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WRITERS tips and RESOURCE Toolkit

Welcome, Writers!

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Bookmark this page of top rated writing tips, and affordable tools and resources for each stage of the writing process.

Writing Craft: Fiction

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Plotting

 

In this highly popular "new" classic, Jessica Brody walks you through the 15 plot points that make up a tantalizing novel. Originally written for screenplay writers, Jessica created this version for novelists. 

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Story Structure

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Discover how to use powerful story arcs and develop rich and intriguing character stories.

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Outlining

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This is an excellent book for crafting story outlines. The title gives a cheeky nod to the "pantser" style of writing. If you like to write by the seats of your pants without plotting in advance - then that's you! 

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Character Emotions

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This book is a must-have for plotting and working in emotions for characters, as well learning how to create an emotional story arc.

It also includes a wonderful section on how to reveal hidden feelings via non verbal cues.

Writing Craft: Nonfiction

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FREE course - How to Write a Non Fiction Book

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This course is hosted by New York Times bestselling author Tucker Max. He walks you through the entire process of wriring your book and flowing through the marketing process. Also incuded are templates to get you going! This FREEBIE is a must-have for any non-fiction writer!

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How to Write

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This book is a must-have for nonfiction writers. It's a classic and provides the fundamentals to ensure your book is well written and effective. It's a highly practical guide that walks you through style, method and skills. 

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Blurbs and Copy

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Whether you're an author or blogger, at some point you'll need to write compelling copy that helps readers understand how they'll benefit by buying your book or your products.  This book will show you how to do that!

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Writing nonfiction

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This book gets right to the point and shows you how to write your nonfiction book quickly and efficiently using a very specific formula. Scott breaks down the formula day-by-day so you can easily schedule it into your routine. I enjoyed this book very much.

Thrive!

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Daily Inspiration for Writers

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This little book is filled with mini meditations, inspiration and affirmations for writers to help you manage the emotional rollercoaster that comes with the territory! Feel at ease with each step of the process and build up the excitement!

Editing, Proofreading, Mentoring & Coaching

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The Starter

The masterful mentoring, editing, proofreading and coaching duo at The Starter will help guide you through the entire creative writing process so you can launch your work in a highly professional way. The Starter is the joint effort of bestselling author and editor (and dear friend) Marissa Stapley and Sophie Chouinard, poet extraordinaire, editor and coach.

Book Covers

99 Designs

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This site is, by far, one of the best options for cover design. (Yes, they do website and app design too.) For one fixed price, you start a "contest" by stating what sort of design you'd like for your cover. At that point, the designers get to work and send you dozens of options. Pick your winner and you're good to go! You can even share your favourites with your advance reader team so they can help you choose!

Marketing

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Find Amazon Keywords

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This little tool is just amazing! I use it to do book research for each of my book launches. It generates keywords for the KDP backend, for your book blurb and even for your Amazon ads (and more!) This is really a "must-have" for all indie authors.

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FREE Amazon Ads Course

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A quick and easy course on Amazon Ads with Dave Chesson. I've taken this course and it's super easy to get yourself set up with his video instructions.

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FREE Google Ads Bootcamp

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This free course shows you how to uncover the best keywords for your book, implement profit-maximizing rules, and more! It comes with a hugely helpful audit checklist, the full roadmap and a Keyword research guide. 

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FREE Facebook Ads Course

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A power-packed course that teaches you how to effectively craft your budget, create your audience, test your ads and optimize your conversions!

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Book Description Generator for Amazon

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Another great FREE tool from Dave Chesson. When you're ready to launch your book on Amazon and want to get your book description looking pretty, use this tool. It's set up to generate the Amazon html code for any text copy you paste in there. All you have to do is copy the code generated and paste it into your KDP backend for the book description.

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KDP Backend Keywords

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Another amazing article from Dave on how to use your keywords in the KDP backend. He also shares the results of an experiment that illustrates how to use this feature more effectively.

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Keywords for Ads

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An in-depth article article by Dave Chesson that explains how to ffind the best keywords for both fiction and nonfiction writers, and how to increase your ranking and sales (plus much more).

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Amazon Categories

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This is a must-read! The right categories can make or break your book sale rankings!

Dave explains in this article how to define and refine your categories and what you need to do to raise your rankings by optimizing your categories.

Self Publishing Courses

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Self publishing for beginners

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This is the seminal course for fiction authors created by multiple bestselling author Mark Dawson. In this course, Mark shows you how to format your book, create covers that sell, upload your books into the online marketplace, help you find the right readers, set up your mailing list along with a plan to build it with confidence, create FB ad campaigns and help you sell your book!

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Ads for authors

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This course is for both fiction and nonfiction authors, also  created by multiple bestselling author Mark Dawson. In this course, Mark takes you by the hand and walks you through setting up ads on all major social media networks. This course has made many an author a bestseller!

Launch

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Launch checklist

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I refer to Gundi's book when I start each book launch. Along with highly useful tips and tools, Gundi also shares her favourite book promo sites and more!

Blogging

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Launch Your Blog

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This course is for newbie bloggers. The course creators show you how to start a blog from scratch, create quality content (nothing cheesy or scammy), get step-by-step help on the first 10 posts, how to pick keywords and headlines, how to attract readers and they claim the course will help you make your first $1,000 by blogging.

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Attract Pinterest Traffic

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I love this course! Alex and Lauren show you exactly how to get set up on Pinterest, how to create eye catching pins and what you need to do to build a solid presence on Pinterest. The "Ninja" secrets are worth the price alone. Great bonuses too (Instagram and more).

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Six-Figure Blogger

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This course is for serious bloggers who want to take things to the next level. This course, also by Alex and Lauren, was created after they made 6 figures within their first 10 months of blogging after serious failures. From there, they just kept going, earning six figures a month.

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Three Course Blogging Bundle

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All three courses above (for bloggers) are offered in a discounted bundle, so I've linked it here too. I love their stuff, their courses are laid out very well. 

Recommended Course Platforms

Are you in the process of turning your writing into a course?

If so, congrats! 

There is something SO exciting about offering your creations and your value in a way that many can use to change their lives!

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Below are the 2 course platforms I recommend for the best value to price ratio.

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There are many good course platforms out there, and I encourage you to check them all out. 

But if you're looking for the best "all-inclusive" options that are also beautifully designed, then these are the most affordable ones out there!

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NEW Zenler

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This is the one that I'm using currently. This platform has EVERYTHING you need in the Basic package!

It includes the full flow from creation to funnels and emails and FB support.

Even better, if you join with the Beta price (on now!), you'll be locked into that low rate forever! 

You can also pay monthly ($47/mo)! Simply send Zenler an email when they send you the registration link. You can test it for FREE too!

Course Craft

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I have a course set up here too. Course Craft has a lovely and intuitive set up, and is very easy to use. 

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Course Craft is great for artist moms and coaches who want more of a visually appealing landing page straight up, without all the extra fuss of landing pages, etc.

Also, VERY affordable! You can set yourself up for FREE and test it as long as you like!

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