Free Resources for Authors-Editing and Images tools
There are many perks to being an indie author. Indie authors have total control on how to market and write their books. The biggest detractor of being an indie author is you have to fund the book publishing and writing process yourself. When I published my first novel, What Goes Around Comes Around, I had no idea what the costs would be to bring this book to fruition. This post will let you know about some free resources available that you can use to edit and create graphics for your site or marketing campaigns.
I worked for several major publishing houses. I had access to a lot of resources. I was on the publicity team more specifically online publicity. All books had a marketing budget. Books being bestselling authors had a lot money thrown at them because the publishing company made most of their money on a few top selling authors. When a publisher loved an author and their books they put up a larger share of financial support.
Unfortunately this isn’t the reality for most authors. As an associate publicist, I often worked with new and upcoming authors. Unbeknowest to me, this helped me promote my own books on limited means. I had to put on many hats when working with .first time or very niche authors. The one thing I learned was to look for free things. The next thing I looked for was inexpensive things. In the spirit of collaboration I often bartered to get the best coverage and other perks for my authors.
I have listed a few free things you might want to look into as an indie author. I will be posting Free Resources for Authors on a regular basis. Feel free to pass along any free finds you know about in the comment section and share this post with anyone you think may benefit.
#1 Grammarly.com
I don’t know who turned me on to this site but I find myself turning to it often when I want to get a quick edit of my work. Grammarly offers a free version and then an upgrade that costs. Editing is so important for an author. You could have the best story but if it is filled with grammatical errors you will turn off readers and possible lose sales. I was at the Soulful Chicago Book Fair when a reader came up to me with a challenge. “I bet you can’t even right,” she said. I gave her a copy of the book and she read the first paragraph and then bought the book. I guess I had passed a test.
Editing is so important and I thank my editors Julia and Diane for looking over my blog pieces to catch my mistakes. I also use Grammarly a lot before I even send out stories to them for review to do a baseline edit. I consistently make the same editing mistakes when I am rushing and this program helps m find those errors and make the necessary correction.
#2 pexels.com
I was taking a class given by Terri Lomax and she has a six-point system of how to write better posts and one of the things she recommends is using graphics to boost your posts. (I will be writing a post in the very near future about what I learned in her free webinar.) Graphics can be costly so I am always looking for a fee alternative.
Erin Harris who I interviewed for the post What Every Author Websites needs turned me on to the pexels.com site. You can find photos for free to use on your pages. You can also contribute photos to the site. I love looking over this site because I get some great ideas about design. I am a writer but I understand the importance of images even if I cannot create them myself. I have to watch my budget so this free resource is something I use again and again.
#3 canva.com/
This site is awesome and the set up is a breeze and it is free. You can sign up via email or Google. Once you do that you are prompted to select choices that reveal what type of business you are working with. Of course, I selected writer/author. The next screen asks you what you want to create. This site is very easy to use even if you are not gifted in the area of creating graphics. You can use this site to create book covers, business cards, flyers and many other marketing pieces. They even have a guide that can show you how to use this program.