All authors need an online presence to get noticed by publishers and literary agents. Online tools for authors are readily available and give you the resources to start a professional website or blog. In fact, Forbes did an article last year, Websites Are The New Resumes — Here’s Why You Need One that explained why you should start one. Blogs not only show off your work, but they are also a way to make a little side money to which you can then invest back into your writing. There are a lot of resources on the web to help you out with creating a professional-looking site.
No matter your reasons why for maintaining a blog, you’ll want to take advantage of what all these online tools for authors have to offer.
Online Tools for Authors to Start a Blog or Website
First and foremost, starting a blog can be overwhelming and exciting at the same time. Karol K, a contributor for Website Setup has a detailed guide on how to do so. Karol explains, “In this guide, we’re going to show you how to create a website with Wix from scratch. We leave no questions left unanswered and no important steps left behind.” You can find his guide and more information about setting up a website here: https://websitesetup.org/how-to-use-wix-editor/
Writing and Editing Tools
Grammica
Grammica grammar check uses a fully advanced machine-learning algorithm to identify grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax errors in your writing. It’s an advanced writing assistant tool runs your text through a sophisticated algorithm that recognizes grammar errors based on the context of your writing. It displays the type of error it detects along with a quick summary.
Hemingway Editor
Need a second pair of eyes to point out grammatical errors or hard to read sentences? Before you give beta readers a chance to read your piece, plug your copy into the Hemingway Editor. This free online tool highlights errors for you similar to Grammarly. It doesn’t go into as much detail as Grammarly. But Hemingway is a great resource for those who aren’t ready for a professional editor. We like using this for blogging in particular. Hemingway points out sentences in past tense which is great for freelance writers who have clients that are strict about using past tense!
Readability Score
Readability Score is similar to Hemingway and is something that all bloggers should check out. There are free and paid versions. The difference with the paid version is that you can score a website’s copy without the hassle of copying and pasting all of the text into the app. You can simply direct Readability Score to your website and it will “grade” your copy.
PLText
PLText developed the world’s first plagiarism checker and remover tool. We detect plagiarism by scanning and comparing your text with millions of web pages and academic resources from the internet. We provide solutions for plagiarism content with our smart, intelligent paraphrase software to avoid plagiarism. Online you have much software that detects plagiarism but does not have a mechanism to remove it.
Writer
Writer.com is an alternative to Google’s Grammarly. It offers plagiarism checks with no character limit. When part of your text matches something written online or in a database, you’ll get a plagiarism alert with the source.
Graphic Design Tools
Graphic design? But wait… I’m a writer. No problem! These online tools for authors are for those who want interesting images without the hassle of hiring someone else to create them.
Canva
Canva is great tool that all bloggers should take advantage of. They have templates that allow you to easily create images for all social media platforms so you can promote your posts! They offer stock images as well, but you have to pay for them. Keep reading below to see where you can find free images.
Piktochart
Another site where you can follow templates to create social media memes, infographics, and so on is Piktochart. Once you log in, you’ll quickly see how similar it is to Canva. Both are easy to use and require little direction or training. Make a splash and show off your blog and start promoting yourself online with amazing graphics that you get to design!
Graphic Designers
Not able to do your own graphic designs or illustrations? The Book Smuggler’s Den suggests hiring one of these experts for quality work!
Nora Kelly
Email: norabeerskelly@gmail.com Instagram: @NoraKelly Website: https://www.norakellyart.com/
Riccardo Cristino Design
Email: info@cristinodesign.com Instagram: @cristino_graphic_design_studio Website: https://cristinodesign.com/
Stock Images and Videos
Attention Bloggers! We can not stress this enough! We’ve heard of too many bloggers getting letters of demand because they used a copyrighted photo or video. Shutterstock is probably the most well-known site for copyright-free stock images. The downside? You have to pay for it. Luckily, there are plenty of sites that have free stock photos and videos available to use to make your blog look amazing!
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is probably one of our favorite sites to go to when looking for stock images and a great online tool for authors to take advantage of. Why? Because it searches all of the sites below for copyright-free images. It is like a one-stop-shop! It also finds images with different types of licenses and each image is specified for how you can use them. As in, you have permission to edit the image or not. We highly recommend checking it out!
