HAPPY WRITING!
Joanna, who writes this site, is a successful author and teacher based in the UK. With over 1000 articles and 100+ hours of audio, she has a thorough site on helping writers with the writing process, how to get traditionally published, how to self-publish, how to make a living from your writing, how to market as an author and so much more. While a lot of her interest is in fiction, she does provide non-fiction writers with support too. Her site is laid out beautifully and is easy to find your way around.
I came across this after someone shared a post on Facebook. Dave, who runs the site, has an absolute passion for digital marketing. This site is jam-packed on how to get free book reviews, how to sell books via You Tube, everything you need to know about self-publishing and he even has a book title generator if you are feeling a creative block with your book title. It’s my go-to site for up-to-date information.
As a long term blogger, it’s great when you get some paying gigs. These can be writing for other sites to sponsoring posts on your own site. It takes time to get your skills out there, but Sophie’s knowledge really shows you the best way to do this and to not undersell your skills.
Copyblogger is a great resource for discovering what works and what doesn’t in terms of online content marketing. As one of the most popular content marketing and writing blogs on the planet (according to Copyblogger – grin!), I highly recommend signing up to this site, because you get tons of free eBooks and regular up-to-date content emailed to you and you have access to a shed-load of resources.
Bryan, the creator of Positive Writer, created his site to help writers who feel stuck, uninspired and full of self-doubt. He helps writers through highly encouraging posts that even the most word-weary writer would find supportive.
For the passionate fiction writer, K.M Weiland invites aspiring authors into the world of how to outline your novel, the secrets of story structure, the most common writing mistakes and so much more. A newsletter I recommend fiction writers subscribe to.
Joel’s site is a site that really helped me understand what I needed to know about self-publishing and some of the basic facts I needed regarding withholding tax as a UK resident when self-publishing. He has a great collection of articles on publishing, cover design, editorial and more. The Book Designer helped me to see my book as a professional book instead of an amateur Indie book. I took myself seriously after taking on board Joel’s wisdom on this site.
Publishers Weekly is known as the bible of the book business. A weekly news magazine focused on the international book publishing business, targeted at publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary agents, authors and the media. This site, while not so much a resource for guidance, is a good site to keep up to date with industry news and what’s selling well in your niche.
Are you interested in seeing what people think of your writing? Critique Circle is a community site dedicated to writers receiving feedback and increasing writing confidence. Critique Circle is an online writing workshop for all authors, whether they write literary fiction, genre fiction, articles or short stories. Their purpose is to provide a place for writers to give and receive feedback on their work, and thereby learn from one another. The Critique Circle also includes forums, as well as helpful writing tools for manuscript progress, submission tracking, character generation and more.
Looking for an agent? Clueless as to how to find one? Agent Query is a completely free site where you can search for agents relevant to your niche category. An agent is needed if you intend to approach many of the traditionally-based publishing houses. Alongside a free search database of agents it also has great articles on frequently asked questions budding authors may have, for example, ‘How do I tell a reputable literary agent from a questionable one? ‘