Episode 176 - Two Perspectives on Choosing the Tools for Your Author Career with Michael La Ronn and Matty Dalrymple
March 7, 2023
Michael La Ronn and I discuss TWO PERSPECTIVES ON CHOOSING THE TOOLS FOR YOUR AUTHOR CAREER, including the tools we use for writing and editing, design (book interiors and exteriors), production, distribution, marketing, promotion, and administrivia. More importantly, we discuss the criteria they use to select our tools, including using tools wide or deep, buying versus building, being an early adopter or not, working solo or with a co-author or assistant, the desire for customization, how ubiquitous the tool is, customer service, and intuitiveness of use.
And Michael makes a compelling recommendation not to overlook the productivity tools that are built into your computer and phone.
Michael La Ronn is the author of over forty science fiction & fantasy novels and self-help books for writers. He runs the popular YouTube channel Author Level Up and serves on the staff of the Alliance of Independent Authors as a US Ambassador, and he also co-hosts the AskALLi Member Q&A Podcast.
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"If you can find all those little pain points and you can find ways using tools that are already on your computer to solve them, it just makes you so much more effective. And it's something that a lot of people don't think about, and people will very quickly go and pay for tools that are already built into their computer." —Michael La Ronn
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Links
Michael’s links:
https://www.youtube.com/authorlevelup
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellaronn/
https://twitter.com/michaellaronn
https://www.facebook.com/michael.laronn
Michael's previous episodes:
Episode 163 - Year End: The Writing Craft And The Publishing Voyage with Jennifer Hilt & Michael La Ronn
Episode 148 - Making the Most of In-person Events
Episode 126 - Estate Planning for Authors
Episode 096 - Emerging Tech for the Writing Craft
Episode 090 - Bringing a Creative Endeavor to an End
Episode 074 - Perspectives on Personal Branding
Episode 055 - The Costs of Self-publishing a Book
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://www.youtube.com/authorlevelup
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellaronn/
https://twitter.com/michaellaronn
https://www.facebook.com/michael.laronn
Michael's previous episodes:
Episode 163 - Year End: The Writing Craft And The Publishing Voyage with Jennifer Hilt & Michael La Ronn
Episode 148 - Making the Most of In-person Events
Episode 126 - Estate Planning for Authors
Episode 096 - Emerging Tech for the Writing Craft
Episode 090 - Bringing a Creative Endeavor to an End
Episode 074 - Perspectives on Personal Branding
Episode 055 - The Costs of Self-publishing a Book
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michael! If you try out our challenge to find a build-in app on your computer or phone to support your writing and publishing work, I’d love to hear what you find and how you are using it!
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Transcript
Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indie Author Podcast. Today, my guest is Michael La Ronn. Hey Michael, how are you doing?
Michael: Great, Matty. How are you?
Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. So at this point, normally I would introduce you to our listeners and viewers, but you have been a guest so often, you're practically an unofficial co-host. So I think people know you already, either through the podcast or through your great YouTube channel, Author Level Up, or possibly from your many books for authors, or your co-hosting duties on the Ask ALLi Member Q&A Podcast. So, if anyone wants to know more about Michael, they can just go to theindieauthor.com/podcast and search for his name, and you'll find all sorts of fun info about Michael there.
Michael and I are doing kind of a periodic series on perspectives. We've already talked about making the most of in-person events, and we had a "Three Perspectives" episode when Jennifer Hilt joined us to talk about year-end for the writing craft and the publishing voyage.
Today we are going to be talking about two perspectives on author tools. The one that I initially talked with Michael about was "wide or deep"—using tools wide or deep. But I realized, as I was looking over my notes right before this, that I think another perspective we can bring is "buy or build."
Ah, yes, I think maybe we're going to bring different perspectives to this. The goal of the conversation is not to do an in-depth analysis of all the tools we use in our writing and publishing careers, but more to focus on the strategies and thoughts we're putting into what tools we choose and what tools we don’t choose, so people can apply those to their own situations. Although I’m sure that in the process of the conversation, we’re going to be sharing some recommendations.
I also wanted to add that, for the most part, I’m only discussing tools that I use for my writing craft and publishing voyage, not, for example, for my podcast. So this will be very much author—not podcasting—centric. I wanted to just start right out talking about our strategies for deciding which tools we use.
Michael, do you want to launch into that? What are your considerations when you're deciding whether to acquire a tool for your writing and publishing work?
Michael’s 3 Criteria for Assessing Tools
Michael: Yeah, I have three considerations. The first is: Does it help me do something more efficiently? The second is kind of similar to it: Does it help me do something faster? And then the third is: Does it improve my enjoyment of whatever it is that I’m doing? So those are my three criteria. It’s speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. And if it meets at least one of those things, awesome, because then it’s going to lead to either more words or more income, which is a good thing. If it meets two of them, it’s amazing. If it meets all three of them, then it’s a slam dunk.
Matty: And how are you distinguishing efficiency versus speed?
Michael: Speed to me is how quickly you do something. I mean, that’s kind of the obvious definition. Efficiency, to me, is how well you do it. So efficiency sometimes can include speed, but it’s also about how well you’re doing it. For example, I dictate my novels. The problem with dictation is that if you use Dragon, it’s really accurate, but when it’s not accurate, it produces some really funky stuff, and it’s super weird.
So I’ve developed some Microsoft Word macros that basically help me catch a lot of those funky errors. So it’s a situation where I had to develop some Word macros, and when I dictate and upload my text into Word, I run this macro, and it cleans up the text. So it doesn’t necessarily increase my speed—it actually slows my speed down a little bit. Well, actually, it doesn’t; it increases my speed because it catches errors quickly. But it also makes the process of dictation more efficient, if that makes sense. It’s not just important to do something quickly—you also need to figure out how the tool can help you do it better.
Matty: Yep. And "enjoyment" almost springs to mind for me on the writing craft side, but do you find that same criteria applies when you’re thinking about your publishing work?
Michael: Yeah, I mean, there’s just some stuff that’s kind of a pain. As an author, I mean, we want to spend time writing our books, but there are so many other things that get in the way, right? I mean, there are things we have to do with marketing. There’s the publishing side. And so some of those things, I would imagine, a lot of people listening probably find not enjoyable. One of those things is calculating sales reports. So, are there tools that you can use to calculate your sales reports with automation so that you don’t have to tally them up by hand, which is what I used to have to do 10 years ago? So, increasing your enjoyment of the process, I think, is also important because then it makes you more likely to do it. And if you can also spend less time doing it and do it more efficiently, then I think that’s a win.
Matty: And I’ll talk about my one criterion that I apply, but as you’re talking, of course, the things that you’re saying make total sense to me.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Deep versus Wide
Matty: I generally think about my tool usage as deep versus wide. My goal is always to have as few tools as possible, with the benefits being lower cost and a lower learning curve. I use them to their utmost and only go to a new tool when I've exhausted what I can do with the tools I have.
A good example—this will be the only podcasting-related one I use, but it’s a good one—is that I've used Descript for many years for my audio and video editing for the podcast, and it’s been fine. But I recently started doing professional videos more on a freelance basis, and I did one and realized that I could probably do it with Descript, but that’s not really what it's built for. I ended up getting Camtasia because there was that one more thing I needed to do that I was really struggling with. I finally thought, okay, I'm going to add Camtasia to my suite of applications because I've done everything I can with Descript without it becoming less efficient, less fast, and less enjoyable. I just invested in a new tool. So that’s kind of my primary criterion: deep versus wide.
Do you have a position on the deep versus wide consideration?
Michael: Yeah, I like your philosophy. It’s really clear, and it makes sense, and it’s definitely one way to approach it. I’m more of a wide versus deep guy because, to me, I think you can always learn how to go deep quickly if you need to. My philosophy has always been that I want to make sure I always have the right tool for any situation that comes up. I’m a very technical guy, so sometimes I find myself getting into stuff and thinking, “Oh, crap, what am I doing?”
Because of my personality type, I find that I just have to use more tools more frequently. I think, “Oh, that tool would be great for whenever I need to do this or that,” and so I grab it, and it sits on my computer until maybe one day I need it, and I’m glad I have it. Yes, I do have a lot of tools, and no, I don’t use them all on a regular basis. But when I come across something tricky, and it’s like, “Oh, crap, I need to figure out how to do that,” I have the right tool, and I know where to go.
If I don’t know how to use it, I can find a YouTube tutorial or use forums—most apps and tools have forums—where I can figure out a specific use case, and I can usually do it pretty quickly. So, I think our philosophies are exactly the opposite.
Matty: Yeah, which is fun, you know?
Michael: Yeah, it is fun.
Matty: I think my philosophy changed a bit when I no longer had a corporate salary. When I worked with my assistant to analyze my expenditures, and we’ll be talking about how I did that a little later, my technical subscriptions—despite my strategy of using as few tools as possible—were still a big chunk of my expenditures for my author career. So, for example, I got Camtasia for about $280, and I thought much more deeply about it now that it’s part of my P&L, compared to before when I had a corporate job and thought, “Oh, I’ll just skip a couple of dinners out.”
Another thing is that I’m not the type to jump in and just muck around. When I got Camtasia, the first thing I did was watch all the Camtasia online videos. So, I also keep in mind the time investment. A person who jumps in and mucks around might spend the same amount of time over the long run, but they don’t factor it in as a separate consideration. I set aside a day to watch all the Camtasia educational videos. So, it’s just about how you weigh the cost and benefits of adding another tool to your toolkit.
More Tools Don’t Necessarily Mean More Expense
Michael: Yeah, you said two really good things there. The first is the cost of tools. Just because you have a lot of tools, that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. For example, I don’t really have that many subscriptions. I mean, I have a few things that I pay for, like Adobe Creative Cloud, and there are a few other subscriptions that are important for tools I use. But you don’t have to have a subscription. There are lots of apps that allow you to pay once, and you’re done.
It’s a one-time investment, and a lot of apps that I’ve paid for have paid for themselves with that one-time thing. Yes, you’re correct—if you buy every tool that has a subscription, you’ll go bankrupt quickly. But I really don’t spend that much on tools. I buy what I need when I need it, and then the investment usually pays for itself at some point.
The other thing you said that I think was really insightful was about documentation and watching videos. I think that’s really important, especially when you buy a tool for the first time. It doesn’t take very much time to review the videos and materials, or at least do a quick walkthrough.
