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Steve’s Creative Resources 5/16/2019

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It’s been awhile since I posted my list of creative resources (which I keep at Seventh Sanctum) for your use.  Please reblog freely, and suggest new ideas.

Art Sources

Free

  • Pixabay – A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There’s a lot here, and much of it is professional.
  • Unsplash – A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.

Royalty Free

  • Canstockphoto – A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.
  • Shutterstock – The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.
  • The Noun Project – A fee or membership-based site for downloading a huge selection of royalty free icons! Once you pay for it or download it, it’s royalty-free! Useful for all sorts of projects

Book Covers

Premade

  • Go On Write – Premade covers for books – pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.

Services

  • Paper and Sage – A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.

Tools

  • Canva – Book cover creator, though you will want to provide your own art if you don’t want to pay for rights to their stock photo. Also has other services.

Book Reviewers

Review Sources

  • Midwest book review – Will review books for free, but it’s a matter of choice.
  • Self Publishing Review – A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .
  • The Indie Review – A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Color Tools

Collections

  • Color Tools – Plenty of useful online color tools.
  • HTML Color Codes – Useful color tools, with a focus on web-focused colors.
  • Material Palette – Useful tools for desginging palettes, finding icons, and locating specific colors

Color Schemes

  • Color At Adobe – A color theme creator that lets you create schemes, or even get one from a picture, and has a powerful interface.
  • Color Calculator – A color scheme creator that also has useful advice and guides.
  • Colormind – A color theme creator that creates schemes with simple clicking, or get one from a photo.
  • Colors at Halfpixel – A simple palette creator (with a mobile option) with intuitive controls.
  • Coolors – A useful and powerful color palette creator that’s easy to use and powerful.
  • Huesnap – A palette repository and creation tool

Contact Management

Mailing Lists

  • Mailchimp – Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it’s the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.

Professional

  • LinkedIn – The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Generators

Generator Sites

  • Chaotic Shiniy – A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.
  • Darkest of Nights – Fantasy-oriented generators.
  • Donjon – Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!
  • Dropping-the-form – Generators for various settings.
  • Eposic – Generators – among other imaginative efforts.
  • Fantasy Name Generators – And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn’t know you needed.
  • Feath – Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.
  • Generator Blog – Links out to many other generators.
  • Generatorland – Lots of generators and generator tools.
  • Mithril and mages – Generators for a variety of genres.
  • Name Pistol – Band name generators.
  • RanGen – Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.
  • Serendipity – A generator site with some setting and name generators.
  • Seventh Sanctum – A gigantic collection of generators founded in 1999, with a focus on writing and RPGs.
  • Springhole.net – A site of generators and other creative tools.
  • Squid.org – Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.
  • The Force – A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

Graphic Tools

  • Art Rage – A painting-oriented digital art program supporting many operating systems, tools, and formats.
  • Clip Studio – A comics, painting, and illustration tool with many options and features
  • Mediabang – A comic and painting application that’s free and multiplatform!
  • Paintstorm – A low-cost digital painting program with many advanced features.

Graphic Tools – Free

  • Gimp – Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).
  • Krita – A free graphic tool focused on professional workflows.
  • Made With Mischief – A quick, free sketching and brainstorming tool.
  • Sketchbook – A free sketching program.

Graphic Tools – Painting

  • BlackInk – A painting program, focusing on stylistic work as opposed to realistic

Mac

  • Pixemlator – A low-cost alternative to Photoshop for Mac, with lots of compatibility options

Helpful Tools

Relaxing Backgrounds

  • 4 Ever Transit Authority – Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.
  • Anomolies – A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.
  • Becalm – A relaxing journey via sailboat through surreal worlds with a relaxing soundtrack and audio. Can be run for a few minutes or in a loop and you can switch between multiple settings.
  • Panoramical – Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.
  • Station To Station – A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Portfolios

Services

  • Adobe Portfolio – The popular porftolio site – that comes with many Adobe subscriptions.
  • Artstation – Multimedia-focused portfolio and blog platform
  • Format – A portfolio site with store services as well.

RPG Resources

Random Charts

  • Chartopia – A site with a huge and expanding amount of charts for RPGs, easily sortable and classified.

Self-Publishing

Audiobooks

  • ACX – Amazon’s self-publishing audio platform
  • Audible – Another amazon audiobook publishing platform
  • Findaway – A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.

Cards

  • Drive Thru Cards – Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.

eBook

  • Itch.io – Itch.io doesn’t just do games – it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.
  • Kobo Writing Life – Distribute your eBook via Kobo
  • Nook Press – Distribute your eBook via Nook

eBook-Multiple

  • Draft2Digital – A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.
  • Smashwords – A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.

Physical And Ebook

  • Ingram Spark – Ingram’s eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.
  • KDP – Amazon’s full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.
  • Lulu.com – A print and eBook creation and distribution service.

RPGs

  • Drive Thru RPG – Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.

Video Games

  • Itch.io – Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Website Creation

Services

  • Squarespace – The popular website creator with many options.
  • Weebly – Easy and simple to use website, blogs, and stores.
  • Wix – A simple And effective website source, though paid options are reccomended.
  • WordPress.com – The classic site, with free and paid options. Obviously blog-focused.

Writing Tools

Ebook Creation

  • Calibre – A free ebook creation tool.
  • Jutoh – Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it’s a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.

Word Processing

  • LibreOffice – A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it’s fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.

