Resources

Author Resources for Writing, Design, Layout, Publishing and Marketing Your Book 

Making Your Book
These two free books by Amazon on formatting your Kindle book are excellent and in my opinion are all you really need. The secret is to follow their instructions exactly. The only real difference between the PC on and the Mac one is on how to build a table of contents.

• Building Your Book for Kindle for Mac by Amazon
• Building your Book for Kindle for the PC by Amazon 
• From Word to Kindle by Aaron Shepard (also pretty good)
  
• Publish and Profit by Mike Koenigs
• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug

Design

Book Covers
There are lots of places to get your book cover made, here are some popular resources in order of costs
• Canva.com, Canva has some really cool pre-made templates that you can customize https://www.canva.com/

• Fiverr.com, probably the cheapest, you will need to dig around some but very popular https://www.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/ebook-covers/

• 99Designs.com, a little more money but you can get a really cool from their pool of designers https://99designs.com/book-cover-design

• Making 3D covers for marketing and promotion BoxShot.com  http://boxshot.com/3d-pack/

Book Insides 
You can also connect with 99Designs.com and Fiverr.com for interior designs, along with finding a local freelance designer or also do the book yourself. For a Kindle it isn’t that hard to do, paperback is a little more work and you might need help.

• If you want to format your Kindle book yourself you can check my course Easy Kindle Book. I take you from initial formatting all the way through to hitting the publish button. Includes formatting, table of contents, working with images, making your cover, uploading to Kindle and hitting the publishing button. http://bruce-the-book-guy.usefedora.com/courses/easy-kindle-books

Choosing Colors 
Need help coming up with your books color pallet, check out Coolors.co. Thousands of color options
https://coolors.co

Book Layout
My go to program for all book design and layouts is Adobe Indesign. It is a big, powerful program that is the leader in graphic design. Maybe to much for just one book, but if you are designing and producing many books this is the program. Also goes with PhotoShop and Illustrator. You can rent it monthly.

Don’t want to go that far try PowerPoint. Upp, this works also and almost everyone has it. Great for children’s books and journals. I call this the poor man’s graphic design program. It is powerful and saves in jpg and pdf.

Programs to Use for Book Design and Layout
MS Word, this has been the standard for ever for writing. It is great for writing but also for layout for Kindle ebooks. What else can I say. It is what everyone uses.

Google Docs, if you want to be online and have full access from anywhere, Google Docs works great. You can even create the book completely here, writing and Kindle ebook files. Learn more at https://docs.google.com

Scrivener, a popular word-processing program and outliner program designed for authors. Allows you to keep all your image files, pdf documents, movies, sound files and web pages right inside Scrivener. Learn more at https://www.writersstore.com/scrivener/

Adobe InDesign, InDesign is the premier page layout program. Different versions of it have been around for over 30 years. InDesign can handle any kind of graphic design project from business cards to books, flyers, brochures, newspapers. Really anything related to design. If you are at all serious this is the program to use. It does have a learning curve but will cover everything. Is now purchased on-line and rented monthly under the name Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud. I use and highly recommend this program. To learn more, http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign.html

Quick link for InDesign Mac and PC keyboard shortcuts
https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/default-keyboard-shortcuts.html

Adobe Illustrator, What InDesign is to page layout, Illustrator is to illustrations. This is the premier illustration and drawing program. Part of the same Creative Cloud package these two programs go hand in hand. To learn more, http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html

MS PowerPoint, PowerPoint has been the premier presentation program forever, but what most people don’t know is that it is also a pretty good book creation program. If you don’t have InDesign and are creating, coloring books, picture books, children’s books or journals you can make pretty good version using PowerPoint. Not perfect but pretty good, especially for the insides. The covers can be a little tricky but the insides are work just fine. It also works for any other graphic you might need like a little flyer or book mark.

Online Programs
Canva.com, Canva online graphic design templates, beautiful designs, free and very small pay options. Tons of templates and ideas for everything online. They also have a great Kindle cover template

Relay, like Canva, this is also an on design program for everything social media wise. Upload the graphics and you get tons of customizable options to choose from. https://relaythat.com/

Book Categories 
When you select a category for your book you use what is called the BISAC subject categories. It categorizes where the books go in Amazon. The BISAC codes loosely apply to the Amazon categories but not quite. It is all kind of mysterious in the background as to how and where a book ends up. To learn more about the BISAC codes you check out this link. https://www.bisg.org/bisac/complete-bisac-subject-headings-2015-edition

Jane Friedman from Jane Friedman.com has some excellent Publishing Checklists on her website, great for planning out your book
The Self-Publishing Checklist: Editorial, Production, and Distribution

Along with some other articles on marketing and publishing for writers
Marketing and Publishing Checklist for Writers