What I’ve found—and this might be a bit of a counterpoint to what you said—is that when you go to a program when you need it, your learning tends to be deeper because you have more of a practical application for it. That’s something I’ve learned over the years. Once you’ve used enough tools, you find that they’re similar enough that you can figure them out. Like, I bet if I jumped into Camtasia, I’ve used enough video editing software that I could probably figure it out pretty quickly.
So, the more tools you use, the better you are at using tools. That’s just something to think about.
Matty: Yeah, and I think the cost I have for my subscription-type things—like Descript, Zoom, Libsyn—again, I’m venturing a bit into some podcast-related things, but last year, yeah, in 2022, it seemed like they all offered discounts if you paid for a year upfront. My recognition of what I was spending was sort of exaggerated because all at once, instead of paying $10 a month for 12 months, I was paying $90 all at once.
So, I was saving money in the long term, but it was more of an attention-getting expenditure because it was a bigger outlay at once. It seemed like last year, they all did that. So I had one big chunk of outlay to accommodate that.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Buy versus Build
Matty: And then the other aspect we’re talking about is buy versus build. I don’t know if it makes sense to talk about this a little bit theoretically first or in the context of the tools we’re using. Do you have anything you’d like to say about buy versus build before we start reviewing our tools?
Michael: Yeah, yeah. This one is really important, and it’s one I think a lot of people don’t have an appetite for, but if you develop the skill, it’s invaluable. To me, this one thing has made me a lot of profit and has improved my processes and efficiencies an unbelievable number of times.
When you think about buying a tool, you’re buying something that somebody else has already developed. It makes things easier for you, and it’s convenient, right? It’s like preparing your own food versus going to a restaurant. When you’re really hungry, you’re going to go get fast food or takeout because someone’s already done the work. The most you have to do is put in your credit card, take the food, put it in your car, and go home to eat it.
But if you want to prepare your own food, you’ve got to go to the grocery store, get the ingredients, know how to put them together, and then you get what is probably, I think we can agree, a better meal—but it takes more time.
Matty: It depends on whether you’re going for fast food or going for the nice restaurant!
Michael: This is true, this is true. But you know, we’ll assume a nice, casual meal. You’re going to get something that maybe you could have made at home, right? So when you buy a tool, it’s the equivalent of going to a restaurant, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When you prepare a tool, it’s the equivalent of staying at home and cooking your own food, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. I think it depends on the situation. Most people listening to this are not technical at all, don’t know how to program, and would be better staying out of the kitchen, right? Unless you have that skill to do it.
Now, there’s a middle ground here, and that is you can hire somebody to build something for you. You can hire a programmer to build you an application that can do something you can’t get anywhere else, or maybe you have an application that’s really expensive. Now, most things you shouldn’t build applications for, but there are things that can help you improve your workflows and processes.
For example, OpenAI just released a new audio model called Whisper, and it transcribes audio. It works just like Dragon, and it’s free. So, I hired a developer to build an application that uses Whisper, where I can upload my audio to it, get it back, and then I don’t have to rely on Dragon. If one day Dragon goes the way of the dodo, which it could—because Microsoft is rumored to be doing some things with it—then I still have a tool that I can use.
So, it’s similar to that. I’m a big fan of building something when it doesn’t exist already, and it’ll help you improve your processes. I’m not so much a fan of building something that already exists and that you can probably buy and get better customer support for.
Matty: Well, I really like the restaurant analogy, and I think it plays out really nicely because there’s making your meatloaf at home versus getting meatloaf as takeout or whatever. But then the analogy of going to a fine restaurant and ordering three or four courses also has an interesting tools analogy because there are things that are so complex. Like, I’m never going to want to cook a four-course meal in my own kitchen, in the same way that I’m never going to want to try to cobble together all the things that Descript does in terms of automated AI, sound leveling, and all those things. So, I’m totally willing to pay the fine dining tab in order to have somebody do that.
But as kind of an entrée to our discussion, I decided we would use—because we’re both big ALLi fans—the ALLi Six of the Seven Processes of Publishing to talk through our use of tools.
Tools for the Editorial Process
Matty: We’re going to start out with number one, which is editorial, and I’m going to roll into that number zero, which is writing. This is a rare example of me building rather than buying because I use Excel for plotting. Listeners have often heard me talk about this big spreadsheet I use where it’s characters across the top and chapters down the side.
In each cell, I put what a character thinks, knows, believes, and feels at a certain point. That way, I can look down the column and see the whole storyline for that character, or I can look across a row and see everything that’s happening in the story for all the characters at that point.
If I just described that and didn’t tell you what I was using, people might think, “Oh, she must be using Plottr.” In fact, I have Plottr for two reasons. One is that it’s such a common tool, and in the interest of building out my consulting practice, I thought it would be good for me to be familiar with Plottr, even if I wasn’t using it myself. And I like to see what people are doing in built tools like that, which I might be able to duplicate in Excel because I’m a big Excel nerd. If I can sort, filter things, and apply conditional formatting, there’s really nothing I can’t do that I need for plotting a book.
So there’s an example where Plottr is a fabulous tool, and I would definitely recommend it to people who don’t want to muck around in Excel, but Excel is really doing what I need it to do from a plotting point of view. Any thoughts about the tools you apply to your writing and editorial work?
Michael: Yeah, Plottr is great. I actually just did a video review of Plottr. It gives you the best of Excel without actually being Excel, which is nice because you can filter everything. But yeah, the tools I use in my writing process have changed over the years. I used to be a Scrivener guy, and I still love Scrivener.
I’ve switched over to Microsoft Word just because there’s so much more I can do with it now than I could 10 years ago. For editing, I use Grammarly Premium. I’m not the biggest fan of the user interface, but it catches typos and other critical issues.
I also use a tool called PerfectIt, which is like a proofreading app. A lot of people seem to hesitate to use PerfectIt because it’s based on the *Chicago Manual of Style* and helps ensure your manuscript aligns with that, which is great. I also use Microsoft Word macros, as I mentioned earlier—that’s for a specific use case.
And that’s really it for me. I am building some applications to use GPT-3, ChatGPT, and soon-to-come GPT-4 to help with editing because AI is actually a very capable proofreader. It can catch a lot of typos and things that Grammarly can’t. So that’s a tool I’m looking into right now. But I try to keep it simple when it comes to the actual writing process.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Early Adopter or Not
Matty: Well, that highlights another distinction: early adopter or not. I use Scrivener for writing, and then I have to export it to Word and other things that we’ll talk about under the design category.
I’ve looked at Atticus a little bit, and I believe one of the goals of Atticus is to eliminate the need to go from Scrivener to Word to give it to my editor, and then export it to Word again to get it formatted—kind of the back-and-forth silliness. It sounds like a great goal. When they get to the point where they’re really doing all those functions, as you can only do when you’ve been around for a little while, then yeah, I would definitely consider moving over to Atticus. But I wasn’t interested in being an early adopter because I wanted somebody else to work out all the bugs before I started using it.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I think Atticus is the future. It’s one of the main reasons I switched to Word. I just got tired of the back-and-forth between Scrivener and Word because you have to send it to your editor, and then it has to come back to Scrivener, and then back to Word for development. I just wasn’t interested in that, which is why I adopted Microsoft Word—to do everything in one app. I think that’s important.
Early adoption has its time and place, but like you said, you don’t necessarily want to be the person beta-testing an app, especially when you’re aiming to be a professional writer. When you’ve got a full day, lots of books to write, and projects to work on, I just don’t have the time to help someone beta test. But when it comes to things like AI or new technology that might give you an advantage, then that’s the time to consider early adoption.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Solo Work or Co-writing
Matty: Yeah. And this highlights yet another consideration, which is whether you’re working with someone on something—and you and I know all about this.
We’ve been co-working on some materials, and we’ve really struggled with how to do that most efficiently. We were sort of brain-dumping material into Google Docs, which is convenient because two people can work on it at the same time, but it’s truly a horrible experience from a writing and editing point of view. I don’t know what it is about the UI, but I struggle to be creative when I’m working in Google Docs. Then we got to a point where we could move it to Word, which has some benefits, but also some downsides. You put a hard “no” on Scrivener, which I understand.
I’m co-authoring a piece of fiction with another author, and we’re both Scrivener users, but Scrivener doesn’t lend itself to shared documentation. So we were working in Word, then we moved it—it’s kind of a mess. I don’t think there’s a good tool out there that makes co-authoring as easy as it could be. Maybe Atticus will be that tool.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t exist right now, but we’ll see where it goes. And I think that’s another thing—what’s so important about this for me is that the biggest pain points writers can have are in this process. Most people don’t really think about what we just talked about: the fact that you have to shuffle your manuscript between applications. I think people just accept that’s how it is.
But if you look at it from an efficiency perspective—and I’m an efficiency guy—it’s important to do things that make sense and that are efficient. Efficiency increases everything in your business, right? It increases your sales, your speed, your volume, your output—everything. And if you look at the process people follow, it’s just not efficient. People are wasting time, money, and effort with a process where you’re trading manuscripts back and forth.
I think it’s up to each individual person to figure out how to make their processes more efficient. I don’t think there’s going to be a developer who comes in and saves the day and does it for us because, if somebody could have solved this problem, they would have already. But like I said, I think apps like Atticus are the future, and I think there’s value in having everything done in one place. I just don’t think that value has been fully realized yet.
People haven’t woken up to the fact that, “Oh yeah, I shouldn’t be doing this with Scrivener. This is a waste of time—I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Matty: It’s like the classic story about the person who cut the turkey in half to put it in the oven because that’s what her mom and grandmother did, only to learn her grandmother had done it because the oven she had 75 years ago couldn’t fit the whole turkey. We do these things without really thinking through them. Building a tool for co-authoring or something like that would be attractive, but it’s probably unrealistic to build something that could be used easily for co-writing.
Michael: Yeah, it’s too much effort to build.
Matty: Yeah.
Michael: But you know, it is what it is. We’re not a technical group of people, and it doesn’t make sense to build an application that does all that stuff.
Don’t Forget Your Computer’s Built-in Apps
Michael: I think it’s also important to think about using the tools that are already on your computer to help you be efficient.
For example, Automator on Macs is a wonderful tool that can help you save a lot of time. There’s a lot it can do. Macros for Excel, macros for Word, Windows PowerShell—you don’t have to know how to use these things, but if you watch some videos on YouTube or hire someone on a site like Fiverr, you’d be shocked at how little they charge to develop something that can help you solve whatever issue you’re facing.
