Five Awesome Indie Author Resources
Here are five awesome indie author resources. Each of the five is a blog that I have visited numerous times for information and enjoyment. While all have at least some focus on marketing and promotion, collectively they provide a variety of content related to all aspects of the indie author “process”.
I tweet links from all of them. Several offer paid services, but their free blog articles are incredibly valuable to new (and not-so-new) indie authors as well.
Visit them all (titles are links). You’re sure to find something you like.
Anne R. Allen’s Blog … with Ruth Harris
If Anne and Ruth’s blog is not on your regular reading list, it should be.
Anne and Ruth are both successful authors, Anne penning mysteries, and Ruth writing women’s fiction.
What makes their site compelling is the in-depth articles on various aspects of writing, indie-publishing, and author marketing.
Moreover, the blog posts have a light, breezy, fun style that make them a pleasure to read while you’re learning something new. Double bonus!
Finally, Anne always takes the time to answer article comments, which are nearly as informative and entertaining as the original post.
And no, their blog doesn’t have their images stuck right on top of the menu bar. I did that to show them, because graphics!
Book Marketing Tools Blog
This is an awesome site supplying concise articles on all aspects of book marketing.
Topics range from social media campaigns to book launches, reviews and their impact book marketing, email lists, author websites, and more.
You could spend a day just browsing the articles.
Moreover, the site offers some free resources, and provides podcasts on various marketing issues as well.
This is one of my go-to sites and it should be one of yours if it isn’t already.
The Creative Penn
Joanna Penn is one of the giants in the self-publishing blogging world. She’s a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author with 21 books to her credit.
She’s done more than that, as you can read on her site.
Joanna provides a wealth of knowledge, experience, and resources to the aspiring indie author.
Her blog posts cover topics ranging from marketing, social media, book cover design, using Amazon, publishing tips, and much more.
The articles are detailed and “meaty”, providing lots of interesting and useful information. She also does interviews with authors and links the podcasts on her site.
In addition, Joanna provides an impressive array of resources for the aspiring author. This includes her free “Author 2.0 Blueprint”. Her site is set up so that one can easily find resources and blog posts on Writing and Editing, Publishing, Book Marketing, and Making a Living from your Writing.
You absolutely need to visit Joanna’s site.
Kristen Lamb
Kristen is another best-selling author and blogger whom I have been following for awhile. She has a background in international sales training and, I presume, has leveraged that experience to help her become very well versed in book marketing.
She also offers reasonably priced courses on blogging for authors, query letters, and plotting.
Her blog does contain numerous, well-written, thoughtful articles on book marketing, but she also provides some great content on story development, structure, characters, and the potential pitfalls surrounding each.
It’s the latter that I really like. Recent articles in this vein include a discussion on whether some people lack the talent to be a writer, and common problems on novel structuring. Her posts are lengthy, packed with insight, and easy to read. Grab a coffee, visit her site, and settle in.
Author Marketing Experts
This is Penny Sansevieri’s site and its dedicated to author promotion, marketing, and related topics. A best-selling author in her own right, Penny’s site focuses on “what works in the market”.
Author Marketing Experts (AME) offers a number of paid services, but the blog provides a wide variety of content available to anyone.
One of the things I like about AME is that the blog articles provide a lot of information on using specific tools — Social Media, Amazon etc. In addition there are a lot of “how to” articles on marketing and promotion, finding and using resources (e.g. hiring audio book narrators) and blogging (if, as author you’re inclined to do so). Stop by AME, you find something worthwhile.
Last Words
In writing this post I have come to realize there are way more interesting blogs on the indie author process than I could include in any single blog post. The ones I included here are only five of my picks out of many. You may find little of interest in any of them (though I find it hard to believe that would be the case). If that’s the case, keep checking back, because I’ll be posting more Awesome Indie Author Resources.
So, what about it, readers? Do you visit any of the foregoing sites? What are your favs? Let me know in the comments.