Resources
From Category: Business, Marketing, and Technical Resources
In Substack We Trust: Navigating the Tension Between Powerful Tools and Platform Dependency
Publishing industry expert Jane Friedman interviewed several successful Substack newsletter authors at a June 2025 panel at NonFictionNow about the pros and cons of the platform, how and whether to monetize your newsletter audience, and barriers to discoverability of lesser-known writers. Panelists were book critic Ann Kjellberg, novelist Amran Gowani, and political journalist Noah Berlatsky. This transcript is hosted on Berlatsky's Patreon.
Tertulia
Tertulia is a no-frills website builder for authors who don't want to tinker with complex software programs. They have a library of website templates designed to showcase books, and an email capture tool that integrates with popular newsletter programs like Mailchimp. Pricing is under $10/month.
Convertio
Convert your files to 300+ different formats with Convertio, a subscription-based online tool that starts at $9.99 a month for files up to 500 MB, with higher price tiers for larger files and conversion volume.
Queer-Owned Bookstores to Love and Support
This 2024 list from Electric Literature features queer-owned independent bookstores to consider for your book tours and purchases, from lesbian-owned Bookends in Florence, MA to outposts in Midwestern and Southern conservative states.
PodMatch
PodMatch is a digital marketplace for helping podcasters and interviewees find each other. Hosts and guests can fill out profiles describing their audiences, areas of expertise, and possible topics. Using AI, PodMatch will generate suggested guests for your podcast and vice versa. While the site is not specifically literature-focused, it can be useful for authors to find podcasters with an interest in their book's topic or a similar target audience.
Printed Matter
Founded in 1976, NYC-based Printed Matter is the leading nonprofit dedicated to promoting artists' books and zines. Their website includes a state-by-state list of book and zine fairs, news of upcoming exhibitions, and the opportunity to have your book sold in their bookstore and website.
Pride Book Tours
Sasha Zatz's Pride Book Tours connects LGBTQ authors with social media outlets that will feature their new books. Many of these bloggers also write thoughtful reviews of the book on Goodreads. As of 2024, the fee was 105 pounds to be featured on over a dozen Instagram book review sites, which is a fraction of the cost of an advertisement in most trade journals.
The Novelry
The Novelry offers a variety of online workshops and coaching for novel-writers. Get help with plotting, editing, and staying on track to finish your book. A bonus feature is that they will work with graduates of their courses to pitch their books to literary agents. See their website for success stories.
Stunning Design Examples to Inspire Your Book Advertising
This 2024 article from the e-book bargains site BookBub showcases 25 well-designed advertisements for books in various genres and explains what makes them so effective.
How to Write Attention-Grabbing Promo Copy for Books
In this guest post on the book marketing website BookBub, M.J. Rose, founder of the ad agency AuthorBuzz, gives detailed advice about writing your ad copy and targeting it to different audiences.
Translation Shop
Translation Shop is an online clearinghouse for finding certified translators for your official documents, business communications, or academic papers. Their site representative explains, "We are ATA certified, which offers objective evidence that a translator possesses the knowledge and skills necessary to provide a quality translation."
The Innocent Loss of First Rights
In this 2023 article for the writing resource site AuthorsPublish, Craig Westmore explains what "unpublished" means in contest and magazine submission guidelines, and how to avoid inadvertently making your work ineligible. Complicating the issue is the fact that journals' rules differ. Sharing your work for feedback in online forums, for example, can disqualify it for some submission opportunities but not others.
Peek Inside a Successful Book Proposal
Nieman Storyboard, a publication of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, showcases exceptional narrative nonfiction and offers resources for writing and marketing your work. In this article, Kim Cross shares the lengthy proposal that secured a contract for In Light of All Darkness, her book about the Polly Klaas kidnapping. She annotates the key elements that made this pitch more successful than her earlier efforts. Click on the "Story Annotations" header for other craft articles by journalists explaining how they researched and structured a feature story.
Artificial Intelligence Manifesto at the Authors Guild
The Authors Guild, a venerable organization that advocates for authors' rights, issued this manifesto in 2023 to propose limits on the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT. The organization plans to lobby for laws and policies that will protect authors' copyrights, compensate them for the use of their work in training AI data sets, and allow them to opt out of such use, among other safeguards.