That’s how I’ve built a lot of my processes and become more efficient.
Tools for Design
Matty: Well, let's keep marching through the processes of publishing. The next one is design, and by this, we mean the design of both the interior and the exterior of the book. I use Vellum for formatting. So I go from Scrivener to Word to Vellum, and then I generate the e-books and the print interior. Do you use a different tool for that?
Michael: No, that’s basically what I use. I use Vellum, but I also use Calibre. I use Calibre to check up on the formatting to make sure everything looks okay. There’s another tool I use for accessibility called ACE Plus by DAISY. It scans your eBook to determine if it’s accessible to the blind. When blind readers use screen readers, sometimes formatting issues can make it difficult for them to read. I do that extra step to ensure my books are accessible. And ACE Plus is free, by the way.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Desire for Customization
Matty: Yeah, we started with just wide versus deep, but every time we have a conversation, I think of another consideration in this decision tree of tool usage, and that is how much customization you want.
I love Vellum because, as Vellum themselves would say, they have one role in life: to make beautiful books easily. And they’re really good at it. You get your file in there, do a little bit of futzing around—like letting it know something is an acknowledgment—and then you press a button and you get lovely books, designed by professionals. I’ve been very happy with that.
I like that there are a relatively limited number of choices. I’ve picked one template for my fiction and one for my non-fiction, so all my fiction books will look consistent, and the same for my non-fiction books. But if someone really wanted to customize things—like changing the size of a large initial cap—that’s a level of customization I’m not interested in. Vellum is successful because it doesn’t let you go too far afield. We’re writers, not designers, and sometimes people make bad decisions when they start mucking around with design details. So Vellum keeps you from doing that. But if you’re looking for heavy customization, then Vellum might not be the tool you’re using anyway.
Michael: Well, Vellum, I think, is the clearest example of something that improves speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. Before Vellum, you either had to use Scrivener to format your books, which was an exercise in frustration—it took forever—or use Word, where you had to deal with inconsistent templates of varying quality. Vellum makes the process of formatting a book easier, faster, and more efficient because you’re going to get a better-looking product.
I just enjoy the process more because I don’t have to spend as much time on it. That’s why Vellum is successful. But yeah, you don’t want to go too far off the beaten path with customization. Some of the diagnostic tools I use help me refine things, like making sure I have alt tags and image descriptions on all my images for accessibility. If I miss one or two, I can go back to Vellum, fix it, and re-export.
So using Vellum files is critical, and I don’t recommend people try to customize too much beyond what it’s built for.
Matty: Any comments you’d like to make about the exterior design, the tools you use for that?
Michael: I guess for my design, I’m in this awkward in-between phase. I’m still hiring cover designers, but I’m learning how to do my own covers for some of my simpler non-fiction books and maybe short story collections. I’m also waiting to see how AI art pans out to see if I can start doing my own covers for my fiction with AI art. I use Photoshop—I took a course and tried to learn how to use it. Photoshop is like having a Ferrari—you’ve got all this horsepower, and you don’t necessarily need it all.
If there’s any tool I’ve struggled with the most, it’s probably Photoshop, just because there’s so much to learn. But that’s what I use. Canva is a great tool if you want to spend the time and effort to learn how to use it, and it’s really easy to use as well. But yeah, I’m more of a Photoshop guy because, in my genres, there’s just more stuff you need to be able to do on the cover that Canva can’t do for you.
Matty: Well, I do want to talk a little bit more about AI because that’s something I’m currently using more for marketing. When I was thinking of doing a full re-cover, I was using MidJourney to generate images that I was planning to give to my cover designer and say, “I want something like this,” because the MidJourney-generated images were a little too fantasy-like. I couldn’t quite adjust the settings to not get that effect. But yeah, that’s a fun tool, and we’ll talk about it more under the marketing and promotion area.
Tools for Distribution
Matty: Let’s talk about distribution. I was struggling to know how to categorize tools related to distribution.
Michael: I’d say the big one I’ve used is Books2Read.
Matty: Oh yeah, that’s a good one.
Michael: It’s an easy way to bundle all your links together. I’ve also used Genius Link, which is a service I recommend for localizing your Amazon links. That’s really helpful when you’re sharing them on social media or your website.
Matty: Talking about Books2Read makes me think of Bitly.
Michael: Yeah, very similar to Bitly but way more powerful. You can do a lot more with it. Those are the big distribution tools I use. It’s also worth thinking about how you present your book on your website.
Usually, people have a page dedicated to each book. It’s important to think about how you structure that page and what tools or plugins you use to make it easier for people to buy your books. For example, having the logos of your retailers on your book page so people know your book is available on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, or Google Play. Having tools that allow readers to buy easily and ensuring they get the right book at the right time is crucial.
It’s not so much a distribution tool, but more of a strategy. Your website is often the first place people will go, so you have to funnel them to the right places to buy. A good strategy for your book pages is essential.
Matty: It’s also making me think I should count PayHip as part of my distribution strategy since I have my direct sales store there.
Michael: Direct sales is a great example.
Matty: Yeah. When Shopify was all the rage, I looked into it, but I didn’t go that route because there’s a fee for using it, whereas with PayHip, you’re paying by them keeping a small cut of the sale. It’s a very small cut, so PayHip would be another distribution tool I’m using.
Michael: And BookFunnel, too. BookFunnel allows you to deliver eBooks and audiobooks directly to readers. And Authors Direct is another great tool for delivering audiobooks. Direct sales are definitely an important part of that strategy.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Ubiquitous or Uncommon
Matty: BookFunnel is one of those tools that whenever the renewal fee comes up, I always think, "Oh, I’m only using a tiny fraction of its functionality." But it’s so easy and ubiquitous that I always renew because I think another consideration is whether the people you’re going to be working with are familiar with it or not.
Again, straying a bit from strictly author-related examples, take Zoom. There are other tools I could use besides Zoom, but everybody knows Zoom. If I send a Zoom link to a podcast guest, they recognize it. They’re not freaked out by it. Chances are, they’ve used Zoom and know what buttons to press. If I used another provider, there’d be an extra level of, “Oh my God, I’ve never used this before.”
BookFunnel is kind of like that. Readers get used to seeing it; they recognize and trust the content from BookFunnel. So, the reputation and commonality of a tool can be a consideration.
Michael: Well, it comes back down to speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. If you don’t use BookFunnel, the alternative is really painful. Before BookFunnel, I used to have to help readers troubleshoot how to get books onto their devices, and it sucked. I hated it. It’s one of those things I never want to go back to. So, BookFunnel is really helpful in that regard.
Matty: Yep. And every once in a while, I venture into some of the other offerings BookFunnel has, like the newsletter swaps. I send newsletters to my fiction platform, but I’ve pretty much committed to them that I’ll only email when I have an author event or a book launch. So, I don’t feel like I can step up and be a full participant in newsletter swaps.
But it’s good to check in occasionally, see what’s new, and think, “Oh, this is different than I thought,” or, “My business has changed, so this does make sense for me now.” Even if you have a tool you’re not using to its fullest, it’s worth taking a quick tour through the unused features once in a while to see if you can start making use of them.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Ubiquitous or Uncommon
Matty: So let’s move on to marketing. There’s marketing and promotion, and I’ll use the ALLi explanation. Marketing is the ongoing work that keeps you front and center with your readers to support their interactions, while promotion is more time-specific things like a BookBub feature deal or running an ad.
For marketing, I categorize Weebly, which I use for my website, and AWeber, which is my email service. The pro of Weebly, for me, is that when I started my website 10 years ago, it showed up frequently as a recommended platform. Now, you hear more about Wix. I tried WordPress, but I got frustrated with it and never felt comfortable. I made the mistake of switching from Weebly to WordPress and back to Weebly, which was a terrible waste of time and money. Let’s talk first about websites. Any thoughts on the tools you’re picking for your website presence?
Michael: Yeah, I use WordPress, and while I’m not the biggest fan, it’s the biggest game in town, so to speak. There’s a lot of support for it if you have issues. WordPress plugins are important, but you have to be careful not to use too many or your site becomes hard to maintain.
One plugin I use is Pretty Links, which allows me to give out nice, clean links to pages on my site. For example, if I’m promoting Scrivener, instead of sending people to a long URL like "literatureandlatte.com/Scrivener/macOS," I send them to "authorlevelup.com/Scrivener," and I can change where that link goes anytime. This is especially valuable for affiliate links because if the page changes, I can update the link on my end without worrying about fixing all the links I’ve ever shared.
Another important tool is a good contact form. It may not seem directly related to marketing, but having a reliable contact form means I can respond quickly to readers who reach out. That’s good marketing—being able to engage with readers and reply promptly to their emails.
Matty: What you’re saying reminds me of a change I made on my Weebly site. I was using a free plugin for comments, but it didn’t notify me when new comments were posted. I had to manually check for comments on recent podcast episodes, which was inefficient, and I sometimes missed comments on older episodes entirely.
To fix this, I started sending people to my YouTube channel for comments since I do get notifications there. While I initially did this to avoid missing notifications, it also helped drive traffic to my YouTube channel, which was a bonus. Sometimes, when you’re looking for a solution, you might focus too narrowly on what fits with your website, but stepping back and considering other tools outside that context can be a more effective approach.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Another tool I’ve used on my website kind of falls into the buy/build category. On my fiction website, I have a tool called Book Wizard, and my philosophy is to always make sure I get the right book to the right reader at the right time. I have a big portfolio of books, so it’s easy for readers to visit my website and feel overwhelmed—like, “Oh my God, this guy has too much, I don’t know where to start.”
When people experience analysis paralysis, a lot of them just won’t make a decision, and they’ll leave your website. So, Book Wizard is a simple tool that asks, “What do you feel like reading today?” Then they click, and it recommends which book they should start with. I used a little WordPress plugin to do that, and it’s due for an update now since I have a lot more books. But that’s an example of getting creative from a marketing perspective. You can figure out what your audience wants from your site, how they engage with it, and either find an existing plugin or jury-rig a way to help them do it.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Customer Service
Matty: This conversation is reminding me of another dimension when choosing tools: customer service. I used MailChimp for a long time but ended up switching to AWeber, and AWeber’s customer service is wonderful. When you’re working in AWeber and have a question, you click the little chat button, and seconds later, an actual person shows up to help you.