STOCK PHOTOS

Stock photos, Clip Art Sites
 • iStockphoto.com  http://www.istockphoto.com/
• Shutterstock.com  http://www.shutterstock.com/
• CorbisImages.com  http://www.corbisimages.com
• FotoSearch.com  http://www.fotosearch.com/
• GettyImages.com  http://www.gettyimages.com
• JupiterImages.com  http://www.jupiterimages.com
• GraphicsFactory.com  http://www.graphicsfactory.com/ yearly fee, almost unlimited uses, unlimited downloads
• Dreamstime.com http://www.dreamstime.com/
• ClipArt.com  http://www.clipart.com
• AnimationFactory.com  http://www.animationfactory.com/en/

Use the rights free ones
Google and Wikipedia

Online Free Photos
Pixabay.com, this site is fill with royalty free photos, vectors and art illustrations that you can use for all kinds of things. https://pixabay.com/
Unsplash.com, Free High-Resolution photos, all of the photos are copyright free under the Creative Commons Zero license. Pretty cool images
VisualHunt.com, a very cool site with commercial, non commercial, public domain photos of all kinds, https://visualhunt.com/ 
Pexels.com, more free images, https://www.pexels.com/
99Designs Free Images, 99 Designs.com  has put out a fantastic list of 30 public domain photo websites. You always need to check to be sure but this is great place to start, https://99designs.com.au/blog/resources/public-domain-image-resources/ 

Royalty Free Maps 
Editable Adobe Illustrator and PowerPoint Maps for Illustrations, Presentations, Graphic Design, Web, and Education
World of Maps  http://www.bjdesign.com, • https://www.mapsfordesign.com

Online Photo Editing
• Pixlr.com https://pixlr.com/editor/  jpg
• FotoFlexer.com  http://fotoflexer.com/  jpg
• Lunapic.com  http://www.lunapic.com/editor/  jpg and tif
• Fotor.com http://www.fotor.com/ jpg
• PicMonkey http://www.picmonkey.com jpg
• Canva, one of the best image creating sites, https://www.canva.com/

Vector Graphics
Artboard Drawing Softward, alternative to Adobe Illustrator http://www.mapdiva.com/artboard/

Auto Drawing by Google
If you need a quick drawing for your book you can have Google do it for you with their Auto Drawing tool. Take a quick stab at drawing the outline and then let Google finish it off. It is pretty cool how it figures out what you are trying to draw. https://www.autodraw.com/ 

Image Converter
Sometimes you need to convert files from jpg to png or to something else or you need to change the dpi but you don’t have Photoshop. Online-convert.com is a pretty good place to go. They can also do a lot of other conversions. http://www.online-convert.com/

Turning Photos to Black and White Outlines for Coloring Books
This video isn’t perfect but gives you a pretty good idea of how to turn a photo into an outline image for a coloring book, https://photoshop-tutorials.wonderhowto.com/how-to/convert-photo-into-line-art-drawing-photoshop-160046/

Fonts
Books don’t work without text of some kind, but where do you get them? The first place to look is right on your computer. Both PC and Macs come with a very nice selection of fonts. If you want more options then check out the sites listed below.

eBook Fonts
My recommendation for fonts for your Kindle publishing is to use Times and Arial fonts. These are probably already on your PC or Mac and they will work just fine. In reality the reader selects the font that they want for their reading device. You want to keep your ebook formatting as simple as you can. It is different than a printed book. With print you can do whatever you want but with your ebook simpler is better.

Printed Book Fonts
Again our computers today come with a very nice selection of regular serif (Times) and san serif (Arial, Formata etc.) fonts. Fonts like Baskerville, Adobe Garamond, Minion, Bookman, Times, Janson, Minion, Century Schoolbook and Calibri. Fonts that are easy to read and work well. But there are lots more especially if you need a decorative font for a chapter title or cover. I will often purchase my fonts but there are also many free sites. My go to pay site is Fonts.com, they carry all major type houses.

Pay Fonts Sites
Fonts.com, https://www.fonts.com/
Adobe.com Fonts, http://www.adobe.com/products/type.html
Myfonts.com, http://www.myfonts.com
FontSpring, https://www.fontspring.com/

There are also lots of free fonts out there. Be careful with them and make sure they work correctly when creating your pdf file. I do not recommend using any unique font that you download or that isn’t already on your computer for your Kindle ebooks, but for print it is ok, just test first. And be careful not to download any fonts with spam connected to them

Free Fonts Sites
1001Fonts.com, http://www.1001fonts.com
Fontsquirrel.com, https://www.fontsquirrel.com
Google Fonts, https://fonts.google.com
Dafont.com, http://www.dafont.com/

Publishing

e-Books, breaks down to two areas, Mobi for Kindle, and epub for everyone else

• Kindle/Amazon Publishing, is the biggest and where you should start first with your e-book publishing

Kindle has a new service that walks you through the e-book publishing process called Kindle Jumpstart. They break the process down into 4 areas, Getting Started, Book Details, Manuscript & Cover and Rights and Pricing. Click here to start with the Kindle training, Kindle Jumpstart

Amazon/Kindle has an excellent book on setting up your MS-Word file for Kindle. It is simple and direct. The tricky parts are dealing with images and the Table of Contents. Follow exactly what these books say to do and you will succeed getting your book up correctly.
Kindle PC, Building Your Book for Kindle
Kindle Mac, Building Your Book for Kindle Mac edition

There are a lot of other e-book publishing sites. Some of these will interface with Kindle and then with a lot of other e-book sellers and readers. Every site other than Kindle uses the epub format.

