Before I launch into the meat of this post, I have an update on Blue Gentian. Or, I guess I should say that I’m hoping it won’t be an update but it might be. Amazon has lost the 2nd Galley of Blue Gentian in the mail, sent it to the BFE, and now they don’t know when it will be here. “If you haven’t heard by Friday let us know,” they say. Which is 12 days AFTER my original delivery date. For which I already waited several days for them to print the thing.
That’s frustrating, but what’s worse is that I may need to postpone publication of the hard copy. I’m optimistic that my cover will be a good resolution and the insides will look great. But if they don’t, I’ll need to do another Galley round and God knows when Amazon will get its act together with this one.
Alright, vent finished. Now to the actual purpose of this post:
I wanted to just mention some tools I’ve been using that make writing, editing, and selling a better process, in case you’re interested. I’ve been getting a lot of questions now that my book is coming out, and I’m not sure if everyone knows about these. They basically make my writing life possible.
Firstly, Amazon has a plug-in for Word that’s free to download that makes it AMAZINGLY easy to format your novel for Kindle publication. I had heard horror stories about getting this to work and was prepared to spend months formatting, but instead it all went like buttah. I highly recommend, especially because it’s free.
For the writing of the actual novel, I also recommend Scrivener. It’s a great program that allows you to draft and drag your novel in pieces so you can manage the flow better as you’re writing. Even better? It exports into Manuscript Format, so you don’t have to worry about that jazz yourself. Totally worth the $45 to to have the program forever. And if you’re a Nanowrimo winner, it’s just half that. How can you not buy Scrivener at that price?
Editing? You can’t go wrong with Auto Crit. Their software is a little pricey – I shell out for the one that’s just under $30 for the month. But it’s been INVALUABLE in editing the novel. It recognizes chapters, analyzes your writing based on its genre, and is altogether wonderful for tightening prose, finding repetition and cliche, and making your work a million times better while keeping it your work still.
Lastly, if you are looking for art I recommend Canva to almost everyone I meet. They have thousands of free templates for you to use, let you upload your own images, and even offer the paid stuff at only $1 each. I end up looking beautifully designed for nothing. They even have Kindle covers ready to go.
I’m sure there are a million other programs that help a lot with this whole Self-Published Author thing but these are the ones I find I’m using constantly. Good luck on your own journey.
Casey E. Hamilton 