To Help You Prepare For Maternity Leave

4 key questions to help you prepare personally and professionally for managing maternity leave in private practice.

I'm a mother of four children. My first two children were born during my educational journey and my last two were born while I was in private practice. Being in private practice provides many perks for balancing work and family life. The flexibility of being my own boss has been wonderful. However, taking time off for extended periods of time, like maternity leave, can prove to be tricky.  Unlike working for an agency, in private  you don't get paid leave in private practice,  you still have expenses to pay even when you're not seeing clients, and you have unpredictable income as you "wind down" to take time off and then build your client load back up after taking family leave.  Becoming pregnant while in private practice and planning for the new addition in your family requires some extra planning, coordinating, and saving.

How Much Time Will You Take Off?

These little babies can be a BIG adjustment. It's important to really think about taking enough time for you to adapt to being a parent to this new, little person. Dr. Jennifer Fee, psychologist from California found that one of the most helpful things was taking sufficient time off after giving birth. She suggests coming back gradually and not carrying a full load for awhile.

"Rushing back [to work] while you're adjusting to and bonding with a new baby is not good for you, your baby, or your clients. The great thing about private practice is that it's not an 'all or nothing' business. You can start practicing with a few clients rather than jumping back into a full load," says Dr. Fee.

Determining the length of your maternity or paternity leave can be extremely important in keeping your practice thriving. If you are a sole practitioner, taking a three month leave could potentially leave you with very few clients upon your return. You must decide not only how long is financially feasible but also how long works for your family and your clients.

Who will provide services to your clients in your absence?

It's important to consider who will provide clinical services to your clients while you are on maternity leave. If you are in solo practice, consider reaching out to another trusted private practice colleague who has openings to provide services to your clients while you are on leave. Make sure that your clients have the contact information of the therapist who'll be covering for you. I suggest that clients in crisis have appointments set up with this therapist before you take time off.

I recently talked with a private practice colleague who is pregnant with her third child. I suggested that she consider hiring another therapist to cover her clinical cases and also to generate income for her practice while she is on maternity leave.

When will you stop taking new clients?

You'll also want to think about when you will stop taking new clients. If you plan on taking new clients up until your leave I suggest that in your first conversation you inform them that you will be taking time off so they can have the option of seeing someone who can provide uninterrupted services.

Jennifer Venable-Humphrey, LCSW of Social Work Solutions stopped accepting new clients one month before her due date. When put on bed rest with her third child, Jennifer used Skype or phone sessions to check in with current clients that she had to stop seeing earlier than planned.

How will you cover your fixed expenses and lack of income?

Taking time off in private practice is tricky because you have to plan not only for lost income but for paying the fixed expenses of maintaining a practice while you are on leave. Expenses like rent, phone, internet, or perhaps the cost of support staff may need to be paid whether you are practicing or not.

Joseph Sanok, LLP, LPC of Mental Wellness Counseling in Traverse City, MI suggests considering the cost of being away from your family once you have returned to your clients. Sanok decided to increase his fee when his wife became pregnant. "For me, I knew that working in my practice was going to be difficult when I had the draw of a wonderful new addition. By raising my rates, it made it easier to give up the time."

I'm curious to learn more about the changes you made or creative ways that you found for your transition to parenthood in your private practice. Share those here!

What You Need To Succeed As A Solopreneur Therapist

 Why are so many therapists bad at building a business? A key to building a successful private practice is developing discipline.

Guest post by Clinton Power, a Sydney-based Gestalt therapist and the owner of Clinton Power & Associates and founder of Australia Counselling Directory.

When I first dreamed of being a therapist, my vision was about helping people, making a difference and feeling good about contributing to the well-being of others.

After 10 years as a therapist, I’ve become acutely aware of the reality of running a business by myself. While I still enjoy the reward of doing all those good things I mentioned, I’m also realistic about what it takes to run a private practice. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that to be a successful therapist in private practice today, you need to be a solopreneur.

What is a soloprenuer therapist?

So what’s a soloprenuer therapist? Effectively it means you’re an entrepreneurial therapist that works solo. Being a solopreneur therapist means you can hold a big vision of what you want for your business and you’re always on the lookout for new opportunities.

You might have all your qualifications, a lovely office space in the right area where your ideal client is located, the furnishings to accompany it and perhaps an attractive website. But that’s no guarantee that you will attract clients to your practice.

In my mind, to be a successful therapist and soloprenuer, you need to have some of the following skills:

• Marketing skills to effectively communicate about your services
• Accounting skills to track your income and manage your finances
• Discipline to show up and complete your marketing activities
• The ability to create a vision for your business and implement the smaller steps needed
• Interpersonal skills to network with other therapists and allied professionals
• Willingness to learn about online marketing, social media and good website design
• Basic SEO knowledge to help your website and articles show up in the search engines
• Writing skills and basic copywriting skills so you can convert your readers into paying clients

Are you getting the idea?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, that’s not my intention. I hope you have a sense of how versatile you need to be to be able to run a therapy business that brings you clients on an ongoing basis.

I’m not talking about a hobby therapy business where you see a handful of clients a week. I’m talking about what’s needed to create a thriving practice where you are the ‘go to’ person in your niche and you can make a very comfortable living from being a therapist.

The importance of discipline for the solopreneur therapist

In my coaching and consulting work with many healthcare professionals, I talk to a lot of therapists that are wanting to build their businesses, but are not sure what they’re doing wrong.

If there’s one theme that seems to capture what many therapists struggle with, I would say it’s discipline for the solopreneur.

Maybe it’s from my many years as a classical musician, where I had to be disciplined in my musical practice to maintain my performance standard, but I see discipline as an essential part of my business, but also the mindset needed for success. And I see discipline as a major stumbling block for many therapists.

It’s so essential for the soloprenuer therapist to have discipline, because if you don’t do the work, no one will do it for you.

Tips for developing discipline

Here’s a number of ways you can work on your discipline in your private practice:

• Create a publishing schedule for your blog and stick to it
• Give yourself learning goals to increase your knowledge of how to use social media effectively
• Study the basic principles of copywriting so you can write powerful copy for your services and events
• Learn how to manage money effectively using accounting software that makes your job easier
• Create a networking schedule to build relationships with other healthcare professionals and make yourself accountable
• Create a marketing plan that breaks down into weekly tasks that you follow through on
• Create 1, 3, and 5 year goals for your business, write them down and review your progress every 3-6 months
• Join a mastermind group or find an accountability partner and schedule regular meetings so you can support, encourage and challenge each other

This is just a start, but I hope I’m giving you some ideas here.

I believe if you choose just one of those ideas from the list above and commit to the application, it can only benefit your therapy business.

The practice of discipline is one that many people struggle with, however, I do believe it’s like a muscle that you can build and strengthen with practice over time.

I invite you to experiment with shifting your mindset from thinking of yourself as a business owner to a soloprenuer, and notice what happens in your business. Take this as a challenge to help take your business to the next level.

Clinton Power is a Sydney-based Gestalt therapist and the owner of Clinton Power & Associates- a private practice dedicated to helping singles and couples move out of relationship pain. He is also the founder of Australia Counselling Directory, a free directory for find counsellors and psychologists in Australia. Clinton is also a passionate coach and consultant for healthcare professionals. Find him on Twitter @sydneytherapist.

(c) Can Stock Photo