• Bookbaby.com, integrates with a number of platforms
• Kobo.com
• Smashwords.com, integrates with a number of platforms
• Draft2Digital.com, integrates with a number of platforms
• Apple iBooks

Physical Book with Print-on-Demand Publishing

• Createspace.com/Amazon. Free to use and allows you sell your books on Amazon, Amazon’s Print on Demand site for books, DVD, CDs, Video download, I have 4 books on this service, it works great. CreateSpace/Amazon is the main site for self-publishing

• Lulu.com, lots of options for sizes, and binding, has a relationship with Amazon

• Blurb.com, great for photo books, cool online software, Bookwrite
  

• Bookbaby.com, distributes books to many ebook and print outlets

• Books-A-Million D.I.Y with BAM! Publishing, write, publish, print and distribute in print or ebook
• Draft2Digita.com

• MagCloud, another option that I just discovered for printing and selling your books. It looks like they have paperback, hardcover, saddle sitch and spiral binding-cool. Plus a variety of other things they can print such as books, flyers, posters. Might be a nice alternative to the high prices of Blurb. Plus they have an 14×11 tabloid book.

• The Bookstore Route. If selling in bookstores is part of your marketing and distribution plan then you need to go in a little different path. I am a huge fan of CreateSpace.com/Amazon and their print on demand model. It works great. But if you want to be in bookstores not so much, Createspace doesn’t really distribute to brick and mortar stores. An alternative is to use a service likeIngramSpark.com. Ingram is the worlds largest book distributor with over 39,000 outlets and retail stores. They also have a print-on-demand side called IngramSpark.com Similar to CreateSpace but they also give you access to their bookstore catalog and stores worldwide. They are a little more money and a little more effort but this is the direction to head if you want to sell in stores. If you are thinking of being a publisher this is the direction. I recently interviewed Robin Cutler on how they work and you can check that out in this video.

Put ingram video here

PDF Digital Publishing Platforms

• Scribd.com, a PDF publishing site, kind of like YouTube for pdf files
• Issue.com online publishing, magazines, heavy into fashion and style

How to Self-Publish
Here is an excellent article by Jane Friedman on How to Self Publish Your Book, covers all the basics, and some excellent resources on publishing

How Much Does it Cost to Self Publish
The author community website Reedsy published an article in August 2017 on price ranges for self-publishing your book. How much does a copy-editor, a proofreader, designer, formatter, cover designer in different genres and word counts. The bottom line is between $2,500-$4,000, which I think is about right. Check out How Much Does it Cost to Self-Publish a Book

Comic Books
Digital printing for comic books Ka-Blam Digital Printing

Audio Recording
You can publish your book in print, but you can also publish your book as an audio book. If you are going to distribute your book on Amazon then you are probably going to sell through Audible.com. To submit your book to Audible you will need to go through another company called ACX.com. ACX manages the process of recording your book and moving it over to Amazon for sale.

But you don’t have to do this if you want to just record your book and sell it on your website or turn it into a pod cast on iTunes. To record your book you can use a $100 microphone like the Blue Yeti and a free software like Audacity. It is a little more complicated than this but it is actually pretty simple. You can also record your book as a series of videos and host them on YouTube and your website. A teleprompter can be very useful if you are going to record your book as a series of videos. There are a number of free ones that work pretty well. I recently use EasyPrompter to record a series of book videos. CuePrompter is also pretty good.

Audible  http://www.audible.com/
ACX  http://www.acx.com/
Audacity  http://www.audacityteam.org/
Blue Yeti USB microphone
EasyPrompter  http://www.easyprompter.com/
CuePrompter http://www.cueprompter.com/ 

Video on Using Audible https://youtu.be/PrN9mYXvrsk  

Legal Rights and Copyrighting Your Book
All books should be copyrighted when they are completed. Just by being created and put on paper they are copyrighted but they are not registered. What most self-published authors do is at a minimum is add the copyright notice on the bottom of the title page and/or on the disclaimer legal page that sits behind the title page. This is important to do. It should be written like this:

© Copyright J. Bruce Jones 2018

Have the little © the word copyright, your name and then the year.

You can also go the full step and register your book with the US Copyright office
https://www.copyright.gov/registration/

The advantage of registering your book is that you can sue for damages if your book’s copyright has been violated. Your book is copyrighted without registering but you can’t get any legal damages. Most books never have any copyright issues, it is pretty rare. If you do have issues it is also very expensive to take someone to court for copyright violation. But you can only do it if your book has registered. It is a choice, but to register isn’t very expensive. Online is $35 and on paper $85.

