Best Tools for Authors

K
Hello all my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be. Welcome to the Writers Triangle podcast about publishing and all things books. And today we’re going to be talking about something I’m super excited to talk about, which is pretty much every time I’m on the mic, right? Because I feel like hey, if I’m gonna do this, I might as well be talking about the things that have me feeling passionate about the success for authors and hopeful about the success for you know, cinnabar moth, our press, and also for indie authors and other indie presses out there. And I think the tools that we choose to use as authors and as presses play a big role in whether or not we’re feeling good, and whether or not we’re being successful, whatever successful means to us in the given moment. I think for most people, success means book sales. And I think we need to drive back a little bit and look at what goes on before we even create the book, and what are the tools that we’re using at each stage of creation. And for me, when I look at what goes into writing a book, I think that every book requires some sort of research. I think every I know that every book requires writing, right. And I also think that every book requires some sort of graphic arts ability, or some sort of visual creation ability, at least in in my lived experience. I think it helps with marketing, and promoting your book and getting people engaged with your writing process, I help I think it’s helpful in that way, a tool that I absolutely love. And for all the tools that I talked about today, of course, I will be linking them down in the description so that you can check them out for yourself and see if they’re the right tools for you. When it comes to research, my absolute favorite, favorite thing and I emphasize favorite, yes, my husband made me a convert, I was really against using anything other than just saving things in Word is where I started at the beginning of my process as a business owner was just wanting to save everything in Word. And that wasn’t a very effective way to save things. It is, and I’m sure y’all know, this is you know, really specific to the instrument that is on to the device that it’s on. And it’s very limiting, at least in my lived experience. It wasn’t doing everything I needed it to do. And for storing anything that I was looking at for research for search ability of the thing that I was storing, I found that Mendeley is so much better with Mendeley, I really love it, especially if you’re a nonfiction writer. Mendeley is extremely awesome, because it lets you save author lets you save the date that it was written, the name of it, then, of course, the name of what the paper is, and the publication that that paper came out in. And it gives so many great ways to search because you can search by last name of author, you can search by date saved, you can search by topic, you can also search keywords. And so I think it’s helpful for fiction writers as well. Because if you’re doing a lot of research on, you know, different devices, or different times in history, or different locations in history, you could just put in the word like if you’ve done a lot of research on castles, you can search in Mendeley you can put the word castle, and it’ll bring up all of the papers that you’ve or documents that you put into it that have the word castle in it.

K
So I thought that was really, really helpful. And I it’s one of my favorite ways to save any resource that I do. Another thing that I love to use is Dropbox. The reason I love Dropbox is because it lets me travel from device to device. I have an office that I work in. And so my home, I don’t like to take my devices with me everywhere. So I have my PC at home and I have my PC at my office, and being able to have everything saved and Dropbox is a great way for me to access everything from different locations. I don’t find that Dropbox is as good as Mendeley in terms of search ability. I think that for me, Dropbox doesn’t have as refined a search methodology as I’m finding in Mendeley. But I do think that it allows me I usually search by date, because if I do something and Dropbox for me, I think of Dropbox as like my short term. And my super long term, like if I’m any something from three years ago, it can be in Dropbox or if I’m going to do something that I wrote this week, and I usually do by date, because I have an idea it’s kind of like my ongoing what I’m working on right now. What are my projects that stay on my mind that I don’t forget? And then Mendeley is really more for me for resources that I’m using for We started rather than my active work. And that’s kind of how I divide the two. And in that sort of same vein, I do really love XL, my XL sheet. And I wasn’t a fan of XL for a lot of years, until I started the press, there’s just so much information. And so many things that need to be done for each book that I just can’t remember where I’m at in the process for any given book. And that’s because I’m usually working and thinking about 22 different titles that on any given day, have things that I need to be doing something for. And what that results in is that if it’s not written, if it’s not in the Excel sheet of what I’m going to do, and when and where they’re at in the process, like which books have been sent out to reviewers, what reviewers are they going to be sent to. And I also like to have a Word document for for each book, because I like to have backups. And I basically store like back blurbs, taglines comp titles, and those types of kinds of things in Word document. And then the longer things like you know, who did, every book isn’t on an Excel sheet. And then there is of course, the Excel sheet that has all of the books for the year on it. And in the coming years, all the way through 2027 is I think, the furthest out our books are currently in terms of the manuscripts that we have.

