How to create an e-book people gladly trade their email for

An e-book that people gladly trade their contact details for has to offer what they cannot get from a search engine or an AI assistant: your own data, ready-made templates, cost calculations and processes from practice. ChatGPT or Google's AI Overview can summarise generic advice and definitions in seconds, so nobody will give you their email address for them. How do you create an e-book that works as a lead magnet? Choose the topic based on customer questions, put a summary on your website for free so AI cites you, and offer the full version through a short form with a clear benefit. Below you will find what to put in the e-book, which strategy to choose, where to place the form, five form examples with ready-to-use copy and how to build them in Quanda.

Key takeaways

1. An e-book only wins contacts with content AI cannot provide: your own data, templates, calculations, prices and mistakes from practice.
2. When Google shows an AI Overview, people click a result in only 8% of visits instead of 15%. According to Ahrefs, the click-through rate of the top result for queries with an AI Overview has dropped by 58%.
3. According to Seer Interactive, brands cited in an AI Overview have a 35% higher click-through rate. So put the e-book summary openly on your website and the full version behind a form.
4. The form has a results-focused headline, three benefits, one to three fields, an unticked consent checkbox and a button that says what people will get.
5. According to measurements with Quanda customers, animated forms collect up to two and a half times more contacts than forms placed statically on the page.
6. Deliver the e-book within a minute using an automation, and follow up with emails that help readers use the content.

In short: what to put in the e-book, which strategy to choose, where to put the form and what to do with the contacts

• What to put in the e-book: content readers cannot find elsewhere, such as your own survey, a price list based on your projects, contract templates or a calculator.
• Which strategy to choose: the summary for free, the full version for an email address. AI cites the free content, and the full version brings in contacts.
• Where to put the form: next to articles on the same topic, on a landing page and in an animated form shown after the visitor scrolls through part of the page.
• What to do with the contacts: send the e-book right away, the newsletter only with consent, and follow-up emails based on what the person downloaded.

What has changed since the article was first published: The article came out in March 2019 under the title 10 tips on how to create an e-book that will help you gain new contacts to your database. We rewrote it in October 2026. We added data on how AI Overviews in search reduce clicks, advice on what to put in an e-book so people want it even in the AI era, a choice of strategy, form placement, five form examples with ready-to-use copy and a walkthrough of Quanda's new form editor.

What is an e-book lead magnet

An e-book lead magnet is an electronic publication you offer in exchange for contact details, most often an email address. Website visitors know it as an e-book download: they fill in a form and the e-book arrives by email. A lead magnet is anything you give people in return for their contact details: an e-book, a checklist, a template, a calculator, a webinar or a case study. The e-book stands out because it can carry more content and more work, which is why people are more willing to sign up for it.

A well-made e-book works for you for years. It brings in new contacts, shows your expertise and gives you a reason to get in touch with people again. A poorly made e-book brings in a few addresses of people who never open it.

Which type of lead magnet suits which stage of the buying journey is covered in the article Lead magnets in B2B marketing: what brings in quality leads. Here we focus on the e-book: what to put in it, how to write it and how to build a form that sells it.

Why a generic e-book is not enough in the age of AI

Today, people get answers to most questions before they click on any website. Google shows AI Overviews (also called AI summaries) right in the search results, and more and more people go straight to ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. For an e-book, this means one thing: content that AI can summarise is no longer a reason to sign up.

What the data from 2025 and 2026 shows:

Source: data for the US, the UK and Germany. Comparable figures for other markets are not yet available, but Google shows AI Overviews in many languages and countries. The current state of how AI Overviews work is described in Google's help.

Seer Interactive's second finding is interesting too: brands cited in an AI Overview have a 35% higher click-through rate than brands that are not cited. The authors point out that part of the difference may come down to brand awareness. For your e-book, though, the advice is clear: content that AI cites brings you visitors who already know your company.

What this means for your e-book:

• Generic advice is free. People get "10 tips for writing a newsletter" from AI in seconds. For their email address, they want more.
• Specifics earn trust. AI does not have your numbers, your projects or your mistakes until you publish them.
• Free content gets you into AI answers. Assistants cite pages they can read. Content hidden behind a form cannot be read or cited.
• The form has to sell the result. Visitors decide in a few seconds whether the e-book is worth their email address.

What an e-book should contain so people want it

An e-book people want contains something they cannot find elsewhere and that saves them time or money. Ideally, things they can use right away: fill in, calculate, compare or present to their boss.

On the other hand, leave out of the e-book what readers will find in the first paragraph of Wikipedia or in an AI answer: definitions, the history of the industry, generic advice without numbers and a long introduction about your company. Such content can go into a freely available article where it brings traffic, but not behind a form.

Tip: The strongest e-books combine two things from the table. For example, a price list from your own projects plus a calculator, or a checklist plus document templates. Readers get a ready-made tool, not just text.

Which strategy to choose: gated, ungated or half and half

For most e-books, we recommend the half and half strategy: the summary openly available, the full version behind a form. Your strategy decides whether the e-book brings in contacts, traffic, citations in AI answers or all of them at once. You have three options.

