Last week I said I was going to put my money where my mouth is and start curating free resources for writers on a shoestring budget. Today I begin that journey. The following are 6 free resources I’ve used to help me with my marketing, either in straight up promotion or as a means to boost my marketing techniques.
- Book Report: If you’re selling your books on Amazon, this browser extension helps you see your sales at a glance. It’s available for both Chrome and Firefox.
- Pros: It’s free for everyone earning less than $1000/month on KDP.
- Cons: If you earn more than $1000 in the month after your initial two-week trial, the price is $19/month, which reduces its appeal to those on a tight budget.
- Reedsy Book Promotion Lists: This is a combination search and list of curated promotion sites put together by the Reedsy staff, a top-notch and trusted group of people who do their best to look out for writers’ interests.
- Pros: It’s curated to weed out the scam sites and list the sites the staff believes gives the best bang for the buck
- Cons: Because the Reedsy staff is particular, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, there selection is rather small and they have missed some decent sites like Awesome Gang and Choosy Bookworm.
- Booklinker: This site takes your Amazon link and creates one link for every Amazon store internationally. So if you’re in the US like me, you simply have to copy and paste your US Amazon book link into Booklinker and it will create a custom link that includes links to the book on the Japanese Amazon site, the Australian site, the UK site–you get the picture. This is a super way to use a short link on social media without excluding anyone based on where they live.
- Pros: It’s free and super simple to use and has good link tracking to show where clicks are coming from.
- Cons: Not everyone trusts short links–with good reason–and it only works with Amazon links.
- Kindleprenuer: Dave Chesson is perhaps one of my favorite writer/teachers because, although he does have a few programs and apps he sells to help writers (which I’m not against), he also has tons of helpful mini apps throughout his sites like his hashtag generator and blogs and videos that actually teach marketing techniques from start to finish that are absolutely free.
- CoSchedule: This blog post is a great way to figure out what the best posting schedule for your chosen social media because it has infographics that lay it all out in a glance. They also set up a new “forever free” version of their marketing calendar, which I will be trying out over the next few weeks, so look for a review on that in the future.
- BookBub Partners: I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard, at least in passing, about BookBub and how it can rock your advertising world–if you can afford it and if your book is accepted. However, did you know that you can set up a free Partner account and list your books? I’d heard about this awhile back but just now decided to try it myself because, hey! it’s BookBub and it’s free. Like CoSchedule, I’ll be taking a closer look at this option in the near future, so be sure to check back for an update on how this new venue is working out for me.
There you are, 6 good free resources (and 2 bonuses!) with the promise to further review two of them in upcoming blog posts. If you know of other free resources, please share them in the comments below so we can all move forward on our shoestring writing dreams together.
Writer on a Shoestring 