Click here to learn more about copyrighting your book
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/index.html

Public Domain
This question comes up all the time. Can I use someone else’s content? When does the copyright expire? What is public domain? What is royalty free? What is patent and trademark? How do I register my book? Public domain and copyrighted content is a confusing topic and is different in every country but there are some laws and treaties that govern it.

In the US pretty much everything published before 1923 is in the public domain and can be used however you want. After that date things get confusing and you need to be careful. Europe is governed by the Berne Convention which the US only joined in 1989.

It is best to read some of these articles and if in doubt it is best to check with an intellectual property attorney. Don’t ask a general lawyer, they don’t know, find an IP attorney.

Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use, this is an excellent resource
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/

Copyright.gov, go right to the source, the US Government
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/

Public Domain Wikipedia, also pretty good, but the Stanford article is a bit clearer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

Royalty Free Wikipedia, does not mean it is copyright free or in the public domain, it just means you don’t have to pay royalties or license on it. Usually applies to clipart art, video or music
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty-free

Trademark, Service Marks Wikipedia, applies to logos, packaging, brands, products, that kind of thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark

US Government Trademarks and Patent Office, search their database
https://www.uspto.gov/

Virtual Book Tours 
Putting together a virtual book tour for your launch can be a great way to gain exposure. Setting up interviews, writing articles, and doing videos that will appear on different blogs, podcasts and social media are all very doable. You need to start working on building these relationships weeks if not several months before your book book launched. You can’t just contact people and ask them to talk about your stuff, you need to build relationship.  For more details I talk about entire strategy for getting in-front of influencers in my How to Market Your Book course

One resource to get started is to get yourself listed at sites like Podcastguest.com and Interview Guests Directory.com which are a sites for either finding good guest to interview around your topic or listing yourself as a good guest to be interviewed around your subject.
http://www.podcastguests.com/
http://www.interviewguestsdirectory.com/ 

Animated Gif Graphics for Your Web Site
Lets say you want to make an animated graphic of your book illustrations on your blog or maybe Pinterest. How would you do that? Well there is a cool site called ezgif.com that will do it for you. Check the link and a training video below
ezgif.com
YouTube: How to Animate your Zazzel Collection for Printerest Using ezgif.com
Ezgif.com: https://ezgif.com/

Press Releases

• Getting interviews is a great way to let the world know about your book, check out RadioGuestList.com for a ton of places to connect with

To see a great example check out the media page that Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner did for his book launch http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/launch/media.html

An excellent article by Michael Hyatt on How to Launch a Best Selling Book
http://michaelhyatt.com/bestseller-launch-formula.html 

Building and author website, all the parts by Tim Grahl
How to build the ultimate author website in 1 hour

Media Page for Your Book
Every book should have a media page on your book blog or website. This is central place for everything about your book. Contained here should be:
• Author name, about the author and description
• Book name and description, different lengths, short, medium and long
• Who this book is for
• Include a sample chapter in pdf and word-.doc format
• Pull out some key facts from your book or good opening paragraph from the book
• Images of the book that people can download, include captions, author etc. with each image
• Videos about the book that people can embed
• Press Release
• Press mentions
• Quotes and testimonials about the book
• All the contact info for the author and where to buy the book

Video Book Trailers
Having a video book trailer(s) is essential for your book marketing these days. They are easy to make with your smart phone, iMovie on the Mac or Movie Maker on the PC, or some of the on-line and phone apps. Even PowerPoint has a Make Movie option to turn a slide presentation into a video. You can be in them or not.  Your video should contain 4 parts:
1. Who you are, your name
2. What you have got, your book, included the title, show the book
3. What it does for the reader or viewer, the benefits, look at your table of contents
4. What you want me to do next, call to action, “Buy at Amazon”

Here are some on-line services
Ripl a smart phone app for making animated videos. http://ripl.com/
Animoto, for making videos and animated slide shows. https://animoto.com

Building your author email list
http://timgrahl.com/email-marketing-101-for-authors/

Free eBook Promo Sites
There are zillions of free ebook sites that you can share your Kindle/ebook out to the world through for promotion. Books are submitted and shared. For many authors this is part of their launch and promotion process. It is an ever changing group of sites, they come up and then go down, don’t be surprised if they disappear. There are also sites that you can pay to spread your book.

