When it comes to self-publishing, no tools and resources are enough for writers. Men of pens want to know and use as many strategies as possible to see their works published and loved by readers.
And one of those strategies could be giving manuscripts to single-purpose online platforms ready to turn them into both printed books and eBooks.
With dozens of such resources available, it can be challenging to choose the best one and trust your writings to them. The below list can help to sort the problem out.
Fast Pencil is an awesome resource for both writing and publishing. You can use their built-in editor to create your story and let other writers criticize parts of your work; their free tools help to write, and their free design templates help to publish books and eBooks.
Fast Pencil Marketplace is where your books will be sold, but you are free to insert them to other marketplaces, such as Nook, Amazon, and Kindle.
Nook is a self-publishing website for eBooks and printed books where thousands of authors have reached millions of readers already. Nook helps to edit, format, cover, design and distribute your writings.
The resource provides step-by-step guides on building your book, preparing your manuscript files, and uploading your print-ready PDFs. Nook works well for both first-time writers and professional authors; it is a quick platform that delivers pro-quality books in about a week.
This self-publishing company is your choice if you have a story but don’t know how to format and design it a little better. Send it to Lulu, and they will help with formatting, reviews, the cover design that sells more books in your genre, and distribution.
What you can use this resource for is a registration of your books for their partner’s fairs. Even if you can’t be present in the event personally, your book will go there! Many marketers, agents, buyers, and librarians will see your writings. It’s not the worst way to promote them, is it?
This resource gives you options to publish works both digitally and by print. Plus, Mag Cloud is a good platform to connect with readers and send notifications, which is helpful when you run a series of publications.
The resource makes digital publication easy: all you need to do is upload your writings for printing, and they will be made available via PDF download, web-based viewer or MagCloud iPad application. They offer a variety of services to help you promote publications, sell content and ship your books worldwide.
Bid 4 Papers
Editing a book is an essential part of the writing process for every author. Bid 4 Papers is a team of professional writers who consult students, and both newbies and experienced authors on writing; they are available via live chat to answer all your questions on style, grammar, or formatting, and they can help you with editing and revising your book before publishing.
No matter what your genre is, this resource will help you find and hire editors for your book to rock.
This publishing service is free to use, and it is very popular among writers: over 18,000 men of letters use Smash Words to distribute their works and earn money for that (authors get 85% of sales here).
Smash Words distributes your material to major retailers like Apple iBook, Barnes & Noble, and others. Just send them you story, and they will help you make it rock.
One can use Lean Pub for creating and publishing books. Their free tools let authors preview works and publish them to PDF, iPad and Kindle from one manuscript. This resource is free for authors to join and use, and they earn 90% royalty here.
You are welcome to publish your books at Lean Pub as often as you like. All writers can use Lean Pub to produce a print-ready PDF of their finished books. The resource is easy to use, and all its features are available with one click.
One more platform that provides a book writing software and lets you create books in all the formats you need. It delivers print-ready files, as well as eBook files to make your writings look great in all stores.
Authors and publishers use this resource to create professionally designed books. No matter what you write – novels, academic texts, textbooks, white papers – Press Books will make it look professional and amazing.
Writers write, and such resources like Draft 2 Digital help them format and publish their writings. This platform deals with technical aspects of writing, converts Word documents into eBooks, and lets you distribute your book in different digital stores.
There are no fees for formatting or distributing; Draft 2 Digital make money when you sell a book: they keep 10% of the retail price, and it’s you who decides how much your eBook should cost.
This resource provides the complete self-publishing package for creating and selling both eBooks and printed books. It will help you sell your book on Amazon, iBooks, and other digital stores.
Book Baby lets you keep 100% of your net sales; they offer printed books in hardcover and paperback for you to sell books in the world’s biggest bookstores: Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and others.
Have you tried any of above-mentioned resources for self-publishers? Don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in comments!
Lesley J. Vos is a blogger and a writer honored to contribute content and academic texts to many online platforms. She writes her first novel and gets ready to publish it soon. Find more works of hers on Google+ or read about Lesley here.
Wanna try Bid 4 Papers, sounds really cool. Great post, Lesley!
It’s hardly ever to imagine my personal list of editing and publishing tools without After the Deadline ( http://www.polishmywriting.com/ ) and a plagiarism checker like Unplag ( https://unplag.com/ ). Now I’m going to add some tools you’ve suggested to include into my list. Thanks.
Dan
As a journalist, my life without writing can hardly be imagined. To save my time and make the process of writing more productive, with sharply focused attention to the characteristics, I have already chosen some tools and resources. I am inclined to believe that the distinctive feature of a good writer must be the uniqueness of course. And I was desolated by continuous despair when I noticed that my work was plagiarized! But thanks to Unplag plagiarism checker I could prove my authorship (I used the report with percentage of similarity). But we all know that too much is never enough! Thank you for this accurate list. Now I am interested in Lulu, thanks!
As a journalist, my life without writing can hardly be imagined. To save my time and make the process of writing more productive, with sharply focused attention to the characteristics, I have already chosen some tools and resources. I am inclined to believe that the distinctive feature of a good writer must be the uniqueness of course. And I was desolated by continuous despair when I noticed that my work was plagiarized! But thanks to Unplag plagiarism checker I could prove my authorship (I used the report with percentage of similarity). But we all know that too much is never enough! Thank you for this accurate list. Now I am interested in Lulu, thanks!
Great article.
Love the Awesome Hacks
Love Awesome Hacks
Hello,
Thanks for sharing this list of useful things. I’ve saved it to my bookmarks and FB and already have started to use it!
The great thing about Grammarly punctuation checker tool is that it makes you a better writer by finding and correcting up to 10? more mistakes than a general word processor. Grammarly has built-in powerful algorithms that are developed by the world’s leading authorities on linguistic technologies. So you will always be able to write mistake-free anywhere on the web as it also corrects over 250 grammatical mistakes at one go. I wish you don’t make any mistakes!
Great set of resources thank you. I’ve been working as a freelance writer for couple of years and already experienced a lot of issues when my articles or guest posts are not well-proofread and work denied because of this. I would recommend highly to add punctuation check service to this list so that people do not commit the same mistake as I 🙂
Thanks, Mary!
Thanks, Mary!
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