London Proofreaders
London Proofreaders is an online proofreading and copyediting service. They say their unique selling proposition is that they assign two proofreaders to every text, for more thorough error-catching. At 12.50 pounds per 1,000 words, their rates are in line with typical US rates of 1-2 cents per word. London Proofreaders can work with academic papers from undergraduate to Ph.D level, business writing, and literary prose. They also offer novel editing and book proofreading.
How to Find the Right Agent for Your Book
This 2023 article by Emily Harstone at the writing resource site AuthorsPublish gives an overview of the process of finding the right agents to query. The article includes links to scam-busting sites and online forums where you can find agents seeking work in your genre.
Editing by George
Bruno George is an experienced in-house and freelance editor who has worked on books published by Yale University Press, Microsoft, and the Seattle Art Museum, among others. He is a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient. He is available to help with your novels, art books, or technical writing. His companion site, Writing Your Life, offers memoir editing and ghostwriting services.
Eightify
Eightify is a Chrome browser extension that generates eight-point text summaries of YouTube videos (up to 30 minutes) with clickable time-stamps for each data point.
Slated
Slated is an online marketplace for film packaging, financing, and distribution. Writers can network with industry professionals and receive feedback on how to make their scripts more marketable.
Stage 32
Stage 32 is a screenwriters' social network and resource site. Basic membership is free. Paid membership tiers include online webinars and intensive classes by entertainment industry professionals, and access to script consultations and pitch sessions.
When Do I Earn Out?
Fantasy novelist and software engineer Hana Lee created this free online calculator to determine how many books you must sell to earn out your advance. Input your royalty rates and list prices for hardcover, paperback, e-book, or audiobook sales to see your sales targets and how much your publisher will earn.
Electric Lit’s 10 Tips for Applying to Writing Residencies
In this 2023 article at Electric Literature, nonfiction writer Alex Park shares what he learned from being on a residency application committee. Pointers include: Show why you're a good fit for this community. Propose a manageable project. Explain why this is the right time in your life and your project to attend this residency.
Poetry Bulletin’s Submission Fee Support Circle
Poetry Bulletin is a literary opportunities newsletter curated by poet and essayist Emily Stoddard. Their Submission Fee Support Circle offers funding to help under-represented and under-resourced authors enter contests for book and chapbook manuscripts. Limit of three submissions per poet. If you'd like to donate to support this project, please contact them.
Ink & Peat Podcast
Ink & Peat is a podcast "for enthusiasts of the written word," hosted by Craig Stewart and Barb Robitaille. They interview authors, editors, publishers, ghostwriters, and others in the self-publishing and indie book world about their writing and marketing strategies.
Picking the Right Email Platform for Your Indie Newsletter
This December 2022 article at the tech website Inbox Collective compares six of the most popular email service providers (ESPs) for your writer's newsletter: AWeber, Beehiiv, ConvertKit, Ghost, Mailchimp, and Substack. Factors to consider include whether your newsletter is a stand-alone or points readers to a site with additional content; how many emails you can send out for free; the way that you plan to monetize the newsletter, e.g. subscriptions or ads; and how much you want to customize the design.
BookFinder
Launched in 1997, BookFinder is a website that lets you compare prices (including shipping costs) from 100,000 booksellers worldwide. A great source for used books, textbooks, or locating a particular edition of the book you want.
Getting Book Endorsements (Blurbs)
In this 2022 guest post on publishing expert Jane Friedman's blog, award-winning novelist Barbara Linn Probst (The Sound Between the Notes) shares tips for selecting and approaching authors to blurb your forthcoming book.
Google Fonts Knowledge
Google Fonts is a library of 1,357 free licensed font families and APIs for convenient use via CSS and Android. The Knowledge page adds advice about different font styles and how to choose the one that works best for your project. Learn readability tips regarding line height, kerning, contrast, and more.
Carrd
Carrd is a free, simple tool for building one-page websites that display well on both desktops and mobile devices. The premium package, which is only $19 per year as of 2021, lets you add features such as contact and signup forms, Google Analytics tracking codes, and payment-processing widgets (Stripe, PayPal, etc.).
CountWordsFree
Traditional word-processing software will count the words in your document, but this functionality is harder to find for PDFs and other electronic document formats. CountWordsFree is an online program that fills this gap.
When You Write
Editor Jessica Majewski reviews technical tools for writers and offers productivity tips at her website When You Write. Check out her recommendations of the best keyboards, dictation software, grammar-checking programs, editing services, and more.