Here is a pretty good one of 90 plus sites from BookMarketingTools.com
http://bookmarketingtools.com/blog/top-free-ebook-sites/

Book Review Sites
Getting your book reviewed and exposed can be an effective way of spreading the love about it. Here is a pretty good list from Erica Verrillo’s blog, Publish to Death
http://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2013/09/top-5-sites-for-finding-reviewers.html

Book/Author Blog or Website
I am a huge believer that every author should have a home on the web. Either a blog or website. I am more a fan of a blog because it is easier to update, manage and add content than a website but either works fine. If you have a website make sure you have a blog page that you yourself can edit and ad content to. Below are some good examples of author blog/website. One of the advantages of having a site is that this is the home for your book and any other product or service you can create.
Prose on Fire with Monica Leonelle
The Creative Penn with Joanna Penn
Mandala Happiness Coloring Book by J. Bruce Jones

Marketing Books
Email Lists Made Easy for Writers and Bloggers, Kirsten Oliphant

Landing Pages
Landing pages as places to send interested people to when you are running some kind of book promotion or launch. Landing page enable you to collect an email address and sell or direct someone to purchase something. Most of them cost money such as ClickFunnels or LeadPages, but there are some free ones like ONTRAPages. I have also just used a blog post with an email sign up box on it.
https://ontrapages.com/

Social Media Posts
Social media is a very powerful tool and needs to be used for exposure, building your platform and marketing your book. One of the questions that comes up is what channels should I be on? And how do I make the graphics and what size should they be for the posts and just opening your account.
Here is a great resource on all the social media graphics
Louise Myers Social Media Check Sheet https://louisem.com/2852/social-media-cheat-sheet-sizes

Piracy, Someone put my book on line, what do I do?
Here is an excellent article by Tim Grahl on ebook piracy and book marketing. This article will change your views on this.
https://booklaunch.com/ebook-piracy-and-book-marketing/
Tim also recommends that you can get infront of this by putting your own books up on the piracy sights, take command, https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2017-170107/

WRITING AND PUBLISHING RESOURCES

Jane Friedman’s Blog for writers and publishers https://janefriedman.com/blog/

Pat Flynn and the Smart Passive Income Blog

Michael Hyatt, Your Virtual Mentor

Joan Stewart The Publicity Hound, Excellent practical advice on how to promote and market yourself and your products, excellent e-newsletter, https://publicityhound.com/

Amazon Author Insights, resources blog from Amazon on writing, publishing, marketing and tools for bringing your book to market. http://amazonauthorinsights.com/

CreateIfWriting.com by Kirsten Oliphan, marketing, Facebook and publishing info
• How to Create a Freebie for Your Email List, excellent article

ON-LINE AND OFF-LINE SITES TO SELL YOUR CONTENT

It is so easy to sell your content on line, make stuff and start selling

• Gumroad.com, one of my favorite sites for selling content. Kind of like an electronic bucket. Load up your content, pdf, mov video, zip files. mp4, mp3 any kind of file or combo of files. Plus coupons, affiliates, pdf stamping and much more
https://gumroad.com/

• Teachable.com. Teachable lets you build an entire school with courses. I use this site for my Book Publishing School. It is affordable and gives you the next step up when your products have more parts than are comfortable on Gumroad. I use both sites and like them both.
https://teachable.com/ 

• Sellfy.com Very similar to Gumroad.com. An ecommerce site to sell your digital products.
https://sellfy.com/

• PayHip, it is like a British version of Gumroad. Many of the same features, different files, coupons, affiliates, pdf stamping https://payhip.com/

Selling Physical and Digital Packages and Bundles Including Through Amazon
Do you have a digital download product and would like to sell a physical version such as a DVD along side?
Do you have a series of books and would like to bundle them and sell them as a collection on Amazon?
Would you like to capture the customer details such as email and the physical address?

Selling physical goods along with digital goods can be a powerful sales combination. How do I do this? One way is to use a fulfillment service like Acutrack.com. Acutrack works with Amazon to fulfill the orders. Inventory is sent to Acutrack, your product is shown and sold on Amazon and Acutrack fulfills, ships and collects the customer data.
To learn more check out https://www.acutrack.com/blog/

Re-Purposing Your Content into Products
Take your content and make a workbook or journal from it. Make a course. Make t-shirts, cups and pillows. Record your content and make an audio book, or podcast. Read your book into a video camera and use it for promotion and education. There are many ways to extend your book’s content.

One of the easiest ways to make a product is take your book’s illustrations and create products with them such as t-shirts, mugs, hats, clocks, pillows. All kinds of things. There are a lot of sites that you can upload your artwork and turn it into products and then link them to your website. You don’t need to print or create inventory or ship anything, just use one of these sites.

CafePress.com, One of the original product sites, I have products here

Zazzel.com, All kinds of things, great for making posters, I use this site, works great

Printful.com, Online printing, fulfillment and shipping, can be integrated wth your website

Redbubble.com, Products designed by independent artists



People or Sites to Follow

Pat Flynn and the Smart Passive Income Blog

Michael Hyatt, Your Virtual Mentor
Steve Scott
Joan Stewart 

Business Services and Tons of Other Cool Resources
This came by way of the great Andy Falco, a fantastic list of resources of all kinds but many along the publishing and images direction, most of these are freehttp://growthsupply.com/free/ 

Courses and Sites with Publishing Training
Author Marketing Club with Bryan Cohen, member site with a lot of book marketing training courses
7 Steps to Publishing Your Book, by Bruce Jones. Online training course taking from writing to design, publishing and marketing of your book. (this is my course-shameless plug)

Online Learning for Writers, Writers Digest University, learn from a variety of current and successful writers, part of the Online Writers Workshop.

