Magic is where you find it – in a garden.
Indie Publishing Resources
Many wonderful people in the writing, publishing and reading communities have helped me in my journey as a conventionally published author. This indie stuff is something I’m coming later to in my writing life. This is a way of giving back. I am not selling how-to books or how-to courses.
Educate yourself! Don’t pay money for courses until you’ve read a great deal and listened to multiple podcasts. Indie publishing isn’t for everyone.
Hit the ground running, indie author!
Indie Author Giants
Mark Dawson, Self-Publishing Foundation podcasts.
King of the inde authors, great free podcasts
The Creative Penn Podcasts–Queen of the indie authors, author Joanna Penn. Great free resources.
Nick Stephenson–Your first 10,000 readers. Free stuff.
Jane Friedman blog. Another fantastic industry resource.
David Gaughran, Irish self-publishing marketing guru.
Alessandra Torre, NY Times best-selling author. Her courses are either for other best-selling writers or complete newsbies. Take the free stuff.
K-Lytrics blog–I take their free stuff.
Marketing and getting ready to launch
Trish Hopkinson, marketing for indie poets. Surprises even for pros.
KDP, Selecting browse categories
Book Blogger List. Reviewers must post every couple of months, minimum, to stay on the list.
ALLI, How to set up automated emails for reader magnets.
11 Creative Ways Writers Launched Their Books
Making Free book trailers. What will people think of next? This looks like great fun. I’m going to try it.
Need to know
The Alliance of Independent Authors blog, Self Publishing advice–free, knowledgeable lots of articles. Writer, educate thyself! ALLI is a global organization.
The GoodEReader, Digital publishing news
2021 Comparison of Book Aggregators
Choose both IngramSpark and D2D
IngramSpark–This is a real, we’ll do it for you, just fork over the money kind of site. But interesting. Note: indie publishing expert David Gaughran says that D2D interface is “four billion times easier to use than IngramSpark.”
Draft to Digital. D2D has a good reputation with folks who blog about indie publishing.
Dave from Kindlepreneur compares 4 self-publishing courses. Dawson and Stephenson are the names I’m familiar with. His assessment of those two courses seem pretty spot on.
Sterling and Stone, quirky tips on indie-book-related topics.
Tools!
Photofunia, free, create graphics for blogs and instagram. The key words for are “easy” and “fun”.
Also, Remove background from photos, takes five seconds.
Canva, fantastic FREE design site. Works even for folks like moi with very limited design or photo manipulation background. Use for logos, Instagram, resizing photos.
Book Funnel–very affordable system that supports indie authors to gets their books into customers’ hands. It’s neat because it of delivers your ebooks to a multitude of reading platforms. Must-have if you are offering a book for free download.
Book covers
My very firm recommendation: don’t even think about: a) designing your own cover or b) cheaping out. Doubt me? Go to your nearest indie bookstore and check out the section where your own published book would be shelved. Which covers attract you? A friend and I did this and we laughed. I told her I could pull out any YA fantasy books that I’d like to read just from the spine–and I was right! There’s an ethos with each genre that pro e-book cover designers are very familiar with. Spend a lot of time looking. Check out covers from writers whose work you admire and buy! Educate yourself for weeks before you commit.
BespokeBookCovers.com I have had very happy dealings with Peter O’Connor. He has done three covers for me. I really like his design sense and he’s been great about making the tweaks I’ve asked for. Have never needed more than that! Timely, professional, courteous.
Joanna Penn’s recommendations. Look at lots of covers in the genre you’re writing in. Do NOT assume I like more than one or two designers in this whole list.
Books Covered is who Mark Dawson uses. Very very busy. Takes orders months in advance.