SFFMP 217: Tools and Software for Authors + Getting More Fan Engagement on Twitter and Facebook
This week, the guys talked about the various tools and services they use as professional authors. Everything is listed below with links to the sites. The guys also gave some tips for increasing engagement on Facebook and Twitter and really using those social media platforms to help turn casual readers into fans–and maybe even attract new fans!
Tools/services for authors
Writing
Formatting
Mailing list provider
Easy ebook delivery
Sales tracking
Stock Photos for ads or social media posts
News
- Kboards Writers’ Cafe
- Various Facebook groups for authors
Analyzing the market or looking up keywords for ads
- K-Lytics (Lindsay likes their semi-annual science fiction and fantasy reports, which you can buy without a subscription)
- KDP Rocket
Creating ads/photo manipulation/temporary covers
Storage/backup
Are there any tools that we didn’t mention that you would recommend (no self-promo, please)?
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I’m a big fan of yWriter. It does everything I need it to do, including drag and drop and renumber scenes; allows you to tag scenes by character, POV, setting, items; publish to word processor format or epub. It works through dropbox and has an android client.
Thanks for the recommendation, LJ!
Great podcast. Thanks.
Care to share some of the FB groups relating to news?
Most of the ones I’m in are private, but you can definitely join the 20Booksto50K group there. https://www.facebook.com/groups/781495321956934/
There are so many posts that it can be hard to keep up, but sometimes things will break there. And then you can hunt around for smaller ones related to your genre that can be useful.
When you guys mentioned Calibre I went to the website. I’d heard of it, but forgotten exactly what all it did.
Anyway, when reading about the history of the project, I discovered Joe’s pronunciation (according to the creator of the program) is RIGHT.
Joe, you’re not bad at pronouncing words- calibre is the British spelling of caliber and on the About tab of the History page on the Calibre website Kovid Goyal, the creator of Calibre says “The name calibre was chosen by my wife, Krittika. The libre in calibre stands for freedom, indicating that calibre is a free and open source product, modifiable by all. Nonetheless, calibre should be pronounced as cali-ber, not ca-libre.”
Hey Jo – Although you’re in the US, most Canadians would say Calib-er, so maybe you don’t need to worry about it. Metre, theatre, fibre … I say calib-er, too. Saying Calibrè seems odd to me – it’s not spelled with the Accent Grave, so it never crossed my mind to say it that way.
Oh well, it’s Friday morning and I really need to stop thinking about this.
So much good stuff in this episode – really nice to see you all on your game, even with Jury Duty in the mix.
I use LibreOffice Writer for my writing. It is much easier to use than Word, and more reliable (less crashes). And completely free (and open source). I have Word as well, but don’t like it.
Calibre is pronounced Kal-ee-ber
I use Adobe InDesign for formatting books for print, and Adobe Photoshop for the covers.
Affinity Photo – it’s all of Adobe Photoshop, with some enhancements and a low price of $50 (and no subscription!).
For open-source/free software, Sigil (for ebooks) and Scribus (for print). They have learning curves, but the cost and Windows-friendly aspects can be worth it.
WriteMonkey is fantastic for distraction-free writing. And it’s free.
Seconding LibreOffice.
And seconding Vellum. If you have access to a Mac, Vellum makes ebook/print layout incredibly easy and fast.