Under the category of Entrepreneurship, writing books on whatever topics you can allow a small to medium stream of secondary income.  It can also help establish your reputation in a particular field, and give you a way to communicate your ideas to a larger audience.  

With the recent advent of eBooks such as Kindle and print on demand, it's become relatively trivial to crank something out.  This short article will simply link to YouTube and other web resources to walk you through the process.  

Under the category of Entrepreneurship, writing books on whatever topics you can allow a small to medium stream of secondary income.  It can also help establish your reputation in a particular field, and give you a way to communicate your ideas to a larger audience.  

With the recent advent of eBooks such as Kindle and print on demand, it's become relatively trivial to crank something out.  This short article will simply link to YouTube and other web resources to walk you through the process.  

It is possible to publish a Kindle book directly from Word, but it's not recommended.  It is also possible to use a program called Vellum for the Macintosh, but that is $100-250 depending on the version.  Scrivener, while not perfect, is recommended.  At $40, it's a fairly trivial price.  There are versions for both Windows and Macintosh, and a limited version for iPad/iPhone.  Version 2 is current, and can create files for Kindle (.mobi) format.   It can also export to Word, PDF, and so on.  The current version has a few formatting limits, but most of these will be repaired in version 3, which should come out for the Macintosh in late 2017 and PC in 2018.

Before getting started, go to the Literature and Latte YouTube channel and get an introduction to Scrivener.  Decide from there if it's the right choice for you.  If you work on a Macintosh and have a higher budget, consider using Vellum instead.  (My Mac is currently not working, so I can't tell you if the reviews of this are accurate or not from experience.)

Scrivener is available for download at www.literatureandlatte.com.   You can install a license on up to five devices for PC with a PC license or five Macintosh systems, but you cannot mix the two.  The Mac version has a few extra features and is updated first in the development process.   Once your book is created, watch this video to see how to format the file for Kindle.  You can then watch this video to see how to upload it to Kindle Direct Publishing.

If you wish to then take your content and make a print book, you are actually better off doing it in Word.  You can export from Scrivener to Word format and then save that for upload as a print-on-demand book.  I have yet to do this but will post an update in a few weeks when I've completed one.