In practice, publish an article on your website with a summary, the key findings, one sample template or table and a clear description of what else the e-book contains. Search engines find the article, AI assistants can cite your numbers along with your company name, and readers who are interested in the topic download the full version. They come to the form confident that the content is worth it.

How to create an e-book in 8 steps

The first six steps describe how to write an e-book, the last two are about the form and delivery. Plan for roughly two weeks of work, most of it spent collecting data and writing.

1. Define your goal and reader

Decide who you are writing the e-book for and what readers should be able to do or decide after reading it. "An online store owner who sets up their first three automated emails after reading it" is a goal. "People interested in email marketing" is not. The more precisely you describe your reader, the easier it is to write both the form headline and the content.

2. Choose the topic based on customer questions

Choose the topic based on questions from customers, sales and support, and validate it with a short survey. Ask your sales team what customers deal with before buying, and your support team what they are asked most often. Go through the most visited articles on your website and the search queries that bring people there. If you end up with several topics, send them to your existing contacts as a short poll and let them choose. The article 6 steps to create a survey shows how.

3. Fill the content with what AI cannot provide

Put into the e-book what readers cannot get from a search engine or an AI assistant: your own data, templates, calculations and processes from practice. Pick at least one content type from the table in the section What an e-book should contain so people want it. Try asking ChatGPT the question your e-book answers. Its answer is the minimum your e-book has to beat.

4. Write a title that promises a result

Write several titles that promise a specific result and pick the one that most appeals to your sales colleagues or customers. "Selling your flat without mistakes: 27 steps from valuation to handing over the keys" says more than "A guide to selling property". The title has to match the content, because a catchy headline that misses the topic causes more disappointment than excitement. And you do not have to start with it. It often comes once the text is finished.

5. Build the outline and watch the length

Build the outline around the steps to the result and keep the e-book short enough for readers to finish. Put the most valuable part at the start, such as the key findings or a ready-made table, not the history of your company. End each chapter with what the reader should do. Tips, real-world examples and exercises draw readers into action, and after the last page they will feel they have made progress.

6. Have the e-book designed and checked

Have the e-book professionally designed and proofread, and before publishing, show the draft to a few people from your target audience. The cover and the first page decide whether readers keep going, and inside, tables, charts and highlighted tips help. Typos undermine the trust you are building with the e-book. With permission, you can use feedback from your first readers as a testimonial next to the form. You can put the e-book together in Canva, which has ready-made e-book templates, while a graphic designer can handle more demanding design in Adobe InDesign. Publish it as a PDF: it opens on both computers and phones, keeps its layout and the links to your website stay clickable.

7. Build the form

Build a form with a headline, benefits, one to three fields, an unticked consent checkbox and a button that says what people will get. What to write in each part is covered in the section How to build an e-book form, and ready-made examples are in the section Five e-book form examples.

8. Deliver the e-book and follow up with emails

Use an automation to send the e-book right after the form is submitted and follow up with a few emails that help readers put the content to use. A contact who receives nothing more after the download will forget about you within a week. What to send is covered in the section What to send after someone downloads your e-book.

Try building an e-book form in Quanda

Where to place the e-book download form

An e-book form works best where people are reading about its topic right now. Offering a heat pump costing next to an article about heating makes sense. The same offer in the website footer hardly does.

An animated form appears at the moment you set, for example after a few seconds or after the visitor scrolls through part of the page. According to our measurements with several Quanda customers, animated forms collect up to two and a half times more contacts than forms placed statically on the page. How to set one up is described in the article Animated forms: a machine for new contacts.

How to build an e-book form: headline, description, benefits, fields and button

An e-book form is a short ad for its content. Within a few seconds, visitors decide whether the e-book is worth their email address, and these parts make the decision:

How many fields. Every extra field reduces the number of people who submit the form. According to Omnisend's 2025 data from more than a billion pop-up form views, forms with one to three fields convert at 2.1 to 2.2%, forms with four fields at 1.5% and forms with five or more fields at 1.4%. An email address is enough to deliver the e-book. In B2B, add at most one dropdown field, such as industry or company size, and use it to tailor your follow-up emails. Ask for a phone number and job title later.

Consent. Downloading an e-book does not in itself entitle you to send a newsletter. The form should therefore include a separate unticked consent checkbox, and you should deliver the e-book even to those who leave it unticked. Making the download conditional on newsletter consent does not pay off: under Article 7(4) of the GDPR, such consent is assessed for whether it was freely given, and European authorities usually do not consider it freely given. Double opt-in verifies the address.

Warning: A pre-ticked checkbox does not constitute consent. Put the full wording of the consent and the information on personal data processing on your website and link to them from the form. This article is not legal advice.

Five e-book form examples

The following examples show what an e-book form can look like in different industries and in different places on a website. The companies and numbers in them are fictional, and you can use the copy as a template. You can build all of them in Quanda's new form editor.

