These online publishing tools for authors will be extremely useful to you. Please check them out and go for the ones that fit your needs. Let us read from you..
Online publishing tools (no 1): Grammarly
Grammarly is a fantastic tool and the good part is that it has a free version that is almost okay for your needs.
Grammarly is an online writing assistant or editing tool for authors.
You can edit and correct your grammar, spelling, punctuation, and more with your writing assistant, grammar checker, and editor. The Grammarly Keyboard etc.
You can use this tool both on your desktop, laptop, or your mobile phone.
If you use the Google Chrome web browser, you can install a Chrome version of this tool easily. This will help you to automatically have the opportunity to edit, proofread and correct grammar issues in your manuscript. Visit https://grammarly.com for more information.
For the Mobile version, you can just download and install the Grammarly app on your smartphone from the app stores. You can follow the various setup instructions to start using the app to using the tool on your mobile phone to edit your book contents.
This is a very valuable app. You only need to try it to see for yourself.
There is a premium version. You can go for that if you want more functionalities.
Related: If you want more editing work done for your book, you can reach out to us at Zarepath Publishing 08034300979 (WhatsApp and Call).
Online publishing tools for Authors (no 2): Google docs
Google Docs is an online word processor included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google, which also includes Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google Keep.
You have likely come across this tool online. It’s such a marvelous and useful tool for authors. Especially when you consider the mobile app version.
As an author, the mobile version of this tool allows me to write my books even when I am not at home. With the app correctly installed on my phone, I can continue with any book project I have started.
The good part is that you have the great option of saving your work in the cloud (Google Drive). This implies that you won’t lose your work because it’s automatically saved in the cloud the moment you click the save button.
I am sure you know that you can have free access to Google docs and Google drive if you have a free Gmail email address.
You will also be able to export your doc in Pdf and Docx formats after you are done with your book.
I hope you can go to the playstore immediately to download the Google docs app.
Related: If you want sermons, teachings on audio transcribed and published as books for you, you can also reach out to us at Zarepath Publishing.
Online Publishing Tools for Authors (no 3): Substack
At this stage of the post, I will be telling you about a tool that we discovered about 2 years ago. It’s an email marketing tool. Before I tell you more about this tool, let me, first of all, tell you something about emails and why authors must begin to keep an email list.
If you sell your books on the major stores online, you should have observed that information about the traffic to your book page or those who bought your books are not revealed by these stores.
For example, Amazon will never give this information. The same way Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and others will not give you this information.
Now, because you don’t have this important information, you will not be able to do what is called repeat sales to these valuable buyers of your books on these platforms.
This is the reason why every author today must begin to gather email lists of their fans and ensure they are getting in touch with them regularly with valuable and relevant content.
The people on your mailing list are usually the first set of people that should know about your new book published on Amazon and other online stores. The catch is that people who already know about you are more likely to buy from you anytime you have a new book.
This is where substack comes in.
What’s substack?
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers.
The great news is that this service is completely free! They don’t even have any account limitations in place. You can send unlimited emails anytime to an unlimited email list.
That’s nice considering the fact that other services in the market have a lot of account restrictions in place for their free version.
I hope you can start building your email list as an author. I hope you can start building an ongoing relationship with your fans through email marketing.
This is the way to go for the 21st century author. Check out substack today
Related: You can check out how we integrated building email list on our various websites at Christian personal development
Online bookstore Nigeria
Related: You will need an author’s website or blog to build a decent email list. We can set up one for you at a good price at Zarepath Publishing/NowNowBooks
Related: If you want to be trained on how to set up email marketing or a list-building plan for your author business, let us know.
Call/WhatsApp 08034300979
Online Publishing Tools for Authors (no 4): Blog
Let me inform you that you can do well as an author without a blog or website especially with the way many online stores and social media platforms are set up today.
But the truth is that you can do VERY well as an author if you have a blog or website of your own as an author.
Today, the competition is so stiff online. Gone are those days when you just upload your books on Amazon or any store and you begin to see sales. Thousands of books are uploaded on Amazon per hour all over the world today in various genres.
You need to start creating and nurturing your community of fans and readers. A blog or a website tool allows you to start creating your community of fans. As I mentioned in the last post, if you have your community of fans, they will be the first set of people you will inform about your new book release and some of them will just be the first set of customers for your book.
When a few of your readers buy your book on the first day of release, it will go a long way to give your book’s sales page the needed push with the Amazon algorithm. They can begin to recommend your book to more readers.
What is a blog?
A blog is like an online diary where you write your thoughts on different areas of your niche regularly. You are expected to write contents that will be of interest to your fans in different categories on your blog.
You should also be able to put your email subscription form on your blog or website so that readers or visitors to your website can join your mailing list. I discussed Substack in the last post as a suitable email marketing platform for authors today.
If you post content regularly on your blog and you optimize your blog and content for search engine optimization (SEO), you will be able to position your blog for free placement by the search engines for relevant keywords. That’s free traffic for your blog.
My blogs now rank for many keywords on Google today. The blog links are:
https://sesanoguntade.com/blog
https://NowNowBooks.com.ng/blog
You can search for:
- Christian ministries in Nigeria
- Christian Blogs in Nigeria and so on
You will find us in number one position on Google.
You can also search for ‘self-publishing companies in Nigeria’.
We get free traffic to our author blogs and website on Google and other search engines today.
Note: If you want to position your blog for this free search engine traffic, you can order for our online course on this topic. Call or WhatsApp: 08034300979 or contact us
How do you set up your blog?
There are free blogs online like WordPress.com and blogspot.com
You can register for free and create your blogs.
I started with these. But really if you want to be a professional author business person, you need to use paid blogs.
If you want us to assist you in this area, please let us know.
Online publishing tools for authors (no 5): Canva
As you grow in your author and book business, you will need to begin to hire a professional cover designer for your books. Great book covers will always go a long way to help the sale of your book in stores.
People will always notice a beautiful and well-designed ebook cover. Apart from the book title and subtitle, your book’s cover design is the next thing people see before they check out your book’s description. So you need to always get it right.
But sometimes or even most times, paying huge fees to cover designers can be completely out of your budget, so you will need a free or cost-friendly tool you can use for this purpose.
We use Macromedia Fireworks 8 and we also use this interesting tool called Canva.
What is Canva?
You can use Canva’s free book cover maker for temporary covers and as sketches to give to your designer. Canva offers premade templates in various genres to choose from with images and typography that work well together.
I also like Canva’s social media banner and blog post templates.
Canva’s Book Cover Maker is free if you upload your images, and their images only cost $1 or $2. Cost is $0, $9, and $18/mo which includes over a million royalty-free images and about 600 templates.
There are a few Canva competitors out there but Canva has been and is still the industry leader. It’s simple to use and there’s also the app version. After installing the app on your smartphone, you can start designing your ebook cover within minutes. Just visit the app stores and search for Canva.
As I mentioned earlier, Canva may not give you all that you want to design your ebook covers but it’s still an affordable or free tool you can start with. Check it out here.
In case you want to learn more about ebook cover design or you want good ebook covers designed for you, please reach out to us.
