Julie Broad from Book Launchers walks through seven tools for self-publishing authors: her own company, the Alliance of Independent Authors, Written Word Media for promotions, StoryOrigin for beta readers and landing pages, Publisher Rocket for keyword research, Author Nation conference in Las Vegas, and Jane Friedman's Hot Sheet newsletter.
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If you haven't written a book yet, you might think the hardest work is writing it. If you're currently struggling to write your book, I'm extra sorry to tell you the hardest part is not what you're going through now. It's all the stuff you have to do to get your book into the reader's hands and use it to build your business and your brand. But there are some fabulous resources, events and communities ready to support you and I'll cover those for you today. So if you want resources as an authority, well, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. And in fact Book Launchers is the first resource you must know about on this list because we have so much to offer to help you. First of all, we have free stuff book launchers TV like 600 videos here to help you. So subscribe to this channel because I teach you everything we do to help our clients. And we have our bi weekly launch letter where I highlight the latest in industry resources and give you links to our live events where we also do a ton of training and content for free. So get that@book launchers.com forward/newsletter our monthly Deep Dive sessions aren't webinars, they are hardcore training sessions that people pay $35 to get the replays on even after they attended live. So we give a ton of value for free. Then you can also get my books Self Publish and Succeed and Self Promote and Succeed. My universal book link will be in the comments below so you can get either book there or you can get Self Promote and Succeed free in audiobook format. The link is also below. Beyond that we have courses for writing and marketing, the Strategic Author Success Group coaching, and our full service offerings which you can learn about@book launchers.com so we are a fabulous resource. The next resource is Ally, the Alliance of Independent Authors. It is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to promoting and providing assistance to independent authors. Ally offers a lot of information and resources to help indie authors succeed in self publishing. I also link to their Watchdog service all the time and I'll put it down below because I am working so hard to help you avoid getting scammed by the crummy companies out there and their Watchdog link will be below for you to help you check out any service you're considering using. I've gone through their vetting process and I know it's rigorous so if they give someone a green light, that resource is going to be one that you can at least trust. Number three. That is not a three. Okay, all right. Number three. Yeah, that's a three is written word media. We use them for 99 cent ebook sales and they have awesome promo stacking. We also keep cheering for them to get Audio Thicket to work well for audiobook sales and promotions. It's not quite there for nonfiction, but they are working hard at it. They have memberships to make their promotions much more affordable as well as ad management support. Written Word Media offers specially branded sites to ensure that your books are promoted to highly engaged readers in your niche. Written Word Media has niche sites for bargain books, free books, romance, audiobooks, and of course new releases. All right, resource number four Story Origin. I've done at least two videos with Story Origin featured lately because they have the ability for you to manage beta readers, which is super cool and they have some great features to help you sell an ebook and build a landing page and so much more. Storyorigin is the place for indie authors to start building both their network and their audience. They have cross promotional marketing tools and community aspects where independent authors can collect resources and offer resources to grow their mailing lists, increase sales and grow reviews. We do have an affiliate relationship with them. You can go to book launchers.com it'll be in the links below book launchers.com below book launchers.com it's like a broken record. Oh, we do have an affiliate relationship with them. You can go to book launchers.com origin. That's our affiliate link if you want to help us pay for some swag. Which by the way, you can win when you comment the day a video is released. And so go ahead, turn on those notifications. Well, first subscribe, then turn on those notifications and comment. And commenting on the day a video is released gets you entered to win noboringbookswag copies of our books and gets you one step closer to being in the Cool Kids Club of YouTube besties with Kevin Hall, Steven Serrell, Darla Mondragon, 718 Scully's House of Thrillers, Professor Burlingame, and many others. Thank you for your comments, likes and shares. Resource 5 regulars know this is going to be on my list because I'm a fan. Yep, it's publisher Rocket Book launchers.com Rocket is our link for that, but Publisher Rocket is something we use every single day at Book Launchers to do keyword category and pricing research. Here's just a quick look at Rocket. It allows us to be on top of what is selling and how books and categories are performing. If you're running Amazon ads, they have great support and tools. And the website Kindlepreneur is jammed with resources to help you save money and not be scammed as an author. Resource 6 is actually an event, so not necessarily a resource per se, but around the event is a great community full of resources. And that is Author Nation. Formerly 20 books to 50K, it now has new people at the helm. But it's 20 books reimagined. And what I loved about 20 books is highly likely to be a part of Author Nation, which is the strong community. An event full of speakers and resources to support authors and a five day event that you really should attend. It's happening in Vegas in November with day one being a vendor day. You can meet fantastic vendors to help you and me and my team will be there as well. And then there's three days of content and Friday is a book selling showcase so you can sell your book to thousands of attendees and people from the Las Vegas community and people visiting Las Vegas too. Finally, Resource seven. And it's actually tough to stop at seven resources because there are so many tools and resources we all use all the time at Book Launchers that I know you'll find valuable. But for today I'm going to tell you the seventh resource is one that you may not need or want, but it helps me stay on top of the trends and topics that are important in the self publishing and publishing industry. And that is Jane Friedman's hot sheet. You can go to her site hotsheetpub.com, scroll to the bottom and you can get two issues for free and you can see if you want to pay for it. But for me, I always learn something new from every issue. Between the stories, the conference summaries, the resource links and news updates, it just makes me more current. So it's a resource I rely on heavily. And if you're keen to be aware of all the things happening in the publishing world, well now you have it too. There are other resources that I like and if you're trying to get book reviews, well, this video on book review sites is a good one to watch. And another resource that isn't on this list but we use and love is Draft 2 Digital. This video contains things you likely don't know about. Draft 2 Digital. Draft 2 Digital. Yes, that's them. Click on over and let me know when you get there.