And don’t tell them this, but I would pay twice what I’m paying for AWeber just for the customer service. There are other tools I use with terrible customer service, where the tool itself is exactly what I need, but every time I run into an issue, I dread it because I know the process of getting help is going to be painful. Sometimes you end up paying a premium for excellent customer service, but it’s something to factor in because it makes the whole experience more enjoyable.
Michael: Yeah, it’s like going to Ace Hardware versus Home Depot. You go to Home Depot, they have more stuff, but you’d better know what you’re looking for because you’re never going to find anybody to help you. But if you go to Ace Hardware, they practically fall over themselves trying to help you, but you’re going to pay more for it.
Matty: Exactly!
Michael: I use GetResponse for my email provider, and I like them for the same reason you mentioned with AWeber—you can click a button 24/7, and somebody will respond. And they don’t just respond; they actually take the time to help you. That’s invaluable to me.
Also, the user interface of your email provider is important. If you’re not in there frequently, or even if you are, it should be easy to use. I’ve used quite a few email providers over the years—I’m not going to name names—but they’re not all easy to navigate. Some are laid out horrendously. With GetResponse, you can literally click a few buttons, type in what you want, and send it out, and that simplicity is something I really appreciate.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Intuitiveness of the Tool
Michael: Yeah.
Matty: Well, I’m going to use that as an entrée into the next category, which is promotion. We already talked about Canva. I’ve used Canva for years, primarily for making ads, social media posts, and things like that. I’ve started adding MidJourney-created AI images as backgrounds to my ads, and that’s been fun.
Another thing I wish Canva did better is mockups. I use Book Brush, but pretty much only for those instant mockups where you upload your book cover and can create images that show things like a person holding your book on the beach or your book in an e-reader. I use those images on PayHip, for example. This is one of those things that should be easier. I make a 3D image of my book in an e-reader in Book Brush, then import it into Canva because if I take the Book Brush-generated image and put it in PayHip, PayHip distorts it since it’s not a square image. So I have to put it in Canva to create a square image that works on PayHip. It really makes me want to pull my hair out every time.
I really like the Book Brush instant mockups, and I also use Book Brush for Amazon A+ content, where it stacks images. You can create it as one image in Book Brush, and it automatically breaks it up for you. But there’s something about the philosophy behind the tool—this is where I wish more tools provided a video on “these are the three things you need to know about how this app thinks in the background.” Because however Book Brush organizes its work, it’s not how I think of it. I always end up with extra projects because when I think I’m saving something, Book Brush evidently thinks I’m duplicating it. It’s kind of a mess.
So, I keep Book Brush because it does a few things very well, but I use Canva for a lot of things others might use Book Brush for because Book Brush just doesn’t make intuitive sense to me. That’s yet another consideration—what’s a tool that makes intuitive sense to you in terms of pulling the levers?
Michael: Yeah, you’re venturing into my side of the water, Matty! You need the right tool for the right circumstance, so being able to create the mock-up, for example. I’ve used Book Brush a few times, and I do like it. I’ve used it for the things you’ve talked about, and I’ve also used it for general marketing materials. It’s a good app, and it does what it does really well.
I think that’s the thing—there are going to be Book Brush people, and there are going to be Canva people, and it depends on how your brain is wired. But intuitiveness in an app is really important.
Matty: Are there any other applications related to promotion that you’d like to mention?
Michael: Yeah, the biggest thing I do for promotion is email newsletters.
Matty: I guess something I’ve been focusing on more lately is copywriting.
Michael: Right, copywriting tools. I built a tool in Excel to help me make sure I don’t miss the important elements when I’m writing copy—whether it’s a book description or a Facebook ad. There are a lot of AI tools out there now that can help with copy too, and those are really helpful. Sometimes they can even generate better copy than we can, or at least give us ideas and inspiration.
Matty: Yeah, they can definitely serve as a trigger for new ideas. I think everyone should take advantage of ChatGPT and MidJourney now while there are free versions available because that may not always be the case. It’s worth getting an account just in case it provides some more runway for free.
Michael: Absolutely. Jasper is one of the AI tools people often use for copywriting, but there are a bunch of them out there, and they’re all pretty much built on the same engines. MidJourney, though, is definitely helpful for generating art, and I’ve found it can also be useful for creating images for ads, like on Facebook or even BookBub.
The issue I’ve had with ads, particularly on Facebook, is finding good images. The best way is usually to go to stock photo sites like Shutterstock or Depositphotos, especially if you write in a genre like fantasy. Stock images often perform better in ads than images you’ve pieced together yourself in tools like Book Brush or Canva. But I’ve noticed that it’s not always easy to find fantasy-related images on stock media sites, which is where MidJourney can be a game changer. The goal is to get people’s attention, and if MidJourney can help generate an eye-catching image, that’s critical.
Another reason I use MidJourney is for representing people of color in my books. My main characters are often people of color, and it’s tough to find models on stock photo sites that represent them well. When you do find them, everyone else is using the same models. With tools like MidJourney or Stable Diffusion, you can create unique characters who don’t exist in real life but still represent your vision, which is a huge help for covers.
Matty: That’s a great point. Regarding stock images, I’ve used Depositphotos a lot—especially when AppSumo offers discounts, so now I have more credits than I’ll ever use. I think a lot of people are in that same boat! But don’t forget that many tools, like Canva, have built-in stock images. You do have to consider whether everyone else is using the same ones, but they can be a great resource for backgrounds or ads.
It’s one of those things where it’s worth taking a tour through the parts of an app you’re not using. You might discover you don’t need to buy more Depositphotos credits because the tool you’re using already has a good stock image pool!
Michael and Matty on Tools: Administration
Matty: So I’m going to switch over to administration, which are the things that don’t easily fit into other categories. I use ScribeCount for collecting sales data. It’s not only time-consuming but also error-prone to do it manually, so I was a happy camper when ScribeCount came along and automated the process. Any tool you want to mention in terms of collecting sales data?
Michael: Yeah, this is one area where I went way off the beaten path and built my own tool. The reason is, I prefer not to share my sales data with any company. It’s nothing against the companies out there; I just like to keep that local and private. So, I chained together a bunch of Excel macros and an Access database. I paid a programmer a couple hundred bucks to develop it, so all I have to do is feed my sales reports into the machine, and it spits out the data. Then, I can use pivot tables and run reports on my sales. I have all my sales data going back to when I first started, and I can filter by any criteria—like how much one of my books sold in Germany in 2015—in seconds.
This is an unusual use case, and I think ScribeCount is probably the right tool for most people. But knowing your sales data is important because it uncovers opportunities. Maybe one of your books is taking off in another country, and you wouldn’t know that unless you had easy access to your sales data. Then you could start running ads in that country.
Matty: ScribeCount is another good example of a tool that saved me money. I use Trello for managing my to-do list, and I’ve used the free version for years. It does 99% of what I need, but when I started running promotions more actively, I needed a way to track them with my assistant. The only way to do that in Trello required a paid account. Then I discovered that ScribeCount has a promotion calendar feature, so I got that functionality without having to upgrade Trello. Do you have a tool for tracking your task list?
Michael: Excel? No, definitely not Excel for this! I’ve used all kinds of to-do apps—Asana, Todoist, you name it. But what I’ve settled on is thinking more holistically. For me, it’s better to have an ecosystem where my email, calendar, and to-dos all work together. So now, I use Apple Mail, Apple Reminders, and Apple Notes as my to-do system.
When an email comes in, and it has a task, I save that email to Apple Reminders and attach a reminder to it. Apple Reminders isn’t amazing compared to other to-do apps, but it works neatly with the rest of my ecosystem, and that helps me stay organized.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Where Do You Want to Be Spending Your Time?
Matty: That’s yet another consideration—where do you want to be spending your time? I’m always looking for ways to detach myself from email. I review my to-do list in Trello, so I wouldn’t want to manage that in an email system. But it’s about where you want to live electronically.
Michael: Exactly. It’s where you want to be spending your time, and it’s another factor to consider.
Matty: Shareability is another consideration, especially when working with others. In 2022, I hired an assistant, and since we both felt comfortable with Trello, it became an efficient way to share our to-do lists.
I’ll use that as an entrée to the last thing I have on my list for administration, which is QuickBooks. I chose QuickBooks because it’s so ubiquitous in the financial world. It’s easy to find people to help me get set up because everyone knows QuickBooks. My assistant was also interested in learning more about it, so it worked out well for us. It’s like Zoom—QuickBooks is everywhere, so finding help or tutorials is easy. What are your thoughts on using common tools like that?
Michael: Yeah, I agree. When a tool is widely used, it’s much easier to get support, whether that’s through tutorials or hiring someone. It’s the same reason I use Microsoft Office—it’s everywhere, and if I need help with Excel or Word, I can find a solution quickly. Common tools save time in the long run because you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you need assistance.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, QuickBooks or any kind of tax software is absolutely important. One last administrative tool I’d mention, which I’ve brought up before, is Automator and other apps on your computer that chain processes together and make things easier.
For example, when I’m preparing for a podcast like this, I have a few things I need to do: turn on the light on my desk, start up a couple of different applications for my microphone and webcam (since I use a DSLR as a webcam), and then open Zoom. I’ve chained all of that together with a Stream Deck. If you haven’t seen one, it’s a little pad that sits on your desk with these nice gel buttons that you can program. When I press one button, the light comes on, all the apps launch, and Zoom opens—so all I have to do is go to the meeting.
Matty: That’s so cool!
Michael: Yeah, little things like that can make a big difference. For example, when I dictate my audio, I use a voice recorder. Normally, I’d have to connect the recorder to my computer, open the file system, transfer the audio, then put it into Dragon for transcription, and finally move the text into Word for editing. But now, I’ve automated the process. When I connect the voice recorder, the system grabs the audio, puts it in a folder, and Dragon automatically starts transcribing it. All I have to do is wait for the text to be ready.
These kinds of automation sound small, but they add up over time and really make a difference. Even something simple like setting up email rules can save a lot of time. For instance, I flag emails from certain people so they stand out as a higher priority, and I have rules that send out-of-office autoresponders straight to the trash. This keeps my inbox clean, usually with zero emails, so I can focus on what matters.
People often overlook these built-in tools and rush to pay for apps that do things their computer can already handle. It’s one of my soapboxes—take advantage of what you already have! There’s a movie, *Defending Your Life* by Albert Brooks—have you seen it?