K
And where each manuscript is in the process, has the manuscript been edited, doesn’t have a cover has the advancement page hasn’t been sent out to reviewers doesn’t have a landing page on Cinnabar Moth Publishing doesn’t have a good reason page hasn’t been sent to distributors hasn’t been sent to the publishers. So lots of different things to remember about a book and, and where you’re at. And little things that are super important to you might get lost if they’re not kept somewhere like on an Excel sheet, or in a Word document, where you can go back and look and see what you’re doing and where it’s at. And I think along with that is looking at the two big writing tools, Scrivener and Ulysses are the two big ones that I know about, I’m not going to go into a deep dive on all of the features between the two different things. And instead, I’m gonna link down to a tutorial for each of those things for author level up. And what I love about both of them, these are just general things that I know that both of them can do is that you can if you’re not a big fan of Excel, you can set up in Scrivener or Ulysses, these types of information in these types of things. You can set up your storyboard, you can set up your chapter information, your character arcs, and you can also keep a running tab on what you’ve done in terms of your edit. And in that you can also keep tabs on what you’ve done in terms of your promotion for the book or in terms of finalizing the book right editing, beta readers, arc readers, getting a PR list, social media post, all of those types of things, I think you can also store in those two writing devices along with writing. So I want to switch gears here a little bit. And I was talking about the things that I view as sort of coming. Before you even sit down to write your book, I think figuring out what you’re going to use for storage for research. What are you going to use to keep track of your writing process and keep you on task right and feel good and safe in the process and confident that nothing is falling through the the track the cracks? And how are you setting yourself up for success.

K
For me who I am as a person, it means knowing what tools I’m going to use. And this is not sponsored. None of the tools I’m talking about have sponsored us and we’re open or sponsorship. These are just things that I know my authors have talked about that really worked for them. And things that in my own life when I’m writing I write nonfiction primarily. And I write primarily things associated with psychology because I’m a PhD in psychology. And I don’t really publish anything I do through the press. The press is a nonfiction cinnabar moth publishing is nonfiction. I mean, it’s fiction. Why am I saying cinnabar moth press is nonfiction. I’m nonfiction, the press is fiction. So I don’t publish my work through the press. If you want to. If you’re interested about what my nonfiction work looks like, you can always check out adjustment guidance.com and go read my blog. That’s mainly where you see most of my writing. I also have some periodicals that it shows up in and so all of these tools are the tools I find helpful, but I haven’t use Scrivener or Ulysses, because I haven’t needed to do a lot of the things that this that these tools do. And what I find to be really, really important for authors to just really drive home that your books must have continuity. And character continuity is a sticking point for me, character arcs that go nowhere, or fizzle out, or are just really wildly inappropriate with huge swings for no reason. When I read those types of things, I wonder if the author was tracking this character throughout the entirety of the book throughout the entirety of their writing. And it’s natural as an author that your writing goes through iterations, and that there will be changes in your character. But if you’re using like a Scrivener or Ulysses, then it’s easier to track those kinds of things. And I’ll give three examples that ended up with one of the examples ended up with us not publishing a book. The second example ended up with a three year long back and forth with the with the author trying to get the book published. And the third example was just a huge, quick fix.

K
So the first example, when the book, a book came to us with a character that was Asian, and that was fine, then the author decided to make the character to be of mixed heritage to be African American, and European. Later on in the book, about halfway through the book, the characters, all of the things that the character was saying, based on their Asian heritage, was still in the book. And that was like, no, this doesn’t work, there’s this dis continuity, there’s this disconnect. And the author just was unable to write the character from start to finish in one heritage. And for me, I don’t care what the heritage of your character is going to be. It just needs to be consistent throughout the entirety of the book. And if you’re not able to manage that, I cannot publish your book. And I’m sorry for that. Because it’s just going to be very discombobulating and confusing, and also a little bit offensive. You know, it’s like, wait a minute, I thought this, like had some great representation of me, or wait a minute, I was completely attached to this character. And now there’s somebody completely different, they don’t even have the same heritage, which means they don’t have the same parents, which means the story doesn’t have the same impact. And using a tool that lets you go back and see your other work, you can check for continuity. And using a writing tool like Scrivener, or Ulysses, you can go back and you can check and search specific things that you’re doing. Because you can do keyword searching, you can do searching for your metadata, to make sure that your story has continuity. The second thing that’s really, really hard for authors are tense, consistent tense throughout the book. And if you start writing a book with one times, and then change the temps halfway through, that’s going to lead to a really long editing process. And if that’s just a blind spot, so that the writer that we’re having like this really long protracted writing experience with republishing their book, we just know that they can’t get the book to where it needs to be in terms of having consistent tense. And we’re now taking that over. But that means that’s going to be a really long edit, because that needs a line edit, which is a lot different than the final edit for a manuscript that has consistent tense that has consistency in storytelling that has consistent character development. And I read every single word of every single book we publish. And I’m the one who makes the decision on the editing call of how much editing that book needs. And if there is a tense shift is going to take me a lot longer to read a book. And that’s going to slow the process down. Not to be like, wait a minute, because I don’t sit down and read the book in one day, even if it’s a one day read, because I’m reading multiple books at a time, which means that for any professional publisher, when they get your work or any professional agent, they’re not going to sit down and just read your book. It’s really, really rare that we have the luxury of picking up a book and reading it all the way through. We usually pick up a book and read the first three chapters and then decide if we’re going to read any more of the book. And then we tend to just shuffle through and read a couple chapters of all of the books that we have. And I know that makes seem confusing. But it really when you have a lot of reading to do sitting down and reading one book is way more time, time consuming, time consuming than reading bits and pieces of a lot of books.

