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An ebook is still the easiest first digital product you can make. You don’t need a course platform, a videographer, or a launch team. You need something useful to say and a way to package it so people will happily pay for it.

That second part is where most people stall. Writing 40 pages from scratch feels enormous, and formatting a book in a word processor is its own special misery. This is the gap AI tools have closed. In this tutorial I’ll walk you through the workflow I recommend: build the ebook with Designrr, a tool made specifically for turning existing content into books, then sell it through Payhip.

One honest note before we start: AI can draft, structure, and format for you, but it cannot make the book worth buying. That part stays your job, and I’ll point out exactly where your input matters most.

What you’ll need

  • Source material: old blog posts, a podcast transcript, workshop notes, or at minimum a clear outline
  • A Designrr account — plans start at $29/month, and the Standard plan covers a text-based ebook
  • A Payhip account to handle checkout, delivery, and VAT
  • Two to four focused hours, spread over a few days if that suits you better

How to create an ebook with AI, step by step

Step 1: Decide what the ebook is actually for

Before you touch any tool, choose: is this a free lead magnet or a paid product? A lead magnet should solve one small, specific problem in 10 to 20 pages. A paid ebook needs to go deeper and deliver a complete result someone would pay for. This one decision changes the length, the depth, the cover, and the price, so don’t skip it.

Step 2: Gather the content you already have

The fastest ebooks are assembled, not written. If you’ve been blogging for a year or two, you probably have a book’s worth of material sitting on one theme already — you just haven’t seen it as a book yet. Pull together the five to ten posts that fit your topic. If you’re newer and don’t have an archive, that’s fine too; you’ll simply lean harder on the AI drafting in the next step. And if you’re still building that archive, my ultimate guide to blogging is the place to start.

Step 3: Import or draft inside Designrr

Designrr’s core trick is importing. You paste in the URLs of your blog posts, or upload Word and Google Docs files, and it pulls the content into a book project with the formatting handled. For gaps in the manuscript, its built-in AI writer (Wordgenie) can generate an outline and chapter drafts from a topic prompt. My advice: let Designrr assemble the skeleton from your existing content first, then use the AI only to fill holes — an intro here, a missing chapter there. Books built this way sound like you, because most of the raw material is you.

Step 4: Edit like an editor, not a typist

Here’s the part nobody selling you an AI dream mentions: raw AI drafts are competent and completely forgettable. Your job in this step is to add the things AI can’t — your stories, your examples, your opinions, the mistakes you made so your reader doesn’t have to. Cut the filler sentences that state the obvious. Check every fact and number the AI produced, because it will occasionally invent them with total confidence. This step takes longer than generating the draft did. That’s normal, and it’s what separates an ebook people finish from one they refund.

Step 5: Design the cover and layout

Designrr ships with template libraries and cover designs, so pick one close to your vibe and adjust colors and fonts to match your brand. Resist the urge to overdesign. A clean, readable layout with consistent headings beats a decorated one every time. The cover matters more than the interior — it’s what shows on your sales page — so spend your fussing budget there.

Step 6: Export the right format

For selling on your own site, export a PDF — it’s what buyers expect and it looks the same on every device. If you also want e-reader formats, the Pro plan and up adds Kindle and ePub-style exports plus flipbooks, but honestly, for a first product a well-made PDF is plenty. Don’t let format perfectionism delay your launch.

Step 7: Set up your Payhip product page

Now the selling part. I like Payhip for a first ebook because it’s genuinely simple: upload the PDF, write your sales copy, set a price, and it handles checkout, instant delivery, and EU VAT for you. You can start on their free plan, which takes a percentage of each sale instead of a monthly fee — check current pricing on their site. Write the product description around the result your reader gets, not the number of pages.

Step 8: Launch it to your list, even a tiny one

An ebook without a launch just sits there. Send it to your email list in a short series: one email announcing it, one answering objections, one last-call. Twenty warm subscribers beat a thousand cold Instagram followers for a launch like this. If your list barely exists yet, this product is the perfect excuse to fix that — my ultimate guide to email marketing walks you through the setup.

Pro tips and common mistakes

  • Don’t publish the first draft. The single biggest mistake. AI-generated books that skipped human editing are flooding every marketplace, and readers can smell them. Yours has to be better to sell.
  • Read it out loud once. Awkward AI phrasing hides from your eyes but not your ears.
  • Price on outcome, not page count. A 30-page ebook that solves a painful problem can cost more than a padded 120-page one.
  • Add affiliate links inside the ebook for tools you genuinely recommend, with a disclosure. It turns a one-time sale into ongoing income. I learned this properly from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing, the $197 course by Michelle Schroeder-Gardner (who built a $50k+/month affiliate income) — it’s the course I took myself.
  • Make a mini version as a lead magnet. Chop out one chapter, give it away for email signups, and let it sell the full book for you.

FAQ

Can you really create an ebook with AI?

Yes — AI handles the heavy lifting of drafting, structuring, and formatting. Tools like Designrr assemble a book from your blog posts or generate chapters from prompts. What AI can’t do is supply your experience and stories, which is exactly what makes an ebook worth paying for. Plan to spend real time editing.

Is it allowed to sell AI-generated ebooks?

On your own site or via Payhip, yes — you set the quality bar. Marketplaces have rules, though: Amazon KDP, for example, requires you to declare AI-generated content when you publish there. Wherever you sell, a heavily edited, genuinely useful book is both safer and more profitable than raw AI output.

How long does it take to make an ebook with AI?

If you’re assembling from existing blog posts, a focused weekend is realistic: a few hours for import and drafting, and the bulk of your time on editing and the cover. Starting from scratch with AI drafts, give yourself one to two weeks of part-time work so the editing doesn’t get rushed.

What should I charge for my ebook?

Most self-published ebooks in the blogging and business space sell somewhere between roughly $9 and $47, depending on how specific and valuable the outcome is. Lead magnets are free by definition. Start at a price you can say out loud without flinching, and test upward from there.

Do I need Designrr, or can I use free tools?

You can absolutely build an ebook in Google Docs or Canva for free — it just takes longer and the formatting fights you. Designrr earns its $29/month when you’re importing lots of existing content, want polished templates, or plan to make more than one ebook. For a single tiny freebie, free tools are fine.

That’s the whole system: pick a real problem, assemble what you know, let AI do the grunt work, and put your name on something you’re proud of. Head over to Designrr and turn the content you already have into an ebook you can actually sell — the sooner it exists, the sooner it can earn.