Tools I use and recommend
Writing: I use ‘MS Word’ to write my books. It does get cumbersome and slow when over 50K words, but I already have it, my editor (my wife) knows how to use it, so I stick with it. ‘Scrivener’ is recommended by lots of writers, they like it, they get $ to advertise it, but I haven’t tried it since there are only so many tools one can use.
Publishing: I currently only publish on Amazon. I started out using ‘Kindle Create’. It’s actually pretty good. I did the first series with it, but it would not let me format the chapter titles the way I wanted, so I found a tool called ‘Sigil’, it’s techy, but that’s okay with me. It lets me do exactly what I want since I’m actually editing the HTML that the ebooks use to display books. My nephew uses http://publishxpress.com/. It seems to work pretty well, I looked at the code for his book and it was very clean.
Editing: The bane of all writers is editing. It’s hard because you know what you meant to write, so you keep reading what you intended to write instead of what you actually wrote. You have to have a separate editor to review your work. I use three tools: ‘Word’ has a spelling and grammar checker, it’s pretty good; ‘Grammarly’ is free and it works well, although it has a small max word limit so I cut and paste my chapters one at a time (I don’t think the paid version is worth it if you’re writing fiction); and ‘Hemmingway’ which lets you know when you’re writing over your audience’s head. Not a problem for me, I keep getting scores down to the 2nd-grade level. I use ‘Dropbox’ to coordinate with my editor, plus it provides a backup and version history. I’ve had to go back a few versions to find something I accidentally erased or incorrectly changed. A real lifesaver.
Feedback: Get some feedback before you publish your book. It’s amazing the assumptions you make that turn out to be wrong. Much easier to fix before you publish. ‘Storyorigin’ provides tools to help you find people who will give you feedback. ‘Goodreads’ has a beta reading group that will help you out. ‘Goodreads’ will also help you get some reviews to get your book off the review floor.
Publishing: I currently only publish on Amazon. I started out using ‘Kindle Create’. It’s actually pretty good. I did the first series with it, but it would not let me format the chapter titles the way I wanted, so I found a tool called ‘Sigil’, it’s techy, but that’s okay with me. It lets me do exactly what I want since I’m actually editing the HTML that the ebooks use to display books. My nephew uses http://publishxpress.com/. It seems to work pretty well, I looked at the code for his book and it was very clean.
Editing: The bane of all writers is editing. It’s hard because you know what you meant to write, so you keep reading what you intended to write instead of what you actually wrote. You have to have a separate editor to review your work. I use three tools: ‘Word’ has a spelling and grammar checker, it’s pretty good; ‘Grammarly’ is free and it works well, although it has a small max word limit so I cut and paste my chapters one at a time (I don’t think the paid version is worth it if you’re writing fiction); and ‘Hemmingway’ which lets you know when you’re writing over your audience’s head. Not a problem for me, I keep getting scores down to the 2nd-grade level. I use ‘Dropbox’ to coordinate with my editor, plus it provides a backup and version history. I’ve had to go back a few versions to find something I accidentally erased or incorrectly changed. A real lifesaver.
Feedback: Get some feedback before you publish your book. It’s amazing the assumptions you make that turn out to be wrong. Much easier to fix before you publish. ‘Storyorigin’ provides tools to help you find people who will give you feedback. ‘Goodreads’ has a beta reading group that will help you out. ‘Goodreads’ will also help you get some reviews to get your book off the review floor.
Comments
Post a Comment