K
Because there may be a point in the book where you’re going to say, No thank you. And doing that, and having another book already slotted that you’ve already started. Because starting a book is the most difficult thing and connecting with the characters and connecting with the story, it’s easier to switch gears and go back to a story that you’ve connected with. The third example is point of view, we have books at the point of view shifts, and that’s not appropriate, we have books that have multiple points of view. And that’s completely appropriate. But if you’ve decided on a first person or third person point of view, you have to make sure that that the point of view of your book from beginning to end. And if you’re doing multiple points of view, you need to make sure that the point of view of your book from beginning to end. And I find with point of view shifts, I tend to be a little bit more forgiving. Because I think point of view is a bit tricky. And if you have a great story, and there’s a point of view issue 5050 chance that that won’t be the reason we don’t finish your book, and really is when you’re writing your book, and you’re picking your tools, really think about what is the point that someone’s going to say no, thank you, because of something that dramatic, you know, grammatical and error, a grammatical error, or a content error or a point of view error, try to minimize the errors that are in your book. And that will increase your success on the other side of it, right. Because when readers start reading your book, even you know, if you decide to self publish, even if it’s not an agent or a publishing house, readers are going to have the same experience. If you’re writing a book, and there’s like a big shift and tense, readers really don’t like that. If there’s a big shift in you know, point of view or character, you’re going to lose readers readers are going to drop off.

K
So that’s something to really keep in mind. And that’s why something like using a Scrivener or Ulysses, or any of the multitude of apps that are out there will really come in handy and help you out and save your bacon, you know, and make sure that you’re putting out the best manuscript possible for you. And, and one that you can feel really, really proud of the reason I’m emphasizing this, I really do want you to succeed. And if you’re an indie press, this is something that you can suggest to authors. Hey, have you tried using this? Or have you tried using that, because there are authors that are not for us, that I tell them, hey, if you fix this, that and the other, I mean, I know a press that might be interested in your work. And I have suggested work, I have given authors referrals to other presses that I’m friendly with, and that we have a relationship with that I think their work would be a better fit. Some of them have ended up getting published, some of them have not, you know, because it is again, then up to that press. But if you have a good, a good vibe about an author, and you’re an indie press, we really do want to see that out there to be published. And I celebrate those successes. And it makes me feel really good. When you hear back from passion like Yes, we love this book. You’re right, that was perfect for us. And then you see them go on and have success with the book and the author be successful. It’s such a beautiful experience. So I really encourage presses to give specific feedback. And if you know of a tool, you know, put it down in the comments, let me know if I’ve missed a tool that you think is really great, that can be really helpful to authors. I’d love to know about it. Because you know, this is about authors succeeding. And it’s also about small presses, succeeding. And having that relationship with a small press. It’s it’s such an awesome feeling.

