Blogs, Books, and Newsletters
David Gaughran
Well researched, fact-based, practical advice about publishing and book promotion. David has published several books about self publishing, and brings out a regular newsletter with tips for writers.
Groups & Forums
Indie Authors Ascending Discord a business-minded server that focuses on self-publishing. It is a server for authors run by authors.
r/KeepWriting: a Reddit community dedicated to motivating writers to stay consistent and constantly grow their craft.
r/selfpublish: a Reddit community to discuss just about everything in the world of indie books. No self promotion allowed.
Shut Up and Write free writing sessions where writers show up and write alongside each other. There’s no critique and no one reads your work.
Book Threads A hashtag on Threads for discussing everything books and writing related.
Publishing and Distribution Platforms
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing Amazon’s self publishing platform for print and ebooks.
Ingram Spark self-publishing company to globally distribute your print and ebooks
Draft2Digital distributes ebook and print books to all the major retailers online, plus hundreds of storefronts worldwide.
Kobo Writing Life Rakuten Kobo’s self-publishing platform.
Publishing Guides
Amazon KDP guides:
- Criteria for creating book covers
- How to choose categories
- Making your book discoverable with keywords
Promoting and Selling Books
Books2Read Universal Book Linker to redirect to all the sites a book is available, and match that to the viewer’s country.
Book Sirens directory of book reviewers.
Software
Affinity Free. Image editing and layout
Calibre Free. Ebook management program useful for converting to different formats.
Kindle Previewer Free. Preview ebooks and convert to different formats.
Obsidian Free. Powerful note-taking and knowledge management, for organizing notes, planning, and writing.
Scapple Not Free. Lightweight mind-mapping to organize ideas.
Scrivener Not Free. Powerful, flexible, clean writing program designed for writers.
Sigil Free. EPUB editing software for creating and updating EPUB files.
Vellum Free. Create ebooks. For Mac