How to create an e-book form in Quanda

You build an e-book form in Quanda's new form editor. You put the form together with your mouse: drag in a headline, text, a cover image, fields, a consent checkbox and a button, and set the colours, font and animation. You design the desktop and mobile versions separately, as well as the thank-you page.

You then add the form to your website with a short code snippet. Quanda inserts it directly into the page as HTML, not as an iframe, so it loads quickly and takes on the look of your website. When and how it appears is set in the form animation.

When the form is submitted, an automation runs. It sends the email with the e-book, tags the contact based on the e-book, sets the consent details such as the purpose of processing and the expiry date, and notifies a sales rep. How to set up automations is described in the article Form automation: how to set it up and make the most of it.

Tip: In Quanda, forms are available in the custom package from the Standard level. You will find a step-by-step guide in the help article How to create and set up an active form.

Sign up and build your e-book form

Real-world examples of e-books and forms

Here is how companies with long experience of e-books and similar materials do it:

Quanda: 60+ catchy email subject line tips. Our own form offering subject line tips has been running since 2020. It has a single required field, the email address, and contacts receive the tips directly in the confirmation email. Over that time, it has brought in 446 contacts, and 7.1% of the people who saw it submitted it. The confirmation email was opened by 60.2% of recipients, and 9.2% clicked the button linking to more tips. A short form and instant delivery turn a simple list of tips into a reliable source of contacts.

HubSpot: The Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing. This email marketing guide for beginners is fully gated behind a form with seven required fields: first name, last name, email, role, phone, company website and number of employees. This is how HubSpot qualifies leads for its sales team. It works thanks to the strength of the brand and the size of its library. A smaller company that readers do not know would lose most of its prospects with such a long form.

Litmus: The State of Email. This report on the state of email marketing is based on a survey of almost 500 marketers, which means its own data that cannot be found anywhere else. The form asks for first name, last name, email and country, a confirmation of the privacy policy, and offers a separate unticked checkbox for consent to marketing emails. You get the report even without it. That is exactly how the download should be separated from consent. You can see it on the Litmus State of Email page.

Salesforce: State of Marketing. This report on the state of marketing shows the half and half strategy: you can read part of the report right on the website, and the full version only after filling in the form. Readers see the quality before they share their contact details.

Source: Quanda's own data, forms on the HubSpot, Litmus and Salesforce websites checked in October 2026.

What to send after someone downloads your e-book

The download is the start of a relationship, not the end. Send the first email right after the form is submitted, while the topic is fresh. People who get the e-book within a minute open it. People who wait an hour often no longer remember why they signed up.

After the first email, follow up with two or three more that help readers use the content:

1. Right away: the email with the e-book and a tip on where to start.
2. After 2 to 3 days: one specific piece of advice from the e-book explored in depth, or a short customer story.
3. After a week: an answer to the most common question on the topic and an offer of the next step, such as a consultation or a tailored costing.

Send the follow-up emails only to those who gave consent, or to your existing customers. Everyone else gets just the e-book. How to set up the series is described in the article Email automation: 8 scenarios that work for you.

Common mistakes when creating an e-book

Most e-books fail to bring in contacts because of a few recurring mistakes in the content, the form and the delivery:

• Generic content. An e-book full of advice people can get from AI disappoints, and next time the reader will not download anything.
• A headline about you, not the reader. "Our new e-book" does not say what people will gain.
• A long form. Asking for a phone number, job title and company on the first download puts off more people than the information is worth.
• Pre-ticked consent. It does not constitute valid consent and undermines trust.
• The form in the wrong place. An offer in the website footer or right on arrival does not tie in with what the visitor is reading.
• The e-book arrives late or not at all. Without an automation, people wait hours for the download and forget why they signed up.
• Silence after the download. A contact who receives nothing more will forget about you within a week.

Checklist: e-book and form

Before you launch the e-book, check the content, strategy, form and delivery.

• The e-book contains at least one thing readers cannot get from AI: your own data, a template, a calculation or a process from practice.
• A summary with the key findings is freely available on your website.
• The form headline promises a specific result.
• The form has three specific benefits and at most three fields.
• The newsletter consent checkbox is separate and unticked.
• The form has a personal data processing checkbox linking to the Privacy Policy.
• The button says what people will get.
• The form appears next to articles on the same topic, on a landing page and as an animated form.
• The mobile version is designed separately and does not cover the content.
• The e-book arrives automatically within a minute, and the contact is tagged based on the e-book.
• Follow-up emails are ready for those who gave consent.

How to create an e-book: summary

In the age of AI, an e-book does not win contacts just by existing. It wins them by offering something readers cannot get elsewhere, and with a form that clearly sells it within a few seconds. Put a summary on your website for free so both people and AI assistants can find you, offer the full version for an email address and, after the download, get in touch with something useful.

You can learn how to collect contacts in line with the GDPR in the free online course GDPR and email marketing in practice. And if you are not sure what to do with your form or e-book, get in touch and we will be happy to help.