Useful Resources
This is a collection of useful resources for multiple self-publishing related topics - author websites, book marketing, book covers, tools , books and other things that can help you!
Useful Tools
Deposit Photos – if you need photos for your website or book cover Deposit Photos is a great choice. Not as expensive as other stock sites, but has huge selection (millions) of stocks and I’ve been using them for book covers and author websites myself for years.
MailerLite – create and manage an email list of your readers cheaply and conveniently. It has a free plan too and their prices are very competitive and are often cheaper than MailChimp (esp. for higher subscriber counts).
Siteground – the current best value for money host. Not the cheapest in the world but not expensive at all either. Great support, active blog and constant innovation makes them trustworthy and likeable.
Elementor – a WordPress plugin that makes designing your website a lot easier and even starts with free option! You can literally design your website without needing to code anything. Huge time saver!
Grammarly – a life saver!! Even has a free version! It’s a software that spell checks what you write in real-time and offers fixes. I’m a huge fan of it and my writing would have a ton more mistakes (so would cost more to proofread) without it. It also sends a weekly overview email which states how may wrote you wrote, how many mistakes you had and compares that to other Grammarly users. There is a Premium version with more advanced mistake check ups and fixes and even genre-specific writing style advice.
Book Sirens – a mini-Google for finding book reviewer blogs. Super useful tool to look for people who do reviews.
Master Bundles – a marketplace of design related bundles where you can find fonts, templates, stocks etc for very low prices.
Design Cuts – another website that has lots of design resources on sales, once a month they have a big bundle of design stuff for $29.
DIY Book Covers – as the name says, it’s a website and tool for those who want to DIY their book covers. Created by the formerly mentioned Derek Murphy from CreativIndie who is a good book cover designer and an indie author.
AppSumo – a website/email newsletter for great deals of all kinds. From stock photos, to all kinds of useful programs and online tools. AppSumo finds great deals and offers them for a certain period of time. Great thing to check out from time to time o just watch their emails. Can save a lot of money on useful tools.
Uptime Robot – a tool that tracks how reliable your website hosting is and how often the servers crash. It’s free and super easy to set up without technical knowledge. It’s a great way to see if your hosting company is doing a good job.
LastPass – if you tend to forget passwords for your online stuff this is a lifesaver! It’s a password manager for your Browser. Any time you create an account or log in for the first time, it asks if you want it to remember the login name and password for you so that next time you need to log in it automatically fills in the details. So you don’t need to remember your details anymore for all the websites and can log in with it.
Self-Publishing Blogs
BookBub Partners Blog – BookBub is not just the best advertising newsletter for authors these days but they also have a great blog with lots of useful information for self-publishing authors. Great, in-depth articles.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch – a very successful author with an incredibly diverse experience. She has been traditionally published, self-published and also runs a publishing house so her insights are coming from multiple POVs and her understanding of businesss side of things is awesome. Must read blog!
The Creative Penn – blog and a podcast by a successful indie author Joanna Penn. Lots of great advice on how to start and how to run your career, she quite transparently shares her own successes and losses.
The Book Designer – a great blog about book design and self-pub in general. Has been one of the main blogs about the topic for years.
Goins, Writer – another blog by a successful indie author. Full of great advice, inspiration and a great philosophy – Real Artists Don’t Starve!
Kristen Lamb’s Blog – lots of great articles about marketing and social media (she’s really good there!). And I’m not just saying it because of her hilarious use of GIF images.
David Gaughran – a bit of a watchdog blog for self-pub. Gaughran does good job researching and exposing BS practices by Amazon, service providers etc. He also has good understanding of marketing of books. Lots of good reading there!
Alliance of Independent Authors – a non-profit association for indie authors. Great blog and must use resource.
Book Launch – a blog by Tim Grahl who is a book marketing expert with lots of success and bestseller books for clients. Must read.
RockingBookCovers.com – features articles about things to know before working with a book cover designer (my website).
CreativIndie – blog by former cover designer now turned indie author, Derek Murphy. He’s doing lots of interesting stuff in book marketing, has lots of useful side projects for indies and is a good source of advice for all kinds of sel-pub stuff.
Jane Friedman’s blog – another great blog by long-time self-pub expert Jane Friedman. Must read for insights.
Writer Unboxed – great big blog(more like a magazine) about self-pub and writing where many experts come to contribute great articles.
Anne R. Allan’s blog – another great personal blog from an author. Lots of relatable and helpful posts.
Your Writer Platform – a great site by Kimberly Grabas. Lots of great posts about building up your ‘author platform’ (website,emai list etc).
Writing-World – a huge website about writing with 1000+ articles on all topics related to it.
Tutorials and Courses
Skillshare – a place where you can find over 24000 courses of all kinds from writing fiction, marketing, drawing, to knitting or photography etc. Lots of web design courses to watch to get better at it. Superb place for us creatives!
Elementor on YouTube – official channel for the main WordPress page builder I recommend. Good videos on how to use it and constant updates on new features.
WP Crafter – a great channel for non-techies on Youtube about running your own WordPress website, tools and plugins for it etc. The guy tests plugins, themes and reports back, gives advice on what to choose etc. Very useful channel.
Podcasts and YouTube Channels
Self-Publishing Formula – podcast by super successful indie author Mark Dawson who not only writes well but has also helped thousands if indies with Facebook advertising. Must listen.
Chris Fox’s Channel – a very successful indie author with great books like 5000 Words Per Hour or Write to Market. He’s got lots of good video about all publishing related topics on Youtube.
Groups and Forums
20Booksto50k – an awesome Facebook group about book marketing. Possibly the most useful one. Huge but still isn’t contaminated with spam and pitches. Lots of advice and help given. Owner Michael Anderle has bold audatious goals and shares lots of great advice for free (while doing great as indie author himself), he’s also doing fantasticly well with his fiction books.
Writer’s Sanctum – a newer and, currently, smaller but active forum for indies.
Writer’s Cafe on Kboards – one of the oldest, biggest indie author forums online. Thousands of members and lots of good threads.
SPF Community – another great Facebook group for authors, run by another very successful indie author Mark Dawson.
This is not the final list of resources. I’ll update them as I find new ones. If you find it useful, please share it or any article with your author friend who might need it!