How to Become an Interactive Book Writer?

Well, this is a laudable intention to become an author of an interactive book. However, be sure that you have a lot of work to do, as now you will be responsible not only for the content but also for design, usability and traffic. Sounds scary, right? But no worse than to buy back links for your site, which you also have to face while promoting your book.

However, let’s move in a logical sequence. In this article, we decided to figure out how to create an interactive book, what pitfalls can wait for you, and how to promote your brainchild.

Start From the Idea of Your Book

So it all starts with an idea. A good idea for a book is already half the success. Unfortunately, a universal recipe on how to find the best idea for a book that works does not exist – you will have to rely on your intuition or build on your type of activity. For example, if you are a cook, then an interactive book with your author’s recipes, secret ingredients and videos will be a good solution. Of course, provided that you are a recognized expert in your industry.

Therefore, choosing a topic and idea for an interactive book, our advice is as follows.

• It should be something you know.
• It must be something interesting and involving.
• Your idea should have practical value and applicability.
• It should be possible to visualize your idea.

Determine Your Target Reader

After you have decided on the main idea and theme of your book, you need to determine the portrait of your target reader. Why is this needed?

• Firstly, it helps you find your right voice tone right away so your readers can enjoy interacting with you.
• Secondly, it will give you the opportunity to immediately think about the channels for promoting your interactive book.

And here is another pitfall you may encounter.

For example, if you created an interactive book for children, then your target readers will be children, and your parents will be your target marketing audience. Feel the difference?

Decide on the Materials You Will Use

Before you start writing, you need to decide which graphic, visual and interactive materials you will use. The ideal picture is to make your interactive book fully copyrighted, that is, it should contain your original photos, drawings, videos, graphics, tests, music and the like.

In the case of the original material, it will be easier for you to build the plot of your book around them.

However, if this is only partially possible, then think about where you will get the missing visual information. It is important that all of the visual data that you will use in your interactive book be taken from free sources. Or, you should definitely use the link to the author of each element that you will borrow.

And then, in this case, you better write the text first (we will talk about this in the next paragraph), and then deal with additional materials.

Write Your Text

It sounds very simple, isn’t it? In fact, this advice may take several volumes of books, and not just one paragraph. Perhaps the most important rule when writing an interactive book is to write simply, interestingly and engagingly. But in general, all the advice of literary geniuses will also suit you in this case. And by the way, don’t forget to read and edit your book several times before publishing.

Cooperate With the Designer

This is an optional but highly desirable condition. We recommend that you collaborate with a designer if you know for sure that visual design is not your strongest skill. All the same, the visual component is important for an interactive book, because it should involve and attract. And if you decide to do the design yourself, here are some tips for you.

• Adhere to a uniform style on all pages of your book.
• Try to keep a balance between the textual and visual components.
• Do not overdo it with interactive elements – at the beginning, the reader should simply receive information, and then get involved in the active interaction with the book.

And by the way, in the next paragraph, we will tell you how to solve most design issues in a few clicks.

Choose a Platform You Will Use to Create Your Interactive Book

In fact, in this case, you will not come across too many options. The format of the interactive book is just beginning to gain popularity, so at the moment there are only a few platforms that you can use for this purpose. Perhaps the best of all is the native Mac iBooks Author app.

This application visually resembles a site builder – here you can create page templates, choose different designs, play with fonts and the method of laying out your material, add widgets and other interactive forms, and all this within the framework of very intuitive and simple functionality.

And in order for you to still have the possibility of choice, we will also mention Amazon’s Kindle Create, since this program is also suitable for other operating systems.

Think Over How Will You Promote It

Now it’s time to promote your book, otherwise what was the point of writing it? The very first method that comes to mind is your blog and social networks.

By the way, here’s another interesting tip. Use part of your book in your form for lead generation. This is a good way to share useful content for free and expand your subscriber base.

Conclusion

Interactive books are a relatively new, but very involving format for reading, learning, and interacting, which, unfortunately, is currently only available to iPad owners. However, this is not a reason to abandon your idea – due to the popularity of the interactive format of books, very soon they will be available on all devices. And if you start to realize your idea earlier than others, you will get a competitive advantage – the opportunity to stand at the origins of the emergence of new approaches to reading, education, and entertainment at the same time.

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