Koss Web Design
Poet and illustrator Koss, a winner of our Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, is also an accomplished graphic designer who creates logos and websites for writers. See examples of her site designs here and here (logo and website). She also redesigned the Ventura County Poetry Project site and managed their social media.
oTranscribe
oTranscribe is a free web app that makes it easy to transcribe recorded interviews, readings, and lectures. The finished product, with interactive timestamps, can be exported to Google Docs, plain text, or word-processing markdown format.
Publishing Trends
The website of Publishing Trends offers a weekly roundup of top stories from the publishing world, plus monthly updates on agents' and editors' job changes.
Author Media
Author Media features product reviews, marketing tips, and technical advice for selling your books. Their offerings include the Novel Marketing Podcast.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive has a large library of royalty-free music clips (up to 15 minutes long) that are searchable by style, mood, pace, instrumentation/vocals, and more. Good for book trailers.
Royalty Free Music by Bensound
Bensound offers a wide variety of short instrumental music tracks in styles such as acoustic, electronic, pop, jazz, and world music. The clips are free to use as background for YouTube and social media videos, such as book trailers. More extensive broadcast uses require a paid license.
Purple Planet Music
Purple Planet Music is an online collection of background music clips in various styles, written and performed by Chris Martyn and Geoff Harvey. The site is easy to search for the musical mood that you need for your book trailer. There are free and paid tiers, depending on the audio quality you need and how widely you plan to broadcast the music.
Zapsplat
Zapsplat offers hundreds of free sound effects and music clips to download, sorted by style, with helpful short descriptions for every clip. The musical tracks are generally 1-3 minutes long, appropriate for a book trailer video.
QueryTracker
Available in both free and paid premium versions, QueryTracker features a searchable database of 1,500 literary agents and a record-keeping system for organizing your queries.
Pub Rants at Nelson Literary Agency
Pub Rants is a blog where agents from Nelson Literary Agency offer advice on improving your manuscript and query letter, finding and evaluating an agent, and marketing various genres.
Manuscript Wish List
Manuscript Wish List is an online database of agents and editors, with information on what they're currently seeking. The site also has a podcast and blog with craft articles.
Fantasy Map Generators and Worldbuilding Tools
This 2021 article from BookRiot recommends 10 websites and software programs that create fantasy maps with detailed terrain. Great for speculative fiction writers and role-playing gamers.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a free online program that will suggest grammatical and style edits for your writing. You can add it as a plug-in to your Firefox browser, and use it on common email and social media platforms (Gmail, Twitter, LinkedIn, MS Outlook, etc.) as well as documents. There is also a paid premium version.
Canceling My Book Deal Was the Best Career Move I’ve Ever Made
In this 2021 article from Electric Lit, Lilly Dancyger describes her long journey to publication of her hybrid memoir Negative Space (Santa Fe Writers Project) and warns writers not to rush into a sub-standard book contract simply because they're frustrated with rejections. Factors to look for in a small press: Amazon and trade-publication reviews, national distribution, social media presence, and editors who will work with you to improve your book.
Know Your Rights: Key Provisions in a Publishing Contract
In this 2021 article on Anne R. Allen's publishing advice blog, literary agent and attorney Joseph Perry explains typical terms in a book publishing contract, such as the grant of rights, advances, royalties, and option clause.
Essayist App
Essayist is an app for academic writers. It will automatically format your text in the standard citation style you choose. Currently supported are Modern Language Association and American Psychological Association formats, with others such as Chicago Manual of Style coming soon. The software allows you to create a list of references that you can click to cite within the text, as well as adding tables and images in the proper format.
Pinpoint
Pinpoint is a software tool from Google Journalist Studio that makes your research documents easily searchable. Upload PDFs, audio files, images, emails, and other source materials to create a digital archive that you can keyword-search, transcribe, and share with your collaborators and fact-checkers. This tool would be useful for scholars, journalists, and nonfiction book authors.
Substack
Substack is an easy-to-use platform to create free or paid-subscription email newsletters. Good for sending out short articles, poems, or blog posts.
New Play Exchange
New Play Exchange is a site for playwrights, lyricists, composers, librettists, devising artists, adapters, and translators to read and share scripts. Find your next collaborator or dramatic work to produce at your arts organization, and network with other creators in your genre. Annual fees are just $12 for early-career members and $18 for professionals.