Matty: No, I haven’t.
Michael: There’s a scene where a guy dies and goes to purgatory, and someone there says, “Everyone here uses more than 10% of their brains. If you only use 10%, you should be on Earth.” It’s kind of like that with computers. Most people use maybe 5-10% of their computer’s power. If you could tap into more of that, it wouldn’t cost you any extra time or money, and it would make you more efficient. You might need to pay someone to help set things up, but it’s worth it.
Matty: I think that’s a great wrap-up thought. For many of us, our computer is the key tool we use in our writing and publishing lives. The assignment for everyone is to take a tour through the built-in apps on their computer and see how they might deploy them, as you’ve suggested, to increase efficiency, speed, and enjoyment.
Michael: And don’t forget your phone! There are lots of built-in tools on your phone that can help as well.
Matty: Great point! Well, Michael, it was so fun talking to you. I’m leaving with so many great ideas to apply. Please let the listeners and viewers know where they can find out more about you and everything you do online.
Michael: Yeah, if you’re interested in my resources for writers, you can find me at authorlevelup.com. I have a YouTube channel, lots of books for writers, and a blog where I share my thoughts. If you’re interested in my fiction, you can find me at michaellaronn.com.
Matty: Great, thank you!
Michael: Thanks, Matty!
Michael: Great, Matty. How are you?
Matty: I'm doing great, thank you. So at this point, normally I would introduce you to our listeners and viewers, but you have been a guest so often, you're practically an unofficial co-host. So I think people know you already, either through the podcast or through your great YouTube channel, Author Level Up, or possibly from your many books for authors, or your co-hosting duties on the Ask ALLi Member Q&A Podcast. So, if anyone wants to know more about Michael, they can just go to theindieauthor.com/podcast and search for his name, and you'll find all sorts of fun info about Michael there.
Michael and I are doing kind of a periodic series on perspectives. We've already talked about making the most of in-person events, and we had a "Three Perspectives" episode when Jennifer Hilt joined us to talk about year-end for the writing craft and the publishing voyage.
Today we are going to be talking about two perspectives on author tools. The one that I initially talked with Michael about was "wide or deep"—using tools wide or deep. But I realized, as I was looking over my notes right before this, that I think another perspective we can bring is "buy or build."
Ah, yes, I think maybe we're going to bring different perspectives to this. The goal of the conversation is not to do an in-depth analysis of all the tools we use in our writing and publishing careers, but more to focus on the strategies and thoughts we're putting into what tools we choose and what tools we don’t choose, so people can apply those to their own situations. Although I’m sure that in the process of the conversation, we’re going to be sharing some recommendations.
I also wanted to add that, for the most part, I’m only discussing tools that I use for my writing craft and publishing voyage, not, for example, for my podcast. So this will be very much author—not podcasting—centric. I wanted to just start right out talking about our strategies for deciding which tools we use.
Michael, do you want to launch into that? What are your considerations when you're deciding whether to acquire a tool for your writing and publishing work?
Michael’s 3 Criteria for Assessing Tools
Michael: Yeah, I have three considerations. The first is: Does it help me do something more efficiently? The second is kind of similar to it: Does it help me do something faster? And then the third is: Does it improve my enjoyment of whatever it is that I’m doing? So those are my three criteria. It’s speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. And if it meets at least one of those things, awesome, because then it’s going to lead to either more words or more income, which is a good thing. If it meets two of them, it’s amazing. If it meets all three of them, then it’s a slam dunk.
Matty: And how are you distinguishing efficiency versus speed?
Michael: Speed to me is how quickly you do something. I mean, that’s kind of the obvious definition. Efficiency, to me, is how well you do it. So efficiency sometimes can include speed, but it’s also about how well you’re doing it. For example, I dictate my novels. The problem with dictation is that if you use Dragon, it’s really accurate, but when it’s not accurate, it produces some really funky stuff, and it’s super weird.
So I’ve developed some Microsoft Word macros that basically help me catch a lot of those funky errors. So it’s a situation where I had to develop some Word macros, and when I dictate and upload my text into Word, I run this macro, and it cleans up the text. So it doesn’t necessarily increase my speed—it actually slows my speed down a little bit. Well, actually, it doesn’t; it increases my speed because it catches errors quickly. But it also makes the process of dictation more efficient, if that makes sense. It’s not just important to do something quickly—you also need to figure out how the tool can help you do it better.
Matty: Yep. And "enjoyment" almost springs to mind for me on the writing craft side, but do you find that same criteria applies when you’re thinking about your publishing work?
Michael: Yeah, I mean, there’s just some stuff that’s kind of a pain. As an author, I mean, we want to spend time writing our books, but there are so many other things that get in the way, right? I mean, there are things we have to do with marketing. There’s the publishing side. And so some of those things, I would imagine, a lot of people listening probably find not enjoyable. One of those things is calculating sales reports. So, are there tools that you can use to calculate your sales reports with automation so that you don’t have to tally them up by hand, which is what I used to have to do 10 years ago? So, increasing your enjoyment of the process, I think, is also important because then it makes you more likely to do it. And if you can also spend less time doing it and do it more efficiently, then I think that’s a win.
Matty: And I’ll talk about my one criterion that I apply, but as you’re talking, of course, the things that you’re saying make total sense to me.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Deep versus Wide
Matty: I generally think about my tool usage as deep versus wide. My goal is always to have as few tools as possible, with the benefits being lower cost and a lower learning curve. I use them to their utmost and only go to a new tool when I've exhausted what I can do with the tools I have.
A good example—this will be the only podcasting-related one I use, but it’s a good one—is that I've used Descript for many years for my audio and video editing for the podcast, and it’s been fine. But I recently started doing professional videos more on a freelance basis, and I did one and realized that I could probably do it with Descript, but that’s not really what it's built for. I ended up getting Camtasia because there was that one more thing I needed to do that I was really struggling with. I finally thought, okay, I'm going to add Camtasia to my suite of applications because I've done everything I can with Descript without it becoming less efficient, less fast, and less enjoyable. I just invested in a new tool. So that’s kind of my primary criterion: deep versus wide.
Do you have a position on the deep versus wide consideration?
Michael: Yeah, I like your philosophy. It’s really clear, and it makes sense, and it’s definitely one way to approach it. I’m more of a wide versus deep guy because, to me, I think you can always learn how to go deep quickly if you need to. My philosophy has always been that I want to make sure I always have the right tool for any situation that comes up. I’m a very technical guy, so sometimes I find myself getting into stuff and thinking, “Oh, crap, what am I doing?”
Because of my personality type, I find that I just have to use more tools more frequently. I think, “Oh, that tool would be great for whenever I need to do this or that,” and so I grab it, and it sits on my computer until maybe one day I need it, and I’m glad I have it. Yes, I do have a lot of tools, and no, I don’t use them all on a regular basis. But when I come across something tricky, and it’s like, “Oh, crap, I need to figure out how to do that,” I have the right tool, and I know where to go.
If I don’t know how to use it, I can find a YouTube tutorial or use forums—most apps and tools have forums—where I can figure out a specific use case, and I can usually do it pretty quickly. So, I think our philosophies are exactly the opposite.
Matty: Yeah, which is fun, you know?
Michael: Yeah, it is fun.
Matty: I think my philosophy changed a bit when I no longer had a corporate salary. When I worked with my assistant to analyze my expenditures, and we’ll be talking about how I did that a little later, my technical subscriptions—despite my strategy of using as few tools as possible—were still a big chunk of my expenditures for my author career. So, for example, I got Camtasia for about $280, and I thought much more deeply about it now that it’s part of my P&L, compared to before when I had a corporate job and thought, “Oh, I’ll just skip a couple of dinners out.”
Another thing is that I’m not the type to jump in and just muck around. When I got Camtasia, the first thing I did was watch all the Camtasia online videos. So, I also keep in mind the time investment. A person who jumps in and mucks around might spend the same amount of time over the long run, but they don’t factor it in as a separate consideration. I set aside a day to watch all the Camtasia educational videos. So, it’s just about how you weigh the cost and benefits of adding another tool to your toolkit.
More Tools Don’t Necessarily Mean More Expense
Michael: Yeah, you said two really good things there. The first is the cost of tools. Just because you have a lot of tools, that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. For example, I don’t really have that many subscriptions. I mean, I have a few things that I pay for, like Adobe Creative Cloud, and there are a few other subscriptions that are important for tools I use. But you don’t have to have a subscription. There are lots of apps that allow you to pay once, and you’re done.
It’s a one-time investment, and a lot of apps that I’ve paid for have paid for themselves with that one-time thing. Yes, you’re correct—if you buy every tool that has a subscription, you’ll go bankrupt quickly. But I really don’t spend that much on tools. I buy what I need when I need it, and then the investment usually pays for itself at some point.
The other thing you said that I think was really insightful was about documentation and watching videos. I think that’s really important, especially when you buy a tool for the first time. It doesn’t take very much time to review the videos and materials, or at least do a quick walkthrough.
What I’ve found—and this might be a bit of a counterpoint to what you said—is that when you go to a program when you need it, your learning tends to be deeper because you have more of a practical application for it. That’s something I’ve learned over the years. Once you’ve used enough tools, you find that they’re similar enough that you can figure them out. Like, I bet if I jumped into Camtasia, I’ve used enough video editing software that I could probably figure it out pretty quickly.
So, the more tools you use, the better you are at using tools. That’s just something to think about.
Matty: Yeah, and I think the cost I have for my subscription-type things—like Descript, Zoom, Libsyn—again, I’m venturing a bit into some podcast-related things, but last year, yeah, in 2022, it seemed like they all offered discounts if you paid for a year upfront. My recognition of what I was spending was sort of exaggerated because all at once, instead of paying $10 a month for 12 months, I was paying $90 all at once.
So, I was saving money in the long term, but it was more of an attention-getting expenditure because it was a bigger outlay at once. It seemed like last year, they all did that. So I had one big chunk of outlay to accommodate that.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Buy versus Build
Matty: And then the other aspect we’re talking about is buy versus build. I don’t know if it makes sense to talk about this a little bit theoretically first or in the context of the tools we’re using. Do you have anything you’d like to say about buy versus build before we start reviewing our tools?
Michael: Yeah, yeah. This one is really important, and it’s one I think a lot of people don’t have an appetite for, but if you develop the skill, it’s invaluable. To me, this one thing has made me a lot of profit and has improved my processes and efficiencies an unbelievable number of times.
