Archive for Writing Tips

How to add a footnote to your non-fiction ebook

Footnote image with the word note written on the bottom of the foot

There are a lot of different methods for adding a footnote to non-fiction ebooks. None of them are elegant.

Why?

Because most methods require the reader to click on a hyper-linked footnote number, go to the footnote and then press either the back button or another hyperlink to go back to where they were reading.

This totally interrupts their reading experience.

So, when I was formatting an ebook for an Author that had 58 footnotes in his non-fiction ebook, I thought, “There has to be a better way.

It made no sense to me to do the extra work of putting in hyperlinks – one to the footnote and another back to where the person left of reading.

I mean lets get serious, this is the one area where we should not follow the norm of print publishing where footnote(s) can be placed at the bottom of the page.

Helloooooooooooo – there are no pages in ebooks – so footnotes are placed at the end of individual chapters or end of an ebook.

Frankly, this is a bad idea because if you use the hyper-linked end of chapter or ebook method, your reader will see some of them out of context.

Not an elegant solution.

So what is the better way?

I came up with having the footnote be immediately under what was being read like this:

This paragraph is talking about something important and I really want to show I know what I’m talking about so I will reference a book, newpaper article or a magazine article.20

20Judith Tramayne, in her ebook “How to Format a Non-Fiction eBook” June 2012.

And then you would continue on with what you’re writing. By doing it this way your reader does not have to take time away from their reading.

Now the code is done in your .html file and your style.css file. The code is below.

Having a business card for your ebook will help you market your ebook when you’re offline.

Usually offline, people will ask you what you do. Yes you can say you’re an “Author” but then what? Do you just leave it at that or, do you whip out your business card?

You don’t?

Then you are losing sales. People love to brag about “meeting an Author.” So it behooves you to be the one they remember.

And this is done with a business card.

If you write ebooks, you don’t have a physical book to show them so a business card will work instead to increase your credibility in their eyes. You’ve just given them something physical they can slip in their pocket and later when they’re on their computer, they’ll normally go on Amazon, Nook or other e-Reader ebook stores and check you out.

Will they end up buying?

Writing is a business

I am so sick of Authors saying “I just want to write and don’t want to deal with all that other stuff like marketing.

Excuse me, but Writing is a Business!

If you want writing as a career where you get to stay home and make a comfortable living then you better rethink your attitude.

In the real world, it’s up to you to “wear different hats” in your writing career.

The first hat you wear is, of course, writing.

That’s a given. And you better be good at it or, if you’re not, you’d better get good at it.

Nobody writes a perfect book the first time.

If they say they did, they’re either lying or don’t take into the fact, they’ve been scribbling words on paper since they were two. Which means they built up their writing muscle and now, on their first book, their years of practice burst forth.

For the rest of us who didn’t start until later in life, we became good because we sat our butt in a chair and wrote everyday until we were satisfied with our ability (a/k/a voice).