Tools
Tools

Tools

Using Vellum to Format Your Book

Though there are other tools out there, Vellum is simply the best we have found for formatting your book. Let’s walk through formatting your book using this excellent program. Start Up Start Vellum and pick either New Book or Import Word File I picked new book just to look at a clean interface before importing a Word document. You can write your whole book directly into Vellum, but it lacks robust editing tools, especially change tracking if you are having critiqued or working with a coauthor. Better to write your book in something else and then import it. There are...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

Accounting And Taxes For Writers

So you’re a self-published author. Congratulations, you are now an entrepreneur. We know, you just want to be a writer. But the “just a writer” career path is quite rare these days. Instead, you chose to control your own financial destiny, which means that you have to actually deal with some financial stuff. If you’re still single, you may wish to marry a money manager or accountant so you can avoid all of this bookkeeping stuff. If you can’t do that, then welcome to managing your own income.  Taxes and Basic Business Accounting Paying your taxes quarterly is really the...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

Help! I Need a New Computer

The days of pen and paper are long gone. Don’t even think about it. You might draft a few things with a quill pen to look cool at the coffee shop, but if you’re going to churn out enough words to survive as an independent author, you need a computer. Whether your old computer is just, well, old, or it has died and you need a new one right away so you can get back to that masterpiece you were working on about space zombies invading Kansas, we’re here to help with our guide to buying a word processing machine...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

Editing Tools

Editing tools? Like… what does that even mean? Is there something more than my keyboard and an old copy of The Elements Of Style?  Yes, dear reader, technology is amazing. While we hate content writing programs using A.I. (they’re taking our jobs!), there are a ton of intelligent software programs that can make your revision and error-checking process much faster. Some simply find typos or offer minor grammar suggestions, while others can do an in-depth read-through of your work. Try out a few, most of them have a free version. You might find something that saves you hundreds of hours...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

A Guide to Keyboards

The first rule of keyboards is that you like what you like. Some professional writers like the cheapest keyboards they can find, mushy things with keys that feel like lopsided marshmallows. Others (that’s me), love a nice clicky mechanical keyboard. The feedback, the crisp actuation, and the myriad of choices insure that you can get exactly what you like.  So if everyone just likes what they like, why am I writing about it?  Because most people have no idea what their options are, so they don’t even know what they like. You may think you like your keyboard and its...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

Storyist

Storyist does everything for an aspiring novelist or screenwriter, and unlike many other one-size-fits-all solutions, it does them all pretty well. Unfortunately, it’s only for Mac users, but if that’s you, it’s worth checking out the free trial to see if Storyist feels like a good fit.  The software includes an iOS version for iPads and iPhones so you can access your files and work on them from anywhere. And when we say that Storyist does everything, we mean everything. Here are just a few of the high points. Full Featured and flexible text editor Outlining software Plot planner with...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now

Dynalist.io

Dynalist is free outlining software that lives in the cloud so you can log in from any device to see your outlines and work on them. We love the simplicity and ease of us, coupled with the ability to handle complicated outlines.  Spending a few minutes with the tutorial in Dynalist will teach you how to create simple outlines very quickly, with child and parent items indented appropriately and displayed based on your preferences. You can create as many unique outlines as you like, and customize them in all kinds of ways with checklists, colors, images, and H1, H2, and...

This content is for members only.
Login Join Now
CHAT