When you think about buying a tool, you’re buying something that somebody else has already developed. It makes things easier for you, and it’s convenient, right? It’s like preparing your own food versus going to a restaurant. When you’re really hungry, you’re going to go get fast food or takeout because someone’s already done the work. The most you have to do is put in your credit card, take the food, put it in your car, and go home to eat it.
But if you want to prepare your own food, you’ve got to go to the grocery store, get the ingredients, know how to put them together, and then you get what is probably, I think we can agree, a better meal—but it takes more time.
Matty: It depends on whether you’re going for fast food or going for the nice restaurant!
Michael: This is true, this is true. But you know, we’ll assume a nice, casual meal. You’re going to get something that maybe you could have made at home, right? So when you buy a tool, it’s the equivalent of going to a restaurant, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When you prepare a tool, it’s the equivalent of staying at home and cooking your own food, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. I think it depends on the situation. Most people listening to this are not technical at all, don’t know how to program, and would be better staying out of the kitchen, right? Unless you have that skill to do it.
Now, there’s a middle ground here, and that is you can hire somebody to build something for you. You can hire a programmer to build you an application that can do something you can’t get anywhere else, or maybe you have an application that’s really expensive. Now, most things you shouldn’t build applications for, but there are things that can help you improve your workflows and processes.
For example, OpenAI just released a new audio model called Whisper, and it transcribes audio. It works just like Dragon, and it’s free. So, I hired a developer to build an application that uses Whisper, where I can upload my audio to it, get it back, and then I don’t have to rely on Dragon. If one day Dragon goes the way of the dodo, which it could—because Microsoft is rumored to be doing some things with it—then I still have a tool that I can use.
So, it’s similar to that. I’m a big fan of building something when it doesn’t exist already, and it’ll help you improve your processes. I’m not so much a fan of building something that already exists and that you can probably buy and get better customer support for.
Matty: Well, I really like the restaurant analogy, and I think it plays out really nicely because there’s making your meatloaf at home versus getting meatloaf as takeout or whatever. But then the analogy of going to a fine restaurant and ordering three or four courses also has an interesting tools analogy because there are things that are so complex. Like, I’m never going to want to cook a four-course meal in my own kitchen, in the same way that I’m never going to want to try to cobble together all the things that Descript does in terms of automated AI, sound leveling, and all those things. So, I’m totally willing to pay the fine dining tab in order to have somebody do that.
But as kind of an entrée to our discussion, I decided we would use—because we’re both big ALLi fans—the ALLi Six of the Seven Processes of Publishing to talk through our use of tools.
Tools for the Editorial Process
Matty: We’re going to start out with number one, which is editorial, and I’m going to roll into that number zero, which is writing. This is a rare example of me building rather than buying because I use Excel for plotting. Listeners have often heard me talk about this big spreadsheet I use where it’s characters across the top and chapters down the side.
In each cell, I put what a character thinks, knows, believes, and feels at a certain point. That way, I can look down the column and see the whole storyline for that character, or I can look across a row and see everything that’s happening in the story for all the characters at that point.
If I just described that and didn’t tell you what I was using, people might think, “Oh, she must be using Plottr.” In fact, I have Plottr for two reasons. One is that it’s such a common tool, and in the interest of building out my consulting practice, I thought it would be good for me to be familiar with Plottr, even if I wasn’t using it myself. And I like to see what people are doing in built tools like that, which I might be able to duplicate in Excel because I’m a big Excel nerd. If I can sort, filter things, and apply conditional formatting, there’s really nothing I can’t do that I need for plotting a book.
So there’s an example where Plottr is a fabulous tool, and I would definitely recommend it to people who don’t want to muck around in Excel, but Excel is really doing what I need it to do from a plotting point of view. Any thoughts about the tools you apply to your writing and editorial work?
Michael: Yeah, Plottr is great. I actually just did a video review of Plottr. It gives you the best of Excel without actually being Excel, which is nice because you can filter everything. But yeah, the tools I use in my writing process have changed over the years. I used to be a Scrivener guy, and I still love Scrivener.
I’ve switched over to Microsoft Word just because there’s so much more I can do with it now than I could 10 years ago. For editing, I use Grammarly Premium. I’m not the biggest fan of the user interface, but it catches typos and other critical issues.
I also use a tool called PerfectIt, which is like a proofreading app. A lot of people seem to hesitate to use PerfectIt because it’s based on the *Chicago Manual of Style* and helps ensure your manuscript aligns with that, which is great. I also use Microsoft Word macros, as I mentioned earlier—that’s for a specific use case.
And that’s really it for me. I am building some applications to use GPT-3, ChatGPT, and soon-to-come GPT-4 to help with editing because AI is actually a very capable proofreader. It can catch a lot of typos and things that Grammarly can’t. So that’s a tool I’m looking into right now. But I try to keep it simple when it comes to the actual writing process.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Early Adopter or Not
Matty: Well, that highlights another distinction: early adopter or not. I use Scrivener for writing, and then I have to export it to Word and other things that we’ll talk about under the design category.
I’ve looked at Atticus a little bit, and I believe one of the goals of Atticus is to eliminate the need to go from Scrivener to Word to give it to my editor, and then export it to Word again to get it formatted—kind of the back-and-forth silliness. It sounds like a great goal. When they get to the point where they’re really doing all those functions, as you can only do when you’ve been around for a little while, then yeah, I would definitely consider moving over to Atticus. But I wasn’t interested in being an early adopter because I wanted somebody else to work out all the bugs before I started using it.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I think Atticus is the future. It’s one of the main reasons I switched to Word. I just got tired of the back-and-forth between Scrivener and Word because you have to send it to your editor, and then it has to come back to Scrivener, and then back to Word for development. I just wasn’t interested in that, which is why I adopted Microsoft Word—to do everything in one app. I think that’s important.
Early adoption has its time and place, but like you said, you don’t necessarily want to be the person beta-testing an app, especially when you’re aiming to be a professional writer. When you’ve got a full day, lots of books to write, and projects to work on, I just don’t have the time to help someone beta test. But when it comes to things like AI or new technology that might give you an advantage, then that’s the time to consider early adoption.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Solo Work or Co-writing
Matty: Yeah. And this highlights yet another consideration, which is whether you’re working with someone on something—and you and I know all about this.
We’ve been co-working on some materials, and we’ve really struggled with how to do that most efficiently. We were sort of brain-dumping material into Google Docs, which is convenient because two people can work on it at the same time, but it’s truly a horrible experience from a writing and editing point of view. I don’t know what it is about the UI, but I struggle to be creative when I’m working in Google Docs. Then we got to a point where we could move it to Word, which has some benefits, but also some downsides. You put a hard “no” on Scrivener, which I understand.
I’m co-authoring a piece of fiction with another author, and we’re both Scrivener users, but Scrivener doesn’t lend itself to shared documentation. So we were working in Word, then we moved it—it’s kind of a mess. I don’t think there’s a good tool out there that makes co-authoring as easy as it could be. Maybe Atticus will be that tool.
Michael: Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t exist right now, but we’ll see where it goes. And I think that’s another thing—what’s so important about this for me is that the biggest pain points writers can have are in this process. Most people don’t really think about what we just talked about: the fact that you have to shuffle your manuscript between applications. I think people just accept that’s how it is.
But if you look at it from an efficiency perspective—and I’m an efficiency guy—it’s important to do things that make sense and that are efficient. Efficiency increases everything in your business, right? It increases your sales, your speed, your volume, your output—everything. And if you look at the process people follow, it’s just not efficient. People are wasting time, money, and effort with a process where you’re trading manuscripts back and forth.
I think it’s up to each individual person to figure out how to make their processes more efficient. I don’t think there’s going to be a developer who comes in and saves the day and does it for us because, if somebody could have solved this problem, they would have already. But like I said, I think apps like Atticus are the future, and I think there’s value in having everything done in one place. I just don’t think that value has been fully realized yet.
People haven’t woken up to the fact that, “Oh yeah, I shouldn’t be doing this with Scrivener. This is a waste of time—I’m not going to do it anymore.”
Matty: It’s like the classic story about the person who cut the turkey in half to put it in the oven because that’s what her mom and grandmother did, only to learn her grandmother had done it because the oven she had 75 years ago couldn’t fit the whole turkey. We do these things without really thinking through them. Building a tool for co-authoring or something like that would be attractive, but it’s probably unrealistic to build something that could be used easily for co-writing.
Michael: Yeah, it’s too much effort to build.
Matty: Yeah.
Michael: But you know, it is what it is. We’re not a technical group of people, and it doesn’t make sense to build an application that does all that stuff.
Don’t Forget Your Computer’s Built-in Apps
Michael: I think it’s also important to think about using the tools that are already on your computer to help you be efficient.
For example, Automator on Macs is a wonderful tool that can help you save a lot of time. There’s a lot it can do. Macros for Excel, macros for Word, Windows PowerShell—you don’t have to know how to use these things, but if you watch some videos on YouTube or hire someone on a site like Fiverr, you’d be shocked at how little they charge to develop something that can help you solve whatever issue you’re facing.
That’s how I’ve built a lot of my processes and become more efficient.
Tools for Design
Matty: Well, let's keep marching through the processes of publishing. The next one is design, and by this, we mean the design of both the interior and the exterior of the book. I use Vellum for formatting. So I go from Scrivener to Word to Vellum, and then I generate the e-books and the print interior. Do you use a different tool for that?
Michael: No, that’s basically what I use. I use Vellum, but I also use Calibre. I use Calibre to check up on the formatting to make sure everything looks okay. There’s another tool I use for accessibility called ACE Plus by DAISY. It scans your eBook to determine if it’s accessible to the blind. When blind readers use screen readers, sometimes formatting issues can make it difficult for them to read. I do that extra step to ensure my books are accessible. And ACE Plus is free, by the way.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Desire for Customization
Matty: Yeah, we started with just wide versus deep, but every time we have a conversation, I think of another consideration in this decision tree of tool usage, and that is how much customization you want.
I love Vellum because, as Vellum themselves would say, they have one role in life: to make beautiful books easily. And they’re really good at it. You get your file in there, do a little bit of futzing around—like letting it know something is an acknowledgment—and then you press a button and you get lovely books, designed by professionals. I’ve been very happy with that.
