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Consumer's Guide for Writers

Reviews of writing and publishing companies, tools, and services

Spend your time and money wisely! Use this consumer's guide to figure out which products, tools, and services you need to help you write, edit, format, design, fund, publish, sell, market, and promote your books and do business as an author. Monthly updates with email address.

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About

About

About the Book

Spend your time and money wisely! Use this consumer's guide to figure out which products, tools, and services you need to help you write, edit, format, design, fund, publish, sell, market, promote your books and do business as an author. Take all the doubt out of your decisions about what use in your journey as and keep this reference handy. Monthly updates with email address.

Author

About the Author

Carla King

Carla King is the founder of the Self-Publishing Boot Camp educational program of books, workshops, and online course and hosts the Author Friendly Podcast, an interview program to talk with the people who make the products, tools, and services for independent authors. Her comprehensive Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Authors is now in its fourth edition. She has written for Bowker’s Self-Published Author, BookWorks, PBS MediaShift, and penned the Book FormattingBook Distribution, and Book Discovery guides for IngramSpark. Carla works with the San Francisco Writers Conference as Independent Publishing Track Leader and Director of Business Development.

Carla spent years as a technical writer and transitioned to travel technology journalist. She freelanced at PC World and other magazines in the early days of portable computing. This paved the way for a career as an adventure travel writer and she has contributed to many magazines and anthologies. With her writing group, the Wild Writing Women, she self-published Wild Writing Women: Stories of World Travel, in 2001, which was wildly successful until it was sold to a NY publishing house where it has languished for years.

Carla's first self-published book was a guidebook Cycling the French Riviera in 1995. Other books Carla has authored include Stories from Elsewhere: Travels on Two and Three Wheels and American Borders: A circumnavigation of the United States on a Russian sidecar motorcycleShe is working on another memoir about a solo motorcycle trip through China. She splits her time between Dana Point and San Francisco, California.

Contents

Table of Contents

ICreating Your Book

1.Interior Design and Formatting

2.Plain Text Writing & Formatting Tools

3.Book Cover Design

4.Ebook, Document and Image Conversion

5.Custom Publishing Services

6.Editing Services

  1. IIDistributing Your Book

7.Distribution Services

8.Direct to Retailer Services

9.Full-Service Formatting, Design, and Distribution

  1. IIIMarketing Your Book

10.Market Research and Competitive Analysis

11.Critique Partners and Beta Readers

12.Book Review Services and Software

13.Trade Reviews

14.Email Marketing

15.Websites and Blogs

16.Marketing Ads and Apps

17.Copywriting Services

  1. IVSelling Your Book Direct

18.Direct Sales Tools

19.E-Commerce Solutions

  1. VDoing Business

20.Online Marketplaces

21.Book Sales Tracking Software

22.Writing Software

23.Editing Software

24.Business and Productivity

25.Crowdfunding Tools

26.Affiliate Programs

27.Book Translation Services

28.Writing Around the World

Suggested Reading

Author and Publisher Organizations

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About the Author

Acknowledgements

There’s lots more where this came from!

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