Home / Academy / STEP-BY-STEP COURSES

GONDAL AI ACADEMY / PRACTICAL STEP-BY-STEP COURSES

Write your first short eBook with AI, step by step

A short eBook — 30 to 60 honest pages — is the most finishable book there is, and the one readers actually complete. The method here is strict about one thing: the expertise is yours. AI organises, expands, and polishes your material; it never invents your experience. A book built that way is one you can stand behind at any book club, job interview, or family dinner.

What you need: one subject you know from real life, your own notes or stories about it (voice memos count), and any AI chat. Length target: short. A finished 40-page book beats an abandoned 200-page one at everything.

The steps

1. Pick one problem and one reader. Narrow until it hurts: not “gardening” but “growing tomatoes on a small Canadian balcony, for a first-timer.” One reader you can picture, one problem you have personally solved or survived. The title will come from this sentence later.
   Copy-paste prompt

   I want to write a short eBook. My subject is [subject] and what I know comes from [your real experience]. Help me narrow it: ask me five questions, one at a time, until we can finish this sentence — 'This book helps [specific reader] to [specific result], without [common painful obstacle].' Do not suggest the topic for me; sharpen mine.

2. Outline five to seven short chapters. Each chapter = one step of the reader's journey, ending with something they can do. Ask for the skeleton, then argue with it using your real experience — you will spot a missing chapter the AI cannot, because you have lived the subject and it has not.
   Copy-paste prompt

   Build an outline for a short eBook that helps [reader] to [result]. Five to seven chapters, each one step of the journey, in the order a beginner actually needs them. For each chapter: a working title, the three points it must cover, and one practical exercise or checklist the reader does at the end. Flag any chapter that sounds like filler.

3. Draft chapter by chapter — from YOUR material. This is the step that decides whether the book is yours or generic. For every chapter, feed the AI your notes, your stories, your numbers first — then let it build the draft around them. Never ask it to write a chapter from the outline alone; that is how competent, forgettable mush is made.
   Copy-paste prompt

   Draft chapter [number], '[chapter title]', from MY material below. Rules: use my examples and my facts; where my material is thin, write [NEEDS MY INPUT] instead of inventing; match the plain, friendly voice of my notes. About [word count] words. My notes: [paste your notes, stories, steps]

   Checkpoint

   You should now have: one full chapter draft where every story and fact in it is verifiably yours.

4. The honesty and voice pass. Read every chapter aloud — the voice problems you cannot see, you will hear. Then hunt for the three failure modes: claims you cannot back up, advice you have never actually followed, and sentences that sound like a brochure instead of a person.
   Copy-paste prompt

   Read this chapter draft critically. List: (1) any claim that needs evidence or softening, (2) anything generic that could appear in any book on this subject, (3) the three sentences that least sound like a real person wrote them. Do not rewrite yet — just show me the problems.

5. Title, subtitle, and description — honestly. The title carries the promise from step 1 — and nothing beyond it. If the book teaches balcony tomatoes, the title does not get to promise a farm income. Ever. Ask for options, then pick the truest one, not the loudest.
   Copy-paste prompt

   Give me eight title options for this book: [one-line promise + chapter list]. Each title must promise ONLY what the book delivers — no income claims, no miracle language, no 'secret' unless the book genuinely reveals one. For each, write the matching subtitle that carries the specifics.

6. Assemble, cover simply, and decide how it reaches readers. Assemble the chapters in a document, one clean pass for consistency (the same term spelled the same way throughout), and a simple cover: title large, one image, your name — clarity beats cleverness at thumbnail size. Then your book is yours to share or sell through the usual ebook storefronts or your own site, on the terms those places set. The book itself is the asset; where it lives is a detail you can change later.
   Checkpoint

   You should now have: a finished manuscript, a clean honest title, and a cover you could read on a phone screen.

Common mistakes (skip these)

• Letting the AI write from nothing. No notes in, generic mush out. The chapters built from your stories are the whole reason this book should exist.
• Promising outcomes in the title. Income, miracles, transformations — if the book cannot guarantee it, the cover cannot either. Honest titles build the only reputation worth having.
• Aiming at 200 pages. Length is not value. A tight 40 pages that solves the problem gets finished, recommended, and read twice.
• Skipping the read-aloud pass. Your ears catch the brochure-voice and the wobbly claims your eyes skim past — every time.