OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
Not too long ago, when the web was in its infancy, you had to know programming languages to run any kind of web presence, and online business was rare. I started this site 5 years ago, and there wasn't even an international Kindle at that stage, so things have definitely changed for the better!
Warning: This list is quite long! Remember, you only need the things you need when you need them and I have added to the toolkit over the years.
Writing and Publishing
Scrivener. I’ve talked before about how Scrivener can change your life, but it really is my #1 recommendation, especially for self-publishing authors. It’s amazing writing software, with brilliant drag and drop functionality so you can write out of order and then just switch things around later. But it also has a Compile function which means you can format your own .mobi files for Kindle and .epub files for Kobo, iBookstore and everywhere else. You don’t have to pay a book formatter, and you can update your files with new books etc. This saves self-publishers SO much money and also time to publication. All for just $45. Amazing. Try it here. If you want to optimize your Scrivener usage, e.g. understand which fields do what when you compile your files, then I recommend the Learn Scrivener Fast training which is brilliant.
Wall calendar. Yes, I have a physical one 🙂 I write my word count on it every day, and have been aiming for an average of 1000 words a day in a month. In 2014, I want to up that quota.
Publishing sites. Without these, many of us would still be in the day job! So let’s hear it for Amazon KDP, Kobo Writing Life, iTunes Connect for iBookstore. Here’s the other sites you can use for self-publishing, but those are the three I currently use (since Nook is still US only).
Kindle app on the iPhone. I read like a crazy person and usually have 5-8 books on the go on my Kindle app which I read on the Tube/ at the gym and anywhere else. I’m a research junkie as well as reading for pleasure, so my reading time is crucial to my writing life.
iTunes. I listen to a couple of specific albums when I am writing, depending on the type of writing I am doing: Rain and Thunderstorms, Enigma or 3 Doors Down. I save the rock power ballads for the gym or before I do any public speaking! I also listen to a lot of podcasts which I count as my business education.
Business and productivity
Gmail. I love the new Gmail design that filters the emails I receive. Before that happened, I’ll admit to being inundated every day by so much to process, but now, all good 🙂 I have it set up so I can email from my domain accounts, and use the settings to change my footers to include my book covers. I took the email account OFF my phone about 6 months ago, and highly recommend it if you want to stop the stress and addiction of email!
The smartphone. I have an iPhone 5, but I don’t think the brand matters much anymore. The point is that you can work on the go. People always ask me how I find time for marketing, but basically I do most things on the go. For example, I went to Kensal Green graveyard to do some book research for Delirium. I took some pics with the phone, did brief editing on an app, and then posted it to Twitter, Instagram, FB and G+ in about 2 minutes. I count that as marketing of a kind as it gets some attention, which can lead into interest, desire and action, which is how social media really works.
Filofax. Yes, a physical one 🙂 I schedule my podcasts months in advance, currently 4 months ahead, as well as meetings, events … oh yes, and personal stuff! I like having a physical diary and have tried to move it online but I keep going back to the physical. I actually bought the leather cover with my first consultancy pay-check back in 1997, so it has emotional resonance too.
OfficeTime app on iPhone. I keep a timesheet every day which I learned this from uber-creative Sean Platt and it’s been brilliant as it keeps me accountable every day. I have time codes for lots of different things, but essentially I monitor creation and income producing work against marketing and social things.
PayPal. I do a lot of business in USD and other currencies and Paypal has enabled me to earn income from anywhere in the world. You have to go through the process of verifying you're not a terrorist and linking your bank account, but once done, it's super easy to sell and pay online.
E-Junkie.com. There are many shopping carts for selling digital products but e-Junkie is the best I have found, and also amazingly cheap. It also has an affiliate program built in so you can encourage others to sell your products for you.
Eventbrite.com. I’ve started using Eventbrite for live events and it is super easy to use for ticketing and online sales.
Mac Pages, Numbers and Keynote. I have a MacBookPro and use the suite of office tools every day.
Google Drive. I now use Google Docs for any kind of collaboration in documents as you can just share it. I also use the (free) Forms feature which replaced SurveyMonkey for me.
Website
Siteground. In 2014, I moved from Hostgator to Siteground and I am an affiliate. I have all my sites hosted there for ~$10 per month. With free WP software, you can get your site sorted really fast.
Aweber. For email list management with scalable pricing that is compliant with anti-spam laws, I have found Aweber to be invaluable (and I am an affiliate). Mailchimp is an alternative.
Multimedia
Blubrry Plugin for WordPress. For streaming my podcast (and they also have hosting options).
Amadeus Pro. For recording, editing and producing audio. You can also use Audacity which is free.
Screenflow for Mac. For video editing and also screen capture recordings. If you have a PC, there are other options like Camtasia.
Amazon S3 cloud hosting. Amazingly cheap cloud storage. I’ve been using S3 for years for all my video and audio hosting. I use Bucket Explorer for uploading and file management, but there are lots of browser options.
