Hello fellow writer! By popular demand, here are some of the tools and resources that I have used as I self-published my first novel, All But What’s Left, and my collection of short stories, Magpie. I only recommend things I have tried, so you can be sure I love (and still use) these tools and resources. I hope you find them helpful too!
[Please note: some of these are affiliate links, so I may receive a small amount of money if you click on them.]
The Craft of Writing:
Here are my favourite books about the craft of writing, although there are so many good ones.
Story Genius by Lisa Cron (this book changed everything for me!)
Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorthy Wall
The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass (all of his books are great)
Still Writing by Dani Shaprio
Self-Publishing Help:
If you’re new to self-publishing (or indie publishing), check out these incredibly helpful humans. They have tons of free content, podcasts, and courses that will get you started on the path to publishing (and selling) books.
Joanna Penn – The Creative Penn
Mark Dawson – Self Publishing Formula
Nick Stephenson – Your First 10,000 Readers
For Writing:
I write in Scrivener and transfer to Word for my editor and proofreader. And then I run everything I write through Pro Writing Aid (which makes me feel terrible about myself, but ultimately makes my writing a whole lot cleaner ;)
Scrivener
Pro Writing Aid Writing Software
Editing, Proofreading & Covers:
I am lucky to have worked with some amazing editing and design professionals.
Editing:
A good editor is like a person diligently using a dish cloth to dry while you sloppily wash dishes by hand: they clean up the suds you missed during rinsing. Okay, that’s likely not the best analogy and the editors below would definitely flag it, but the point is, editors are an incredibly important part of the writing process.
Rachel Small (editor extraordinaire)
Maya Berger (editor extraordinaire)
Covers:
Covers sell books. The end.
JD Smith Design (cover design genius)
Displaced Snail Publications (divine handmade chapbooks)
Formatting eBooks:
Oh my goodness Vellum is brilliant. You can use Vellum to format books for print or any ereader. Super easy, super fast.It’s an investment up front, but wow does it pay off. The only thing Vellum won’t do is format is Large Print books, but I believe that functionality is in the works.
Vellum
Promoting Books:
I’m just getting into the land of book promotion, but here are a few tools that have helped me very much.
Keywords:
What’s a keyword, you ask? Keywords help people find your books. They are ideas or topics or other authors’ names or book titles related to your book. These are the things a person who might be interested in your book would type into a search bar.
When you use keywords for ads, or to tag your book on a platform, it makes it more discoverable by the people who are most likely to read it. Great success!
I search Amazon to find books and authors that my readers might like and add those to my keyword lists, but I also use a fancy keyword tool. KDP Rocket is designed specifically to help authors find the most relevant keywords for their books. This comes in reallly handy when you are creating ads for Amazon, Facebook, BookBub, Goodreads and other platforms, or for simply finding keywords to tag your book(s) with when you launch them online. It saves me hours and hours of time.
KDP Rocket
Promotions:
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway): when you self-publish your work, you need to promote it. Once you’ve bribed/guilted your friends and family and long-lost acquaintances into buying your book, you’ll need to find other readers. I’ve tried a bunch of different services and courses and spent a lot of time, effort and money along the way. Here are a few things I’ve found helpful.
Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors
Nicholas Eric’s curated list of promo sites (my secret weapon)
Amazon Marketing Services Course:
This course teaches you how to run ads on Amazon. And it’s free!
Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) Course
Design:
You can do so much with Canva for free it’s alarming. Use Canva to make convincing ads for Facebook/Instagram, BookBub and other social platforms.
Canva
Books About Publishing Books
I’ve read so many excellent books about publishing books that it’s tough to remember them all, but here are a few of my favourites.
- Strangers to Superfans: A Marketing Guide to the Reader Journey by David Gaughran
- Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert by Tammi Labrecque
- The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman
- The Indie Author Mindset: How changing your way of thinking can transform your writing career by Adam L. Croft
- Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author’s Guide by Brian D. Meeks
- Successful Self-Publishing: How to self-publish and marketing your book in ebook and print by Joanna Penn (all of Joanna’s non-fiction books are super helpful!)
Other Thoughts:
During my first year on my self-publishing journey, I’ve learned a ton. When I launch my second book, I’ll definitely do a lot of things different, and a few things the same. Here are my top five lessons.
- Spend your promotional budget wisely. You can spend a lot of money on promotional newsletter services without trying very hard. ALL THE MONEY. Over time I’ve established a few sites that work best for me and my books (and this differs by genre). I’ll share a list of my tried-and-true favourites at some point in the future, but in the meantime, check out Nicholas Eric’s list. As far as ads go, just start slow until you’ve had a chance to test out various ad copy and formats so you know what works before you ramp up your spending.
- You might have to give away free books to get reviews. Getting those glorious Amazon/GoodReads/BookBub/etc. reviews as an unknown author is tough. You can pay for expensive services to try to speed this process up legitimately; I didn’t have much luck with these. What did work was putting my novel in KDP Select and running free promos. I have also had a really good experience with VoraciousReaders (lovely people!) and Reader’s Favorite.
- Experiment with different formats. I launched with paperback and eBook versions of All But What’s Left, and assumed I’d barely sell any paperbacks after my family had ordered their copies. I was happily proven wrong when my paperback sales continued to rise after launch. I went on to create a Large Print version of the novel, and it has been even more successful than the paperback! Next up: I’ll be launching an audio version of the book in December to see how that does. As an indie, you have the option to put your book out in multiple formats – if you can find the money to do so, don’t limit your audience by only producing an eBook.
- Track everything. I just started doing this (insert super ashamed face here). I am now tracking my expenses and income by book monthly, and I have a much better view of how my promotion tactics are performing. It’s actually a fair bit of work to keep track of everything as I have yet to find one tool (aside from Excel) that will allow you to consolidate everything in one place. I use BookReport for sales stats from Amazon, QuickBooks for my business bookkeeping, and Excel to bring it all together.
- Get on with it and write another book. As important as it is to get your first book out into the world and help people discover it, it’s just as important to keep writing. The best marketing for your first book is your second book (or so I’m told – I’ll let you know next year :)
Missing Something?
I’ll keep updating this page as I learn more about self-publishing, but am happy to answer any questions you may have! Send me an email and let me know what you’d like me to add.