K
It does bring us closer as presses and makes it makes me feel like they’re my sibling press. Because hey, they published an author that that I championed. And I’ve had presses send me a book and send me an author. I’m like, Yes, and I’ve had authors send me recommend, you know, other books to me. And even if we didn’t publish their book, they’ll say, Hey, I have a friend that I think has a book that would be a better fit. And those types of relationships are really gorgeous and beautiful to have. Another thing that authors need was might be surprising, is I really do believe that authors need something some sort of way to create images for their book. And it’s for marketing. It’s for pre sales. It’s also for helping you realize your book. And if you have aspirations of your book, becoming a TV show or getting picked up or getting representation from an agent that does film and TV or and streaming I really strongly recommend that you think about what your press package is going to be. And today’s press releases and press packages are image and idea creation heavy. So knowing what your tools are going to be in the image creation space, and what your skill set is going to be in the image creation space, I think it’s going to be really important and get some comfort with that. And I find a really great gentle place to enter is Shutterstock. Because the images are so great that they’re you can, they do have some editing tools, not a lot of editing ability, but it’s really easy to take a Shutterstock image and then put it into Canva. And add your words, add your text, add your book, and, and those types of things, or take a couple of Shutterstock images, and put together a mood board or storyboard that you can share with people online or that you can share with people who are interested in your book. And also looking into getting some skill with Photoshop. Photoshop allows the most, I think, the easiest entry place, but also the most profession, most professional and polished looking, there are a lot of images I’ve seen, I think about to call the image, column, the image and I look at other images. And I feel like that’s a professional image. And I’m sorry that that bias exists. biases are part of the world. And I know that when I go to conferences, we do talk a lot in the indie press space, about how to make sure we’re presenting as professional as possible, because we’re already coming up against a bias that we can’t do as much as the Big Five can do. And I’m going to do a whole podcast on marketing like the Big Five does, and talking about their sales. And what they do to market and how successful their marketing is. Because I think there is a lot of mystery around what the big five does for marketing. And I like you know, I like to demystify stuff, pull back the curtain, and against because I had access to these associations. And I get to go to these meetings as a press owner, that I get these types of insights. And so I’m always looking to pass on the knowledge, creating a professional and polished looking image. If you’re not used to Photoshop, I think it’s it is worth looking at it because the main thing I love about Photoshop is that it can increase the pixelation. And that’s how much color and how much image is given in a given space. And it can take a low resolution image and turn it into a high resolution, very polished looking image, so that you’re not having to jump through a bunch of hoops. And I also love I use JPEG, PNG converter, and that’s a link down in the bottom as well. Because not all of the image that we that we’re working with are a JPEG or PNG or in this specific format that people want. And with Photoshop, sometimes when we’re looking at advertising venues and marketing venues, when we’re sending them marketing material for our books, they ask for a specific dpi, and they ask for a specific pixelation count a specific, there are different types of color formats that you can look into. And Photoshop allows you to customize and do all of that. So if you’re looking at advertising and or going to different venues and being included in their advertising, familiarizing yourself with the features of Photoshop will allow you to familiarize yourself with the professional language of what advertisers are expecting to see when they’re getting your images. And by knowing what advertisers are expecting to see when they’re getting your image and your images, you can then have those that level of professionalism and polish when you’re putting them online because this is what a professional, you know, magazine or a vet would want in your image. You know, when you put it out on the internet, that you’re doing professional quality work. And, you know, it’s such a bummer that we have to prove that we’re valid. I’m not really big on Validating my existence. I do what I do, and I leave, I leave my journey. As a press owner and my my journey and the team’s journey in terms of what we create an image creation out there. And we recently had a meeting as a team, they were like, Hey, should we wipe and restock our Instagram? And I said next. I think it’s really cool for people to see as a press.

K
We were in our first year. We weren’t our second year. We weren’t our third year. It’s kind of our yearbook that shows how we’ve grown and and what level of polished we’re getting and all the different iterations of how the team’s expanding and growing and the different skills that they have and I love it. I’m not ashamed of anyone I’ve ever been. I’m not ashamed of any of the work I’ve ever done. My point of sharing this is neither should you be, you’re beautiful and your art is beautiful. And what you’re doing is amazing. You’ve read a book, or you’re thinking of writing a book. You know, that’s not a small endeavor, that’s huge. And having the courage to go after, or even think about doing something different than what you did yesterday, is beautiful and deserves to be celebrated. And you deserve to be celebrated. You rock and you’re awesome. And you’re valid. I hope that you know that the indie space is hot and sexy, and poppin and turning out bestsellers, and being made into movies and being made into films. So go ahead and swing for the fences, you know, shoot, shoot for the moon, you’ll hit a star kind of thing is where I’m at with that. And so I hope that that this is helpful. And check out the links down in the description. And I want to thank all of our beautiful moths for tuning in every week. All of our beautiful cinnabar moths and you could be any type of moth you’d like to be or you can even be a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey. I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. Talk to you soon. Bye.