I like that there are a relatively limited number of choices. I’ve picked one template for my fiction and one for my non-fiction, so all my fiction books will look consistent, and the same for my non-fiction books. But if someone really wanted to customize things—like changing the size of a large initial cap—that’s a level of customization I’m not interested in. Vellum is successful because it doesn’t let you go too far afield. We’re writers, not designers, and sometimes people make bad decisions when they start mucking around with design details. So Vellum keeps you from doing that. But if you’re looking for heavy customization, then Vellum might not be the tool you’re using anyway.
Michael: Well, Vellum, I think, is the clearest example of something that improves speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. Before Vellum, you either had to use Scrivener to format your books, which was an exercise in frustration—it took forever—or use Word, where you had to deal with inconsistent templates of varying quality. Vellum makes the process of formatting a book easier, faster, and more efficient because you’re going to get a better-looking product.
I just enjoy the process more because I don’t have to spend as much time on it. That’s why Vellum is successful. But yeah, you don’t want to go too far off the beaten path with customization. Some of the diagnostic tools I use help me refine things, like making sure I have alt tags and image descriptions on all my images for accessibility. If I miss one or two, I can go back to Vellum, fix it, and re-export.
So using Vellum files is critical, and I don’t recommend people try to customize too much beyond what it’s built for.
Matty: Any comments you’d like to make about the exterior design, the tools you use for that?
Michael: I guess for my design, I’m in this awkward in-between phase. I’m still hiring cover designers, but I’m learning how to do my own covers for some of my simpler non-fiction books and maybe short story collections. I’m also waiting to see how AI art pans out to see if I can start doing my own covers for my fiction with AI art. I use Photoshop—I took a course and tried to learn how to use it. Photoshop is like having a Ferrari—you’ve got all this horsepower, and you don’t necessarily need it all.
If there’s any tool I’ve struggled with the most, it’s probably Photoshop, just because there’s so much to learn. But that’s what I use. Canva is a great tool if you want to spend the time and effort to learn how to use it, and it’s really easy to use as well. But yeah, I’m more of a Photoshop guy because, in my genres, there’s just more stuff you need to be able to do on the cover that Canva can’t do for you.
Matty: Well, I do want to talk a little bit more about AI because that’s something I’m currently using more for marketing. When I was thinking of doing a full re-cover, I was using MidJourney to generate images that I was planning to give to my cover designer and say, “I want something like this,” because the MidJourney-generated images were a little too fantasy-like. I couldn’t quite adjust the settings to not get that effect. But yeah, that’s a fun tool, and we’ll talk about it more under the marketing and promotion area.
Tools for Distribution
Matty: Let’s talk about distribution. I was struggling to know how to categorize tools related to distribution.
Michael: I’d say the big one I’ve used is Books2Read.
Matty: Oh yeah, that’s a good one.
Michael: It’s an easy way to bundle all your links together. I’ve also used Genius Link, which is a service I recommend for localizing your Amazon links. That’s really helpful when you’re sharing them on social media or your website.
Matty: Talking about Books2Read makes me think of Bitly.
Michael: Yeah, very similar to Bitly but way more powerful. You can do a lot more with it. Those are the big distribution tools I use. It’s also worth thinking about how you present your book on your website.
Usually, people have a page dedicated to each book. It’s important to think about how you structure that page and what tools or plugins you use to make it easier for people to buy your books. For example, having the logos of your retailers on your book page so people know your book is available on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, or Google Play. Having tools that allow readers to buy easily and ensuring they get the right book at the right time is crucial.
It’s not so much a distribution tool, but more of a strategy. Your website is often the first place people will go, so you have to funnel them to the right places to buy. A good strategy for your book pages is essential.
Matty: It’s also making me think I should count PayHip as part of my distribution strategy since I have my direct sales store there.
Michael: Direct sales is a great example.
Matty: Yeah. When Shopify was all the rage, I looked into it, but I didn’t go that route because there’s a fee for using it, whereas with PayHip, you’re paying by them keeping a small cut of the sale. It’s a very small cut, so PayHip would be another distribution tool I’m using.
Michael: And BookFunnel, too. BookFunnel allows you to deliver eBooks and audiobooks directly to readers. And Authors Direct is another great tool for delivering audiobooks. Direct sales are definitely an important part of that strategy.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Ubiquitous or Uncommon
Matty: BookFunnel is one of those tools that whenever the renewal fee comes up, I always think, "Oh, I’m only using a tiny fraction of its functionality." But it’s so easy and ubiquitous that I always renew because I think another consideration is whether the people you’re going to be working with are familiar with it or not.
Again, straying a bit from strictly author-related examples, take Zoom. There are other tools I could use besides Zoom, but everybody knows Zoom. If I send a Zoom link to a podcast guest, they recognize it. They’re not freaked out by it. Chances are, they’ve used Zoom and know what buttons to press. If I used another provider, there’d be an extra level of, “Oh my God, I’ve never used this before.”
BookFunnel is kind of like that. Readers get used to seeing it; they recognize and trust the content from BookFunnel. So, the reputation and commonality of a tool can be a consideration.
Michael: Well, it comes back down to speed, efficiency, and enjoyment. If you don’t use BookFunnel, the alternative is really painful. Before BookFunnel, I used to have to help readers troubleshoot how to get books onto their devices, and it sucked. I hated it. It’s one of those things I never want to go back to. So, BookFunnel is really helpful in that regard.
Matty: Yep. And every once in a while, I venture into some of the other offerings BookFunnel has, like the newsletter swaps. I send newsletters to my fiction platform, but I’ve pretty much committed to them that I’ll only email when I have an author event or a book launch. So, I don’t feel like I can step up and be a full participant in newsletter swaps.
But it’s good to check in occasionally, see what’s new, and think, “Oh, this is different than I thought,” or, “My business has changed, so this does make sense for me now.” Even if you have a tool you’re not using to its fullest, it’s worth taking a quick tour through the unused features once in a while to see if you can start making use of them.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Ubiquitous or Uncommon
Matty: So let’s move on to marketing. There’s marketing and promotion, and I’ll use the ALLi explanation. Marketing is the ongoing work that keeps you front and center with your readers to support their interactions, while promotion is more time-specific things like a BookBub feature deal or running an ad.
For marketing, I categorize Weebly, which I use for my website, and AWeber, which is my email service. The pro of Weebly, for me, is that when I started my website 10 years ago, it showed up frequently as a recommended platform. Now, you hear more about Wix. I tried WordPress, but I got frustrated with it and never felt comfortable. I made the mistake of switching from Weebly to WordPress and back to Weebly, which was a terrible waste of time and money. Let’s talk first about websites. Any thoughts on the tools you’re picking for your website presence?
Michael: Yeah, I use WordPress, and while I’m not the biggest fan, it’s the biggest game in town, so to speak. There’s a lot of support for it if you have issues. WordPress plugins are important, but you have to be careful not to use too many or your site becomes hard to maintain.
One plugin I use is Pretty Links, which allows me to give out nice, clean links to pages on my site. For example, if I’m promoting Scrivener, instead of sending people to a long URL like "literatureandlatte.com/Scrivener/macOS," I send them to "authorlevelup.com/Scrivener," and I can change where that link goes anytime. This is especially valuable for affiliate links because if the page changes, I can update the link on my end without worrying about fixing all the links I’ve ever shared.
Another important tool is a good contact form. It may not seem directly related to marketing, but having a reliable contact form means I can respond quickly to readers who reach out. That’s good marketing—being able to engage with readers and reply promptly to their emails.
Matty: What you’re saying reminds me of a change I made on my Weebly site. I was using a free plugin for comments, but it didn’t notify me when new comments were posted. I had to manually check for comments on recent podcast episodes, which was inefficient, and I sometimes missed comments on older episodes entirely.
To fix this, I started sending people to my YouTube channel for comments since I do get notifications there. While I initially did this to avoid missing notifications, it also helped drive traffic to my YouTube channel, which was a bonus. Sometimes, when you’re looking for a solution, you might focus too narrowly on what fits with your website, but stepping back and considering other tools outside that context can be a more effective approach.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Another tool I’ve used on my website kind of falls into the buy/build category. On my fiction website, I have a tool called Book Wizard, and my philosophy is to always make sure I get the right book to the right reader at the right time. I have a big portfolio of books, so it’s easy for readers to visit my website and feel overwhelmed—like, “Oh my God, this guy has too much, I don’t know where to start.”
When people experience analysis paralysis, a lot of them just won’t make a decision, and they’ll leave your website. So, Book Wizard is a simple tool that asks, “What do you feel like reading today?” Then they click, and it recommends which book they should start with. I used a little WordPress plugin to do that, and it’s due for an update now since I have a lot more books. But that’s an example of getting creative from a marketing perspective. You can figure out what your audience wants from your site, how they engage with it, and either find an existing plugin or jury-rig a way to help them do it.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Customer Service
Matty: This conversation is reminding me of another dimension when choosing tools: customer service. I used MailChimp for a long time but ended up switching to AWeber, and AWeber’s customer service is wonderful. When you’re working in AWeber and have a question, you click the little chat button, and seconds later, an actual person shows up to help you.
And don’t tell them this, but I would pay twice what I’m paying for AWeber just for the customer service. There are other tools I use with terrible customer service, where the tool itself is exactly what I need, but every time I run into an issue, I dread it because I know the process of getting help is going to be painful. Sometimes you end up paying a premium for excellent customer service, but it’s something to factor in because it makes the whole experience more enjoyable.
Michael: Yeah, it’s like going to Ace Hardware versus Home Depot. You go to Home Depot, they have more stuff, but you’d better know what you’re looking for because you’re never going to find anybody to help you. But if you go to Ace Hardware, they practically fall over themselves trying to help you, but you’re going to pay more for it.
Matty: Exactly!
Michael: I use GetResponse for my email provider, and I like them for the same reason you mentioned with AWeber—you can click a button 24/7, and somebody will respond. And they don’t just respond; they actually take the time to help you. That’s invaluable to me.
Also, the user interface of your email provider is important. If you’re not in there frequently, or even if you are, it should be easy to use. I’ve used quite a few email providers over the years—I’m not going to name names—but they’re not all easy to navigate. Some are laid out horrendously. With GetResponse, you can literally click a few buttons, type in what you want, and send it out, and that simplicity is something I really appreciate.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Intuitiveness of the Tool
Michael: Yeah.
