What Tools Do You Need …
to write a book? Let’s assume that you are an amazing story teller, that you are well read, you have gone over the formula, (yes there is a formula, later post) and your story ready and done.
You aren’t done, not by a long shot. Here are the websites / tools I have used to take that very rough piece of wood and turn it into what you now see on Amazon and *EEK* almost audible …. the date is coming I promise! I’m listing them below but each will be its own post, otherwise this post would take you an hour to read and I’ve heard people don’t like that. Don’t forget to check out What is an Independent Author and The Payout Breakdown of an Indie Author if you are just getting started on this journey.
www.reedsy.com www.diybookcovers.com www.pexels.com www.booklife.com www.amazon.com acx.com
So you know those really popular blogs that disclose that I get some small portion of some type of sale if you click on these links …. that’s not happening here … although … AHEM if any of these websites want to approach me, I’m totally up for it.
Let’s start with the most used one. Reedsy.com …. reedsy.com provides a place for authors to find editors/copywriters/cover artists/beta readers etc. You take your project fill in pertinent details and search for whatever professional you are looking for. Personally I needed an editor. You can ask for up to 5 bids, so I found 5 editors who worked within my genre and asked them to take a look at my project and give me a basic idea of the service they would provide as well as how much money they would want and I needed to make sure they could work within my timeline which was about 6 weeks. Of the 5, 2 responded and said no, 1 did not respond. 1 thought that I needed a beta reader more than an actual editor and 1 said he was excited to look at my project. Carl Smith was amazing!!! I cannot tell you in words how amazing he was to work with. He is over in the UK, so we typically exchanged emails at different points in our day but he was genuinely wonderful. He works in the publishing industry and has knowledge that I would never be able to come up with on my own. I actually also preferred to work with someone in the UK because he had a lot of good points and questions that I think someone in the US would just know and because he didn’t it made me look at the manuscript in a different way. I paid him $1,000 US dollars.
Yes, I know that is a lot of money and don’t for one minute think that I didn’t feel like I’m going to pay all this money and still no one will buy the book, I may as well light it on fire. BUT! You have to have an editor, you do, you need a fresh set of eyeballs, you need someone you can bounce ideas off of. You know what the real kick in the ass is? A lot of literary agents, you know the people who are supposed to be pitching your book to publishing houses? They want you to hire an editor before you even submit your work to them. So they are basically saying spend all the money the publishing houses would typically spend and oh by the way, we still aren’t going to answer your emails. Sorry, rant about traditional publishing …. coming back ….
The best thing about working with Carl was even after he finished his work on the manuscript he was open to me checking in with him if I changed something major or if I had an idea. It was a true relationship. I hope that he will be my editor for part 2, I emailed him earlier today Carl, if your ears are burning this is why.
The other important thing to note about Reedsy is that they will typeset your book into e-pub and pdf format for FREE!!! Yes people FREE. This is a wonderful service and you can download it as many times as you need to.
If you have used Reedsy.com ….what did you think??