Word Tools

  • Describing Words – Ideas for how to describe a given word.
  • Dictionary.com – The classic online dictionary.
  • Related Words – Helps find words similar to or related to one you’re using.
  • Rhyme Zone – A tool to help you find rhyming words.
  • Thesaurus.Com – The classic online thesaurus, with plenty of useful options and displays

Writing

  • Scriviner – A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.

Writing Checking

  • Grammarly – A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.
  • Hemmingway – A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.
  • Pro Writing Aid – A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.

Indie Authors Versus The Money

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Right now you want to sell your books.  Maybe it’s a future career.  Maybe it’s a hobby that pays (like mine).  Maybe you’re just trying it out.

Either way, you want to sell.  As I noted in There’s No Honor In An Unread Book, your goal is to reach the right people.

And to do that, you’re up against many things, but one of those things is money.  Namely money other people have and spend to sell their books.  If you have a lot of money, well then good on you, but this isn’t for you (except to say, hey use that cash to help out others too).

You may think “wait, I’m up against other indies and self-publishers” with cash and worry about that.  Let me ruin your day further by noting it’s also you being up against publishers and marketing departments and everything else companies large and small have at your disposal.  When you’re trying to promote your works, you’re up against organizations older than we are.

It sounds overwhelming.  But we’ve all seen and heard of success stories out there.  Sure there’s a ton of survivor bias there, but there are people to learn from.  People who inspire us and give us hope.

Right now I’m not going to focus on that inspiration, I’m going to focus on what people are throwing money at to sell their books and such.  You can either throw money at those things, or if you’re like most folks coping with the world today, how you work around your limits.  Forewarned is forearmed, so roll up the sleeves on those forearms and get to work.

Here’s where money is getting spent.

Advertising

It’s easy to throw money at advertising on Google, Amazon, and More.  You can, with dilligent research, at least break even at advertising if not make a profit.  It’s just other people and companies can buy advetising at a loss if they need to in order to drive up sales and get reviews.

Advertising also has a feedback effect.  If you advertise your book or product and people buy it then it gets into reccomendations.

My cheap suggestion?  Study up on advertising and aim to get to the break-even point at least to get your book out there.

Book Tours

Publishers can send people on book tours.  It’s a great way to get attention on authors.  Other authors can send themselves and do their own book tours at indie book stores, conventions, and more.

Book tours are mixed bags in my experience – some sell some don’t.  Do them if you want.  It’s just to do it cheap, you’ll want to line it up yourself with local stores.  I like the idea, but I’m also the kind of person that likes to meet people.

The only challenge is that a lot of Indie stories are fussy about what they carry – usually amazon print books are a no-no.  That leaves Ingrahm Spark or Lulu for print.

I also do a lot of public speaking at conventions and libraries.  I use that to meet people and network.

Covers

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a good book cover can wrap many, many more up in a single image.  Good covers sell, as I have found the hard way.  People can throw money at a good book cover.

If you’re not going to do that your options are to learn to do it yourself (which is useful), get someone to help you (which is nice but can be exploitative), or use a premade cover service (like GoOnWrite, which I adore).  I find you can do pretty well with these if you’re careful.

Giveaways

You’ve probably seen newsletters like Bookbub that promote book giveaways – for a fee.  I can’t speak directly to how effective they are, but they keep going and I hear good thing.  It’s just they cost – you guessed it – money.  Also they usually only promote if there’s a discount.

It’s hard to top these for sheer volume.  You can of course give away books to friends and newsletter subscribers, or use things like ProlificWorks.com (which still costs but not as much).  It won’t get you a huge blitz, but still.

Reviews

Book-wise you can pay for reviews.  This may sound unethical (and there’s debate about it), but the model is simple – companies or publications keep a staff of reviews around and farm out entrants to them if they’re interested.  Similar models have existed for decades.  I’ll leave you to decide on the ethicalness of the situation.

But people are using this.  You can throw a few thousand dollars at a review service and get a lot of reviews.  So guess what, you compete with that too.

The cheap solution of course is to get as many reviews as possible.  Ask friends.  Ask family.  Ask fellow authors.  Go to sources of reviews and review sites and ask for reviews.  Offer free copies of your book.

Some people are throwing money at reviewers.  If you can’t or won’t, it’s time to get tactical.

In Summary

People are going to throw money at promoting their books.  If you don’t want to do that, can’t do that, or disagree with some of the approaches, you need to work around that.

One thing I can definitely suggest is to team up with your fellow authors.  Share tips.  Promote each other.  DO giveaways together.  One thing that’s free is friendship.

You’ll probably make some pretty awesome friends and you can plot together.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 5/13/2019

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Here’s our latest sprint roundup! Definitely prefering these two week sprints.

So what have I done since last time?

  • Way With Worlds: The Fashion Book close to completion! I hope to get it to the editor next week with a drop in early January.
  • Seventh Sanctum Book: I’m through the toughest part, and am on to the rest of the book. I think I’ll have it in editing mode (for myself) in June and to the editor in July.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Working on the eventually python migration and completed the Fantasy Romance Generator.

What’s next?

  • Way With Worlds: Finishing up the Fashion book and getting it to the editor (and maybe starting the next)
  • Seventh Sanctum Book: Writing as usual!
  • Seventh Sanctum: Launch the fantasy romance generator!

Steven Savage