Social media
Tweetdeck. For my desktop twitter experience 🙂
Camera+ app on iPhone. Really easy photo editing that you can then use as part of your social media marketing. I also use pictures a lot for research, and share all mine as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial here on Flickr.com
Other social apps on the iPhone – Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, G+, Goodreads. I do most of my social media on the smartphone, so have all the apps.
OK, I think this is it … I’m actually quite shocked to see how many different tools I use, and I hope this is all of them!
What tools do you use in your daily life as a writer or as a creative entrepreneur? Please do leave your suggestions in the comments below.
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1 2 Next »I keep meaning to do something about Scrivener, now that it's available for Windows, but I've had my own system for so long that I suspect I'd be reinventing the wheel. And I've always used Mobipocket Creator for translating my Word files into something KDP can use. It works great.
Finding your own systems that work is the aim of the game, so you're right, changing it may be rework for nothing. Thanks for sharing mobipocket creator.
Great post. Do you ever find time to relax?
I have been playing around with Scrivener. But as Megaera said I have my own system. One of the things I couldn't easily figure out with Scrivener was how to insert a timeline i.e week and day etc for each scene and chapter so that i could avoid continuity blips. With an excel spreadsheet it's easy to achieve this.
Relax??! why would I ever relax - I love my life :)
My relaxation is actually reading, so I am kind of always working in some sense, or at least learning.
On Scrivener and timelines, I just add documents for days and times - but some people are using Scapple, which is their other product for timelines.
For a planner I just use a desktop planner (Star Trek), which just contains slots for days of the week and retro posters of episodes. Since I started using planners several years ago, I've bounced around in planner fail -- in part because most of planners require me to track too much information. I just need reminders of appointments and a place t0 jot down mileage. I just write down phone numbers in the back, and story titles in the front as a quick reference. One of the things I struggled with was that I wanted pretty inside and out, and I could get pretty outside, but never pretty inside. But I also didn't want a planner to "explain" what I should use it for with words. Saying "notes" are for notes is really irritating to the right-brained rebel in me, so Star Trek it is.
Excel: Use this for tracking mileage, expenses, submissions. While I use Duotrope, I'm wary of keeping all my submissions in there. A while back, I used the Writer's Digest one, and they had a major database failure. If I hadn't been keeping a separate spreadsheet, I would have lost my entire list.
Evernote: Research notes, character photos, setting photos, Setting lists (i.e., five senses. Some are very hard for me to come up with so, I do things like a list for a snowstorm). I also do blog posts here, as well as type in writing workshop notes.
Scrivener: Yup, use this for writing novels. I'll also put short stories in it, mainly because I'm lazy. It'll format the whole thing to me. Then I can export it to Word and delete the Scrivener version.
Word: I still use Word.
Paper Files: For my business related expense files like receipts. If it's a small receipt, I paste it on a bigger sheet so it doesn't get lost. I just use one of those file boxes that comes out at tax time (got pretty!).
Hootsuite: For Twitter, though I'll admit I hate Twitter and don't spend much time there. I'd rather blog than tweet, so Word Press is my blog of choice.
RSS Owl: RSS feed for blog posts. But, in this case, I'm looking to stay on top of pro-rate places to submit to, what's happening in the industry as a whole, some writing advice, and general entertainment.
Further plans:
Photo In-Design: For building covers and books. Contrary to most writers, I've done graphic design at work and am pretty good at it, so I can do my own covers. The only thing I have to watch out for is that it's just way too fun to look at photos!
I would love to invest in my own skills around covers - HM Ward is a heroine of mine as she even does her own photoshoots as well as her own covers :)
I'm with Linda regarding Evernote. I'm a relatively new blogger attempting to build an online presence and, for every one thing I accomplish, I find there are two more things I need to do. On Evernote, I used a combination of the web clipper, notes and tags in the following ways:
--As I'm working on one area of my blog or writing, I may stumble across an article or blog post online (on another topic) that I know will be valuable to read. But, of course, since I'm in the middle of doing something at the moment, I don't want to get sidetracked. So I clip the article/blog using the Web clipper and tag it: "to read". At some point, I schedule time to go through my "to read" list and that's when I'll read these blog posts and articles.
--Based on Guy Kawasaki's sage advice in The Art of the Start, I didn't start building my online presence by writing a formal business plan. I just started "doing things". Well, as I'm doing things, I realize I have a lot more things to do. Don't get me wrong. I am strategic in my decision-making; but when you're just starting, you have to get through a million administrative and tactical tasks just to get moving. So I use a to-do note on Evernote where, whenever I task I need to do comes to mind, I'll just list it on an ever-growing list. Every once in a while, I'll look at that list, determine what I need to prioritize (using my strategic thinking) and rearrange the items on that note to reflect what needs to come next.