Learn how to make children’s pictures books and sell them on the Amazon Kindle. Using popular software that we probably already have on our computers and the Kindle Kid Creator app from Kindle it is pretty easy. Learn how with the online course, How to Make Children’s Picture Books for Kindle, by Bruce Jones

Online Broadcasting
Broadcasting tools now for your smart phone, Facebook Live Video which you can broadcast to your pages and groups. Get involved in Facebook Live. There are also many other broadcasting platforms that are constantly popping on the market, Bluejeans, BeLive.tv, ECamm. It is constantly changing but if you want to get you message out there are lots.

Giving Back
Want to support a classroom, check out DonorsChoose.org. As they say support a classroom, build a future.
Skype-in-the-Classroom, connect with classrooms and education all over the world. Have something to teach, this is a great way to connect. https://education.microsoft.com/skype-in-the-classroom/overview

My Big List of Resources
Over the years I have compiled quite a list of resources that I use for researching, producing, publishing, distributing and marketing my print, web and video projects. I thought it might be fun to let you see it and it might help you in your projects.

This list is a work in progress and will change over time as I add or subtract resources. Love to hear about your resources, send them over.

Product Research
Research/Keyword Resources for Web Sites and Products
Google, Blogs, YouTube,
Google Keyword Tool/external, phrase match
• WordTracker  https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
• Word Tracker Questions  http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions/

Web Traffic Research
• Alexa.com  http://www.alexa.com/
• Quantcast  http://www.quantcast.com/

Google has many fantastic tools to use for learning about and keeping track of your market area, competition or products
• Gmail, search on gmail, signup, Start here I opens you to the Google world
• Google Alerts  http://www.google.com/alerts
• Google Analytics  http://www.google.com/analytics
• Blogger, an easy place to start with your web presence  http://www.blogger.com
• Google Trends  http://www.google.com/trends
• Google Images  make sure your images are here, great place for research
• Google Places, making sure your business is found, list it here
• Google Adsense, make a little money along the way
• Google Keyword Tool/external, find your keywords, learn what new keywords you should be using and paying attention to, because of recent changes I like the phrase match option now.
• Learning the process via Ed Dale, the four pillars, Research, Traffic, Conversion, Product  http://www.challenge.co

Product Creation
How to Write a Book Using a Blog
• Pat Flynn  http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/
Pat’s ebook is the best I have seen on how to pull a book, ebook or regular book, together using a blog.

Print/Web Site/Product Creation
Print and publishing is in constant change right now. Sometimes we are designing and printing on paper with ink, other times we are designing and publishing to the web, and often we are doing both. Either way most of the resources below are working with both.

Design and Layout
• Adobe Indesign  http://www.Adobe.com/InDesign/
• Adobe Photoshop  http://www.Adobe.com/Photoshop/
• Adobe Illustrator  http://www.Adobe.com/Illustrator/
• QuarkExpress  http://www.quark.com/
• Apple Pages  http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
• Microsoft Publisher  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/publisher/
• Microsoft Word  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/
iPad
• Apple Pages http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/pages.html

Tools for Making Kindle Books
• Kindle Kid Creator, turns pdfs into Kindle books, fantastic app from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1002979921

Stock Photos, Clip Art Sites
• iStockphoto.com  http://www.istockphoto.com/
• Shutterstock.com  http://www.shutterstock.com/
• CorbisImages.com  http://www.corbisimages.com
• FotoSearch.com  http://www.fotosearch.com/
• GettyImages.com  http://www.gettyimages.com
• JupiterImages.com  http://www.jupiterimages.com
• GraphicsFactory.com  http://www.graphicsfactory.com/ yearly fee, almost unlimited uses, unlimited downloads
• Dreamstime.com http://www.dreamstime.com/
• ClipArt.com  http://www.clipart.com
• AnimationFactory.com  http://www.animationfactory.com/en/

Use the rights free ones
Google and Wikipedia

Royalty Free Maps 
Editable Adobe Illustrator and PowerPoint Maps for Illustrations, Presentations, Graphic Design, Web, and Education
• World of Maps, Adobe Illustrator, PowerPoint, JPG  http://www.bjdesign.com,
• Maps for Design, editable PowerPoint Maps https://www.mapsfordesign.com

Copyright Free Images You Can Use on Your Website,
Creative Commons 0, CC0
• Pixabay, over 600,000 photos,  https://pixabay.com/ 

Online Photo Editing

• Google Photo Editor https://support.google.com/photos#topic=6128857
• Pixlr.com https://pixlr.com/editor/
• PicMonkey.com https://www.picmonkey.com
• FotoFlexer.com  http://fotoflexer.com/
• Lunapic.com  http://www.lunapic.com/editor/
• Canva.com http://canva.com
• Online-Converter http://www.online-convert.com/
• Working with collages, posters, social media graphics and photo cards, check out https://www.fotojet.com/ a free photo collage site. Lots of templates to choose from.