Matty: Well, I’m going to use that as an entrée into the next category, which is promotion. We already talked about Canva. I’ve used Canva for years, primarily for making ads, social media posts, and things like that. I’ve started adding MidJourney-created AI images as backgrounds to my ads, and that’s been fun.
Another thing I wish Canva did better is mockups. I use Book Brush, but pretty much only for those instant mockups where you upload your book cover and can create images that show things like a person holding your book on the beach or your book in an e-reader. I use those images on PayHip, for example. This is one of those things that should be easier. I make a 3D image of my book in an e-reader in Book Brush, then import it into Canva because if I take the Book Brush-generated image and put it in PayHip, PayHip distorts it since it’s not a square image. So I have to put it in Canva to create a square image that works on PayHip. It really makes me want to pull my hair out every time.
I really like the Book Brush instant mockups, and I also use Book Brush for Amazon A+ content, where it stacks images. You can create it as one image in Book Brush, and it automatically breaks it up for you. But there’s something about the philosophy behind the tool—this is where I wish more tools provided a video on “these are the three things you need to know about how this app thinks in the background.” Because however Book Brush organizes its work, it’s not how I think of it. I always end up with extra projects because when I think I’m saving something, Book Brush evidently thinks I’m duplicating it. It’s kind of a mess.
So, I keep Book Brush because it does a few things very well, but I use Canva for a lot of things others might use Book Brush for because Book Brush just doesn’t make intuitive sense to me. That’s yet another consideration—what’s a tool that makes intuitive sense to you in terms of pulling the levers?
Michael: Yeah, you’re venturing into my side of the water, Matty! You need the right tool for the right circumstance, so being able to create the mock-up, for example. I’ve used Book Brush a few times, and I do like it. I’ve used it for the things you’ve talked about, and I’ve also used it for general marketing materials. It’s a good app, and it does what it does really well.
I think that’s the thing—there are going to be Book Brush people, and there are going to be Canva people, and it depends on how your brain is wired. But intuitiveness in an app is really important.
Matty: Are there any other applications related to promotion that you’d like to mention?
Michael: Yeah, the biggest thing I do for promotion is email newsletters.
Matty: I guess something I’ve been focusing on more lately is copywriting.
Michael: Right, copywriting tools. I built a tool in Excel to help me make sure I don’t miss the important elements when I’m writing copy—whether it’s a book description or a Facebook ad. There are a lot of AI tools out there now that can help with copy too, and those are really helpful. Sometimes they can even generate better copy than we can, or at least give us ideas and inspiration.
Matty: Yeah, they can definitely serve as a trigger for new ideas. I think everyone should take advantage of ChatGPT and MidJourney now while there are free versions available because that may not always be the case. It’s worth getting an account just in case it provides some more runway for free.
Michael: Absolutely. Jasper is one of the AI tools people often use for copywriting, but there are a bunch of them out there, and they’re all pretty much built on the same engines. MidJourney, though, is definitely helpful for generating art, and I’ve found it can also be useful for creating images for ads, like on Facebook or even BookBub.
The issue I’ve had with ads, particularly on Facebook, is finding good images. The best way is usually to go to stock photo sites like Shutterstock or Depositphotos, especially if you write in a genre like fantasy. Stock images often perform better in ads than images you’ve pieced together yourself in tools like Book Brush or Canva. But I’ve noticed that it’s not always easy to find fantasy-related images on stock media sites, which is where MidJourney can be a game changer. The goal is to get people’s attention, and if MidJourney can help generate an eye-catching image, that’s critical.
Another reason I use MidJourney is for representing people of color in my books. My main characters are often people of color, and it’s tough to find models on stock photo sites that represent them well. When you do find them, everyone else is using the same models. With tools like MidJourney or Stable Diffusion, you can create unique characters who don’t exist in real life but still represent your vision, which is a huge help for covers.
Matty: That’s a great point. Regarding stock images, I’ve used Depositphotos a lot—especially when AppSumo offers discounts, so now I have more credits than I’ll ever use. I think a lot of people are in that same boat! But don’t forget that many tools, like Canva, have built-in stock images. You do have to consider whether everyone else is using the same ones, but they can be a great resource for backgrounds or ads.
It’s one of those things where it’s worth taking a tour through the parts of an app you’re not using. You might discover you don’t need to buy more Depositphotos credits because the tool you’re using already has a good stock image pool!
Michael and Matty on Tools: Administration
Matty: So I’m going to switch over to administration, which are the things that don’t easily fit into other categories. I use ScribeCount for collecting sales data. It’s not only time-consuming but also error-prone to do it manually, so I was a happy camper when ScribeCount came along and automated the process. Any tool you want to mention in terms of collecting sales data?
Michael: Yeah, this is one area where I went way off the beaten path and built my own tool. The reason is, I prefer not to share my sales data with any company. It’s nothing against the companies out there; I just like to keep that local and private. So, I chained together a bunch of Excel macros and an Access database. I paid a programmer a couple hundred bucks to develop it, so all I have to do is feed my sales reports into the machine, and it spits out the data. Then, I can use pivot tables and run reports on my sales. I have all my sales data going back to when I first started, and I can filter by any criteria—like how much one of my books sold in Germany in 2015—in seconds.
This is an unusual use case, and I think ScribeCount is probably the right tool for most people. But knowing your sales data is important because it uncovers opportunities. Maybe one of your books is taking off in another country, and you wouldn’t know that unless you had easy access to your sales data. Then you could start running ads in that country.
Matty: ScribeCount is another good example of a tool that saved me money. I use Trello for managing my to-do list, and I’ve used the free version for years. It does 99% of what I need, but when I started running promotions more actively, I needed a way to track them with my assistant. The only way to do that in Trello required a paid account. Then I discovered that ScribeCount has a promotion calendar feature, so I got that functionality without having to upgrade Trello. Do you have a tool for tracking your task list?
Michael: Excel? No, definitely not Excel for this! I’ve used all kinds of to-do apps—Asana, Todoist, you name it. But what I’ve settled on is thinking more holistically. For me, it’s better to have an ecosystem where my email, calendar, and to-dos all work together. So now, I use Apple Mail, Apple Reminders, and Apple Notes as my to-do system.
When an email comes in, and it has a task, I save that email to Apple Reminders and attach a reminder to it. Apple Reminders isn’t amazing compared to other to-do apps, but it works neatly with the rest of my ecosystem, and that helps me stay organized.
Michael and Matty on Tools: Where Do You Want to Be Spending Your Time?
Matty: That’s yet another consideration—where do you want to be spending your time? I’m always looking for ways to detach myself from email. I review my to-do list in Trello, so I wouldn’t want to manage that in an email system. But it’s about where you want to live electronically.
Michael: Exactly. It’s where you want to be spending your time, and it’s another factor to consider.
Matty: Shareability is another consideration, especially when working with others. In 2022, I hired an assistant, and since we both felt comfortable with Trello, it became an efficient way to share our to-do lists.
I’ll use that as an entrée to the last thing I have on my list for administration, which is QuickBooks. I chose QuickBooks because it’s so ubiquitous in the financial world. It’s easy to find people to help me get set up because everyone knows QuickBooks. My assistant was also interested in learning more about it, so it worked out well for us. It’s like Zoom—QuickBooks is everywhere, so finding help or tutorials is easy. What are your thoughts on using common tools like that?
Michael: Yeah, I agree. When a tool is widely used, it’s much easier to get support, whether that’s through tutorials or hiring someone. It’s the same reason I use Microsoft Office—it’s everywhere, and if I need help with Excel or Word, I can find a solution quickly. Common tools save time in the long run because you’re not reinventing the wheel every time you need assistance.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, QuickBooks or any kind of tax software is absolutely important. One last administrative tool I’d mention, which I’ve brought up before, is Automator and other apps on your computer that chain processes together and make things easier.
For example, when I’m preparing for a podcast like this, I have a few things I need to do: turn on the light on my desk, start up a couple of different applications for my microphone and webcam (since I use a DSLR as a webcam), and then open Zoom. I’ve chained all of that together with a Stream Deck. If you haven’t seen one, it’s a little pad that sits on your desk with these nice gel buttons that you can program. When I press one button, the light comes on, all the apps launch, and Zoom opens—so all I have to do is go to the meeting.
Matty: That’s so cool!
Michael: Yeah, little things like that can make a big difference. For example, when I dictate my audio, I use a voice recorder. Normally, I’d have to connect the recorder to my computer, open the file system, transfer the audio, then put it into Dragon for transcription, and finally move the text into Word for editing. But now, I’ve automated the process. When I connect the voice recorder, the system grabs the audio, puts it in a folder, and Dragon automatically starts transcribing it. All I have to do is wait for the text to be ready.
These kinds of automation sound small, but they add up over time and really make a difference. Even something simple like setting up email rules can save a lot of time. For instance, I flag emails from certain people so they stand out as a higher priority, and I have rules that send out-of-office autoresponders straight to the trash. This keeps my inbox clean, usually with zero emails, so I can focus on what matters.
People often overlook these built-in tools and rush to pay for apps that do things their computer can already handle. It’s one of my soapboxes—take advantage of what you already have! There’s a movie, *Defending Your Life* by Albert Brooks—have you seen it?
Matty: No, I haven’t.
Michael: There’s a scene where a guy dies and goes to purgatory, and someone there says, “Everyone here uses more than 10% of their brains. If you only use 10%, you should be on Earth.” It’s kind of like that with computers. Most people use maybe 5-10% of their computer’s power. If you could tap into more of that, it wouldn’t cost you any extra time or money, and it would make you more efficient. You might need to pay someone to help set things up, but it’s worth it.
Matty: I think that’s a great wrap-up thought. For many of us, our computer is the key tool we use in our writing and publishing lives. The assignment for everyone is to take a tour through the built-in apps on their computer and see how they might deploy them, as you’ve suggested, to increase efficiency, speed, and enjoyment.
Michael: And don’t forget your phone! There are lots of built-in tools on your phone that can help as well.
Matty: Great point! Well, Michael, it was so fun talking to you. I’m leaving with so many great ideas to apply. Please let the listeners and viewers know where they can find out more about you and everything you do online.
Michael: Yeah, if you’re interested in my resources for writers, you can find me at authorlevelup.com. I have a YouTube channel, lots of books for writers, and a blog where I share my thoughts. If you’re interested in my fiction, you can find me at michaellaronn.com.
Matty: Great, thank you!
Michael: Thanks, Matty!