A couple months ago, I was at the playground with my son and saw a guy wearing an Evernote t-shirt. Of course I had to introduce myself and managed not to scare him off. Well, he looked a little scared. But I am a big fan of Evernote; it does wonders to help me get organized. It's a fantastic tool.
I think the trick to Evernote is deciding how you will use it and organize things before you've done too much on it. I just found it was too much, so Things is my alternative.
I experimented with Scrivener, and liked it. The only trouble was that I was writing a memoir that included letters, journal entries, and flashbacks.... I needed some way of keeping straight the origin of the material and making it clear to the reader who was speaking. In short, I needed stylesheets as part of the workflow.
I ended up using Sigil, on open source epub editor, as my main writing venue. Yep, directly into html with no word processor in between! Write a chapter, read it in Ibooks via Dropbox while sitting in my garden, making notes as I go. Then back upstairs to implement the changes and write the next chapter....
As a fairly technical type, this was just the ticket! Sigil allowed me to shuffle whole sections and chapters at will, change the styles to distinguish the different voices in the book, and keep track of what was what. The fact that I could upload the file directly to my beta readers' kindles and nooks didn't hurt either! Not for everyone, but for the nerds among us, open source options like Sigil are amazingly helpful!
Thanks Yael, I hadn't heard of Sigil - I love the word, very Game of Thrones / Nordic!
I am currently writing my first novel and, on the "technical" side, I still use very traditional instruments such as Word, an alarm-clock (sometimes a chronometer), notebooks, tear sheets for quick notes or maps that I sketch with pencils or markers. And English lessons, so I can improve my knowledge of your language and read more and more books written in English, without having to rely on an Italian translation.
But on the inspirational and creative side, nothing helps me more than music. So, my best tools are probably iTunes (for the musical pieces I already have in store), YouTube (for new researches and experiments) and the mp3 reader on my car (to keep listening when I travel). This novel would probably not exist without music from Within Temptation, a Dutch band that plays gothic - symphonic - metal - rock music, and it's really great that I can listen to their songs wherever and whenever I want!
You might like The Undercover Soundtrack hosted by Roz Morris which features authors and the music that inspired their books
http://mymemoriesofafuturelife.com/category/undercover-soundtrack/
Thanks so much for this list, Joanna! I've been wanting to ask you this very question for weeks, and now I don't have to ;-)
I'm a recent Scrivener convert and couldn't love it more. Each time I think, "Hey I wonder if it could do x?" it has that capability. Amazing. It has truly revolutionized my plotting and writing and made me much more productive. It also stores the info in a way that makes my brain very happy.
And not to stick my nose in, but in response to Stephen's comment, above, about tracking time in each section of the project, I use the Document Notes feature in the Inspector. I just jot down "Day one - evening" or whatever, and it works really well.
Thanks again Joanna!
Wonderful list of resources, Joanna. I use Scrivener for writing. I like Gimp for image editing. I'm learning Screenflow and CamTwist for some video content I'm starting to make. I have a giant dry erase board next to my desk. I use several of the other things you mention, but you certainly gave me some new ones to think about too.
Thanks for the great content as always.
Regards,
Scot
Great post, Joanna -
I've finally mastered Tweetdeck and Buffer, so getting there on the scheduled tweets front!
My iCalendar syncs with my iPhone, which is really fantastic for diary management and reminders (I had to get my son to set it up...!)
I've not yet used Scrivener - but have the trial version so that's on my hit list. I'm especially interested to try out the eBook conversion functionality.
The 'Notes' function on my iPhone syncs to my inbox - and I've recently used it to jot down notes for scene ideas when out and about: I then copy and paste into Word later to file away...
I used GarageBand free software on my iMac to make the recordings for my Ferdinand Fox's Big Sleep bookapp. I also used it for my YouTube reading of The Secret Lake - combining it with iMovie to upload the image to go with the YouTube reading. The quality is quite amazing - though it's important to use a proper headset to record. My Logitech headset only cost around £30 and is brilliant...
And I used my iPhone 5 to video the demos of my app that are now on YouTube - there is a way to link the iPad to the iMac and make a recording that way, but using the iPhone I was able to show the app in action with fingers tapping... again they've come out fine!
Things just get better and better for us control freak indies! :-)
Control freaks rule :)
Excellent post! I really have to get Scrivener. I also decided to go with MailChimp recently to improve delivery of my posts.
I keep track of my commitments, blogging schedule, appointments, etc. on Google Calendar. My wife helps me with the business part of my writing endeavor. Until we got a Smartphone, we often double booked or forgot to put something on the master calendar. Now we keep the one shared master calendar in Google using color coding for each "calendar" that is part of the master. We have different colors for her personal appointments, my personal appointments, business appts., business tasks, classes/webinars, blog posting topics/dates, and personal tasks. Now we both can use/update the calendar wherever we are.
Thanks for sharing.