I’m embarking on a big and fun project right now that involves a companion e-book, and so I turned to my faithful Twitter community for some input. I happen to love e-books, but my idea of a comfy read might not be the same as someone else’s. So I digested the feedback and added a few thoughts of my own about what works.  I think they’re great opportunities to share amazing content with your readers, clients, customers, and prospects. So, let me know if you agree with my assessment.

1. Keep your writing punchy. Reading on a screen isn’t the same as reading a hard piece of paper, and it’s easier to get distracted by the ding of email (or TweetDeck for me). Writing in concise sentences packed full of goodness is a much easier way to keep someone rooted to the page, or get them back quickly if they stray.

2. Choose a larger font than you’d normally type with. Again, you’re reading on a screen. Try something in the 14 pt. range, and don’t choose a heavy or clever font. Stick to something readable, like Tahoma, Verdana, Georgia, or Baskerville. (I’m not a big fan of Arial, but hey if you like it…)

3. Make use of white space. You don’t have to fill every ounce of the page with words, and you’re better off if you don’t. Keep the words loose on the page with lots of room for your eyes to breathe between words and paragraphs.

4. Incorporate visuals. Graphics, pictures, and (simple) charts are a good way to enhance and emphasize the points you’re making in your piece. Don’t go overboard though; one or two carefully chosen ones are much better than a mess of irrelevant junk. For good choices in photos, look in Flickr’s Creative Commons section. Try eMarketer for charts and simple graphs on a variety of topics.

5. Break up your content. We’re back to the idea that we aren’t reading in hard copy, and catching someone’s eye is easier if you chunk your content into easy to digest pieces. Much like a blog post, it helps to have prominent headings and subheadings. Bullets are good. Blocks of rambling text, bad. This also makes it much easier for your readers to come back later and find their spot if they have to go away.

6. Mind your length. Per the all-knowing Twitter community, it seems that 20-30 pages is the ideal length, with a few outliers +/- a few pages. Over 50 seems to be begging for multiple pieces, or it better be super content rich. And it may differ based on whether or not your book is free; if your readers are paying for your content, they might be willing to take a bit more of their time to read.

7. Embed links. The cool thing about a PDF is that you can keep hyperlinks live and clickable. If you’re listing sites or resources, link to them in the text itself and save your readers a bit of research.

8. Use text bookmarks. This is a cool tip, and is a big help to readers who may wish to skip to specific sections in your book. Most word processing and presentation software allows you to bookmark pieces of text, which essentially is an anchor in the document you can return to later. You can then create a hyperlink within your document that jumps to that place, either from a table of contents or from within the text itself.

9. Don’t forget links to your site! At some point, your book is going to become detached from your site, passed around, etc. Use the document footer or other strategic locations to put the name of your website and a link back to the e-book. It doesn’t hurt to park your contact information in there somewhere, either.

10. Make it easy to share. This seems to go without saying, but it’s vital. Make sure you’re using something ubiquitous for your format, like a PDF. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or other Adobe formats don’t translate well, and not everyone uses them (or the same version for that matter). Also, be mindful of your file size; if it’s over 1MB or so, compress it (you can do this easily in Adobe Acrobat Reader under Document > Reduce File Size). That keeps it emailable and easily downloadable.

So what else? What have you liked about ebooks you’ve read, and where could they have been improved? I leave the comments to you.

Thanks to all the following whose input contributed to this post: @JerseyMomma, @ltrosien, @esonline, @carakeithley, @kurtscholle, @brianandrian, @RoyalAntsJosh, @BeckyMcCray, @kalalea, @JackBastide, @SonnyGill, @eeUS, @JohnnyAmos, @epodcaster, @paulmerrill.

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