5 Tools Everyone in the Book Industry should be using
Productivity for writers is super important and having the right tools can help you get your work done. Below are five programs which you may not be using but should be.
1. CANVA
"Create a design" for a Facebook post, a social media campaign, a Kindle book cover, a logo, Pinterest graphic, Instagram cover. You can do all that for free on this remarkable design software. There are many, many free elements, texts, backgrounds and layouts. For a few dollars you can also buy illustrations, photos and upgraded texts and backgrounds. The program is truly user friendly.
www.canva.com
2. DRAGON SPEAK
To add to your productivity and speed of reaching that word-count, why not try speaking your story? "Simply talk and your words appear on the screen." You can also create shortcuts for common tasks. Say, "Open email" and your computer obeys. Of course, this program does require some time for you to train your dragon. The more you use the program, the more reliably it will transpose speech to text. Oh, and don't let others play with your dragon because dragons are a single user kind of program.
https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html
3. TextAloud
Do you remember that English teacher suggesting that you read your work aloud when editing? Well, she was right, but reading your own work has problems, including overlooking mistakes as you read what you meant to write instead of what is there. Enter a text to speech program. The perfect tool for catching those words that should be plural or that missing word or the wrong word, of for if, as an example. This program is also great for reading back your story for flow of sentences and checking for repeat words. I used TextAloud to edit this post!
There are many offerings of this. The one I use is TextAloud.
https://nextup.com/
4. MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular mailing software programs available and it is the one that I use to manage my mailing lists, create newsletters, automation campaigns and a landing page for new subscribers. The program is complex but user friendly and has loads of statistical information even at the free level. Upgrading to the paid subscription, for me, was definitely worth the price!
https://mailchimp.com/
5. BRAIN.fm
"Music for the Brain"
Brain.fm creates playlists online that you can use to Focus, Meditate or Sleep. I've only used the Focus option but quickly used my free sessions and found this a valuable tool to "Get hours of work done without distractions." The website says you will see an improvement in focus usually in 15 minutes and that their program has some heavy-duty neuroscience behind the music.
https://www1.brain.fm/
Here's hoping that you discover a new favorite program to help you in your journey as an author, editor or any other book industry profession!