DIY Indie Author Resources
So you’re looking for author resources? These are the tools I use personally.
There is a difference between being an Indie Author, being a DIY Author, and being a DIY Indie Author. Neither is better than the other. What you choose is driven by your personality, budget, and goals. Over the course of your author career, due to market changes and budget restraints, you may experience being all of them. I work outside of publishing and share helpful resources on this page and my YouTube channel with affiliate links to invest in Shawneda.com. Thanks to my formal education and professional experience, I do a large amount of things for my book business myself — including handbinding my autographed print books using in-home print-on-demand technology to create author copies. This is my preference, but it may not be yours. The beauty of technology is the ability to customize the DIY parts of your author journey to you.
Traditionally published or hybrid authors may find some gems in the mix, but after fifteen plus years in the industry, my observation is people who like being traditionally published don’t like the business responsibilities of publishing. If you’re looking for craft books and writing resources, a list of craft books (that will include affiliate links to help) is in draft.
Joanna Penn aka the Creative Penn
My favorite author industry expert is Joanna Penn. She is the most consistent, thorough, and seems like a genuinely nice person based on my limited public observation of her since I started writing and publishing back in 2005. She has a podcast, book or course on darn near any self publishing topic you can imagine (except for bookbinding, but no one is perfect). I’m all about uplifting other women in business who have shown themselves to be empathetic and authentic. You can find other complementary resources to what Joanna offers below.
Valuable Books
Following and BookBub Ads by David Gaughran
This man is an entire hoot. He is hilarious. Like I can tell at a party, he is probably a good time. Extroverted writers who love colorful entertaining moments while being taught will find him especially refreshing. These things normally put me off of experts – I prefer the instructions, fact, figures, and resources because I read fiction or watch streaming shows to be entertained. However, he is the exception to my preference because he is just being his entire self and between the jokes; you get all the above with proof to back it up. So he is a definite read. I also took his course, but I’ll touch on that more below.
Helpful Courses
Starting from Zero by David Gaughran
Leaving my book business dormant to complete my Master’s degree was the best and worst thing possible for me to do for my book business. Two years in digital markets today is the same as a decade of changes in the 20th century. David brought me up to speed on things. While I continued to read the blogs and perused my favorite resources on semester breaks, I knew I’d missed a lot of changes. This course helped me because launching in new genres and coming back to books after two years felt like starting from zero. It’s also free, so yeah, that helped.