SFA 047 – Tech and Tools That We Find Useful as Full-time Authors

For today’s episode, Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay talk about the various programs they use for writing, marketing, and productivity. We decided to do a later episode entirely on newsletters and mailing list tools, so we didn’t mention those here, but we’ve got lots of other stuff!
Before jumping into that, Andrea shares why she canceled her pre-orders, and Lindsay share tips from an ADHD video on motivation that may be useful to all who struggle with getting things done. Jo acknowledges some of the difficulties of his year of working on new installments in old series rather than launching something new.
Writing Tools:
Scrivener
MS Word /Office 365
Google Docs (especially for collaboration)
Good old pen and paper
Notes app on the phone
Keyword / Market Analysis Tools:
Publisher Rocket
AMZ Suggestion Expander (plug-in for Google Chrome)
K-Lytics
Administration / Time Management Tools:
Quality Time phone app
A Pomodoro Timer (Jo likes Focus 10 for Windows)
Lindsay goes old school and just turns off the wi-fi and mutes the phone and puts it in another room.
Trackerbox for Windows (importing sales reports from all stores)
Formatting Tools:
Vellum for the Mac – formats ebooks and paperbacks
Calibre
Adobe InDesign
Graphics / Ad Design Tools:
GIMP – a free Photoshop alternative
Inkscape – a vector art editor similar to Illustrator (Jo uses this for logos)
Canva – for social media graphics and ads
Book Brush – graphics for social media and ads specifically for authors
Other Tools:
Natural Reader – a free program that reads what you copy and paste into it back to you
Zim Desktop Wiki – turn your story bible into a linkable wiki
Bookfunnel – ebook delivery
Books2Read – custom nameable link that links to your book in all stores + link tracking (we forgot to mention this one in the show but all use it)
Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing the show.