Signature Generator
This is just kind of cool, sometimes you need signature for a recommendation on your site or somewhere. Here is one that does a great job, http://signature-maker.net/signature-generator

Print on Demand Sites
• CreateSpace, an Amazon company, gets your book into the Amazon.com system, excellent quality  http://www.CreateSpace.com
• Lulu.com, one of the major players, lots of options, excellent quality  http://www.lulu.com
• Blurb.com, used by a lot of artists and photographers for excellent quality with images  http://www.blurb.com

National Printing Services
• 48HourPrint.com  http://www.48hourprint.com/
• USPress.com  https://www.uspress.com
• VistaPrint.com  http://www.vistaprint.com

Make a Physical Product Around Your Subject, t-Shirt, Mug, Bag, etc.
CafePress  http://www.cafepress.com/
Zazzle Products  http://www.zazzle.com/

Web Books
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition, by Steve Krug. Excellent book for figuring out if your website is working. Short and to the point, personally recommend.

Web Sites for Ideas
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Google Images, I use Google Images all the time for ideas,

Video Creation
Equipment for making actual videos
You Smart Phone actually works great
On your computer you can use the included camera or if you want to go a little better the Logitech 920 is excellent

Mics
There are a ton of options for microphones.  Sennheiser makes great professional microphones, they aren’t cheap but will give you a great sound. Want more affordable take a look at Audio Technica. Make sure your microphone will work with your camera. Check the connectors
Sennheiser MKE 400, small shotgun microphone
Sennheiser ME66 short shotgun microphone
Sennheiser also has great wireless mikes as well
For a more affordable microphones check out Audio Technica
Audio Technica ART-3350 Lavalier Omnidirectional Condenser microphones
Audio Technica ART-55 Condenser Shotgun Microphone

B & H Photo Video are very helpful if you call with guiding you to the best option. Amazon is also a great place to look but there is no personal service. Pricing is often about the same.
Lighting
Portable
Standing

Editing Software
Apple iMovie  http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
Movie Maker
Finalcut
Sony Vegas
YouTube  You can edit clips right in YouTube now  http://www.youtube.com/editor

Suppliers/Stores
Apple
B&H Photo Video  http://www.bhphotovideo.com/
Amazon.com

Stock Video Footage
iStockphoto.com, http://www.istockphoto.com/
Shutterstock.com,  http://www.shutterstock.com/
Corbis Images  http://www.corbisimages.com
FotoSearch  http://www.fotosearch.com/
Getty Images  http://www.gettyimages.com
Jupiterimages.com  http://www.jupiterimages.com

Stock Music
RoyaltyFreeMusic.com  http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com
IStockPhoto.com
Gettyimages.com/music  https://secure.gettyimages.com/Music

Screen Capture Videos
Making video right from your computer with no camera

Computer based screen capture
• ScreenFlow, a Mac based program that captures the computer screen and the video that comes from the iSight video camera. Screenflow is a game changer in terms of a simple program that allows you to record and edit how-to-videos from your computer almost easier than anything else on the market. The editing is very straight forward line editing but with the added feature that you can zoom in and around to highlight areas, add text, additional media including more screen sharing into the current project. What is really cool is that each track of video is independent and can be customized however you want. All of those how-to-videos you see with a shot of the person in them have been produced with Screenflow. I personally have done hundreds of videos with it, it is an amazing product and only $99. If you are producing how to videos or recording a broadcast and have a Mac or better yet go buy a Mac, this is the product to use.  http://telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm

• Camtasia Studio, Windows and Camtasia for Mac, captures the screen but not the video camera http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

Web based screen capture
• Screenr.com  http://screenr.com/
• Jing  http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

Animation
Dragon Stop Motion  http://www.dragonstopmotion.com/
Stop Motion Pro  The basic version begins at $70, but more sophisticated editions, which offer higher definition and the ability to connect with high quality digital S.L.R. cameras, can cost up to $295.

Other programs from free to hundreds of dollars
AnimatorDV and Animator HD  http://animatordv.com/
iStopMotion, Mac Based program  http://stopmotionpro.com/   http://boinx.com/
iKITMovie, includes a version with over 2,200 sound, good for school kids, http://www.ikitmovie.com/

Online Resources for Video/Video Marketing
Will Video for Food, Kevin Nalty http://willvideoforfood.com/
Video Maker.com http://www.videomaker.com/
Web Video University  with Dave Kminski
http://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/
http://webvideouniversity.com/blog/
AskMrVideo.comv http://www.askmrvideo.com/
HowToSellYourVideosv http://howtosellyourvideos.com/Steve Garfield.com  www.SteveGarfield.com

