Book Stack: Software and Tools for a Self-Publishing a Book
I just put out a book, Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a Creative Career in Marketing. Half-memoir, half-guidebook, it traces my nearly 30 years in advertising and digital marketing with embarrassing stories and hard-earned wisdom. Writing the book was one huge lesson in discipline and patience, but finding the right tech stack has been more than I expected. Here I’ll share not necessarily what I recommend (though some I do), but what I have used so far for product management, distribution, marketing and reporting.
Product
The manuscript has shifted back and forth from MS Word to Apple’s Pages and back. Part of my everyday for work, I’m simply used to them. I heard great things about proper writing software such as Scrivener and Ulysees (which I tried and paid for), but after editing one chapter, I didn’t have the patience for anything new and cowardly retreated to familiar old, clunky, unhip Word.
Design seemed the opportunity to take it up a notch. To format my first ebook, a compilation of content from my podcast about moving from the city to the country, I invested earlier this year in a paid subscription to Designrr.io. With photos of farms, chickens and donkeys, my book had a lot of fun visuals so I was more concerned with the images than formatting the text. Pricing was decent…