Flickr
Flickr browses the internet and collects photos that bloggers can use for free. As stated on their site, they have two main goals:
- We want to help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
- We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
You can create an account or download images for free. Keep in mind that these photos are from amateur or new photographers so some of the images aren’t always the best quality. However, if you are looking for an image of a celebrity or are having trouble finding an image of a local landmark, you’ll probably have better luck on Flickr of finding a copyright-free image.
FreePik
FreePik offers the best high-quality content: illustrations, photos, icons, mockups, and presentations templates
Pexels
We absolutely love Pexels’ mission statement: “We help millions of designers, writers, artists, programmers and other creators to get access to beautiful photos that they can use freely which empowers them to create amazing products, designs, stories, websites, apps, art and other work. We call it: ‘Empowering Creators.'” A great supportive community with photos and videos that add a whole new dimension to your site.
Pikwizard
Pikwizard has over 100,000 free images and videos on the site, with 20,000 of those exclusive to them. They are also adding new images and videos to their library daily and their ultimate goal is to get to more than 1 million images and videos. Pikwizard has A LOT of pictures of people, which tend to be rare on free stock photo sites. If you check out their site and search for “office” or “meeting”, you will see the quality of images on the website. All of which are free to use without attribution. You can also take each image and edit it on their graphic design tool, Design Wizard!
Pixaby
For free images, Pixaby is similar to creative commons where it combines many of the images from other photo sites across the web. We like how easy they make it to attribute the photo to the owner! They also offer copyright-free videos that can add that something extra to your blog or YouTube channel.
Promo
Promo is an online video maker that gives you everything you need to make high-performing videos that will boost your business visibility on the web. Promo has ready-to-use templates for any kind of business. With Promo, you can freely and easily make video advertisements on all online platforms. Promo helps you to promote your business or products, improves brand awareness, widen your reach, and engage your customers. We love how they help to create Amazon video ads, perfect for the up and coming indie author.
Stock Snap.io
The free images on Stock Snap are available to use for business websites, print brochures, crafting a digital or magazine ad, or whatever you need the photo for! We like how they categorize the photos right up front, making searches a bit more fun. It can also spark using a different photo idea than what you originally thought of.
Unsplash
Unsplash has high-quality photos that are tough to beat!
Video
Motionbox
Motionbox allows you to collaborate on videos with colleagues and friends regardless of where you are in the world. Provides a lot of templates, a music visualizer, video translation, podcast to video functionality, the ability to easily add subtitles and text, and the ability to crop audio, crop video, resize Gifs, and convert Youtube to MP3 among other features.
Ssemble
Ssemble offers a comprehensive collection of plugins to empower you to create stunning videos. Cut, rotate videos, and remove backgrounds from videos all with Ssemble. They also have tools to download videos from all major social media platforms.
VEED.IO
VEED.IO is one tool you’ll want to check out if you are trying to grow your audience and establish yourself as the author everyone will want to follow on social media. They have created an easy way to create stunning videos, and add subtitles with a platform that you can store files, and add team members to so everything is all in one place. Our favorite part is that no account is required and have a free plan available. VEED.IO also has tools that can turn your podcast or audio files into videos. They come highly recommended by the Den.
Music
Bensound
If you want to add a little music to your site or to your YouTube channel, Bensound has royalty-free music to use. The site was created by Benjamin TISSOT, a composer from France who has been creating music for more than 10 years. Bensound offers the following sounds: Acoustic, folk, cinematic, corporate, pop, electronica, urban, groove, jazz, rock, and world. Licensing depends on what you plan to use the music for. Free downloads require you to credit the website. You can only use a free download for your multimedia project (online videos (Youtube, Facebook, websites, animations, etc.). You can not use free tracks for audiobooks, podcasts, song-making, or remixes. If you plan to use the music for any of that, you can purchase the track or subscribe to Bensound.
Free Music Archive
Free Music Archive was inspired by Creative Commons! The site launched in 2009 keeping in mind the digital era we now live in while being mindful of music artists and ensuring that their creativity is protected and can be put to good use. They have great tracks and we like that they pay artists whenever it is applicable.
Marketers, Editors, Coaching
For a full list of marketers, editors, coaching, and other writing services for aspiring authors, please see our page of writing resources.
If you would like to list your website or service here, please send an email with a link to your site to contact@booksmugglersden.com for further details.