Online Video Tutorials and Training
• VideoMaker.com http://www.videomaker.com/
• Web Video University  with Dave Kminski  http://webvideouniversity.com
• Lynda.com, one of the longtime standards for online training for all kinds of software, http://www.lynda.com/
• DovS-Simens’ & Hollywood Film Institute’s Web Film School
http://www.webfilmschool.com/index.htm
• Video, video production training videos, this is a paid member site but is a great place to learn, http://www.izzyvideo.com/

Product Tutorials
iMovie 11, learn from Apple’s site http://www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/
Final Cut Express, learn from Apple’s site, http://www.apple.com/support/finalcutexpress/
Final Cut Pro, learn from Apple’s site, http://www.apple.com/support/finalcutpro/
Final Cut Studio, learn from Apple’s site, http://www.apple.com/support/finalcutstudio/
Microsoft Windows MovieMaker
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/default.mspx

Actual Live Video Courses
Bill Gentile  http://www.billgentile.com
Maine Media Workshops, video and photography  http://www.mainemedia.edu/workshops
www.videomaker.com courses

Books on Producing Video
• Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed by Jennie Bourne and Dave Burstein, Excellent book on producing video, how to, tips, equipment. Personally recommend (amazon affiliate link)
• Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business by Steve Garfield and David Meerman Scott (amazon affiliate link)
• You Made Your Video-Now What? 10 Essential Tips for Marketing Your Video, by Bruce Jones, download our book, just sign up over on the right.

I have had great luck with the Dummies Books on pretty much any subject, available at Amazon.com

Product Publishing/Distribution

Publish a Book Using Print on Demand
Lulu.com http://www.lulu.com/
Blurb.com  http://www.blurb.com
Createspace.com/Amazon https://www.createspace.com/
Print on Demand site for books, DVD, CDs, gets you in the Amazon system
Scribd pdf publishing site  http://www.scribd.com/
IngramSpark.com. Largest book distributor in the world, prints using print-on-demand

Video Distribution/Sharing Sites
YouTube.com  http://www.youtube.com
TubeMogul.com  http://www.tubemogul.com/
Blip.tv  http://blip.tv/
Vimeo.com  http://vimeo.com/
UStream.tv  http://www.ustream.tv/
DailyMotion  http://www.dailymotion.com/us
Amazon S3 video distribution

Livestreaming Video on the Web
Broadcasting our messages using video has change dramatically in the last couple of years. Using web cams built into our PCs or small video cameras we can now create, broadcast, distribute and record for later our video content all in one unified step and send it out to the global community. Plus once we have broadcast our message, our content is stored and displayed for anyone to view whenever they want, basically for free.
Personal Broadcasting Channel, live streaming
Facebook Live
BeLive.tv
UStream.TV  http://www.ustream.tv/
Livestream your events, http://www.livestream.com/

Web Based TV
Mevio.com  http://www.mevio.com/
Facebook Live and YouTube would be my two options

Product Marketing
To Keep Up and Learn about Social Media
Mashable.com  http://mashable.com/
Social Media Examiner.com is a fantastic site on social media info, it is my go to site for info http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/

Email Marketing Management
Aweber.com  https://www.aweber.com/landing.htm
MailChimp.com http://www.mailchimp.com/
Constant Contact http://www.constantcontact.com
SurveyMonkey.com  http://www.surveymonkey.com/
PR Resource, Great PR tips
Subscribe to Joan Stewart’s weekly newsletter  http://www.publicityhound.com/
Web/Blogging/Social Media

Webhosting
Hostgator, Web hosting  http://www.hostgator.com/
Web.com  http://www.web.com

Domain Registor
DirectNic.com  http://www.directnic.com/
GoDaddy  http://www.godaddy.com

Blog Platforms
Blogger  https://www.blogger.com/start
WordPress,  free.com or paid.org  http://wordpress.org/
Tumbler  http://www.tumblr.com/

Photo Sharing Sites
Flickr http://www.flickr.com/
Picassa, Google site http://picasaweb.google.com

Social Media
Linkedin for professional contacts  http://www.linkedin.com
Facebook  http://www.facebook.com
Twitter  http://www.twitter.com

Books on Social Media
• Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk, a great short, right to the point read on building your own personal brand using social media. Personally recommend (amazon affiliate link)
• Social Media 101: Tactics and Tips to Develop Your Business Online by Chris Brogan (amazon affiliate link)
• Trust Agent by Chris Brogan (amazon affiliate link) • Social Media Bible by Lon Safko (amazon affiliate link)
• Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, and David Meerman Scott. These are the HubSpot guys (amazon affiliate link)
Social Media Web Sites www.chrisbrogan.com www.mashable.com

Online Freelancing and Outsourcing
• Elance.com  http://www.elance.com/
• Fiverr.com http://www.fiverr.com
• Guru.com  http://www.guru.com
• RentaCoder  http://www.vworker.com
• 99Designs.com  http://99designs.com

Disclaimer: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links to products that will earn me a commission. I am recommending these products because they are helpful. I have also used most of them on a regular basis over the years and are worthy of making this list