Can someone give me simple advice on creating an E book?

[Mr Coconut]

Hi. I have a subject that I am passionate about, and gets a lot of attention when I discuss in on the internet at large. I have written for some time, on forums and so on, and what I would really like to do is put all of my thoughts and research on my subject into one book, then make that freely available to as many people as I can, on the internet. I don't really want to go down the route of trying a conventional publisher, as I want my work to be seen, and not for that to be at their mercy. I did look at some self publising sites, but they seem expensive, for what you really get. I know there are a few YT vids out there, showing different ways to do an E book, and wondered if any of you had advice you can give? I am not incredibly technical, so keep that in mind :-). I do not have a blog at the moment, is there a means, having done the E book, that would best get it seen online? Is it possible to even sell your E book, and how would you go about that? Thanks

[Creus Sun]

No matter what you do, a conventional publisher would do it 100 times better. Its their job to advertise you and make sure you sell as much as possible, how exactly would you be in their mercy.

If you wanted to just post it for free on the internet, you could go to sites like wattpad. But if you want money for it, a conventional publisher would be the best choice.

If you only want to publish it in an electronic form, you could have some1 build you a site and sell it there, but advertising it would be up to you. And the internet is a hard place to shine through. Any publishing site would give your book more buys in a day than what a custom one would give in a year. Reason is that they already have subscriber and an audience that keeps track of their releases. If you start by yourself you have a site that wont even appear on the first 500pages of google due to its lack of content, and even if your book is the best out there, no one would even know.

Not to mention that the whole pride of being a published writer is that you actually got a publisher to buy your book.

[Vivienne T]

There are self-publishing sites that are reliable and cost nothing to use, such as Lulu, Kindle, Kobo etc. They are all easy to use, but the issue is not that. The real issue is getting others to know it is there and to want to buy it. Contrary to what the other commenter suggests, publishers do very little indeed to publicise new books by new authors. I know a number of conventionally publishing authors who have to do a lot of work to promote their own books and they admit they had virtually nothing from their publishers in that respect.
Blogging is an excellent way of reaching the reading public, and it's easy enough to find and use a platform. Most are simple. I use Wordpress. But it takes time to build a presence and a following, which is part of having an author platform. Twitter is also a good place to explore but if you are there to solely sell a book, you'll find it a lonely place. Time to build a platform is before a book comes out.
I've used Kindle (and a print on demand company) to sell my books, and I do ok and sell fairly well fo my genre but writing the book is the easy part. Promotion is the hard part, and is time-consuming and takes away valuable energy from writing.
Good luck.