Ensuring That Your E-Book Flows from Chapter to Chapter

Readers don’t want to be jolted from their enjoyment of your e-book by a jarring break between chapters or a confusing sequence of information. Your first editing task is to ensure that your e-book is working at its broadest level — chapter by chapter. Put aside the draft of your e-book for a week or two and then read it through in its entirety. Then follow these general steps:

1. Before you begin tinkering with the chapter order, be sure that you have no superfluous or missing chapters.

During the drafting process — often over several months or even years — you may have accidentally written repetitive or redundant chapters. You might also recognize that the original scope of your e-book has changed slightly or that you need to add material because your perspective has expanded.

2. When you’re confident that you have all the correct chapters, consider whether you’ve placed them in the optimum order.

Often, you see more than one logical way to arrange your e-book. Your task is to choose the order that best suits your target reader, as in these examples:

• An audience of busy executives: Give quick-to-implement tips in Chapters 1 and 2 and then dig into more in-depth material later.

• An academically minded audience: Give the theoretical side first and then move on to practical implementation.

• A novel aimed for a commercial genre: Follow chronological order from chapter to chapter. A more literary work can use flashbacks or other devices to present the story out of sequence.

• A collection of separate essays, short stories, articles, or blog posts: (You get no free pass.) Consider the overall structure and flow — which might require rearranging the order, creating themed sections, or adding a short introduction before each individual piece. Though readers of print books might dip in and out, readers of e-books are more likely to read sequentially.