Category: Author Resources

Author Resource: Creative Bonanza for Free at Free Illustrations🎨

While writing a book/blog post or even while promoting a book/blog post on social media, you can not ignore the value of illustrated content. Visual impact is key in getting noticed and if you are in need of a quick drawing or two, there are several free illustration sites out there that help you get the kind of images that are relevant to your needs.

Free Illustrations is Fun to Use

Free Illustrations is a simple site to navigate. It’s a one-stop centre for a variety of illustration websites available online.

screengrab of freeillustations site where you can browse for different file types

Browsing through different available file typesAll you have to do is visit the website and pick from a wide range of illustrations, clipart, avatars, etc. Make sure to double check if acknowledgements need to be provided when using these illustrations.

You will have to visit the sites separately and sign in for free downloads.

If you are an illustrator and want to submit free illustrations, you can submit too!

Recommended or Not?

For sure!

Free illustration image

 

Looking for illustrations for your book? Check out our illustration services.

Author Resource: Make a Mark with the Free ISBN Barcode Generator 🦓

Okay, you have applied for an ISBN and got it. Is that the same as the barcode?

ISBN vs Barcode 😕

Barcode is simply a machine-readable version of some information, in case of books the information being the ISBN and/or MRP, so the question of a difference between the two does not arise.

Remember that you need to apply for an ISBN from an agency first and then create the barcode by entering this number into the barcode generator. Random numbers that are entered into a barcode generator won’t provide a valid ISBN.

Having a barcode is a must if the book is going to physical bookstores since this makes it easier for sellers to identify it. For books sold primarily online i.e. eBooks, it doesn’t play much of a role, so it is up to the author whether they need to add a barcode or not.

The barcode is typically placed on the right-hand side of the back cover of a paperback or hardcover.

How Do You Generate your Barcode?

It’s easy. There are multiple free barcode generators online. The Free Barcode Generator | Cognex is easy to use.

Just select the ISBN Code category.

screengrab of ISBN option selection
Select ISBN option

Fill out the 13-digit ISBN.

screengrab of how to download barcode ater entering ISBN
Enter the ISBN and download the barcode

Generate your barcode!

Free Barcode Generator: Recommended or Not?

Recommended.

 

Looking for a professional cover for your book? Check out our cover design services.

Author Resource: Formatting Made Easy with Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator

When you see a tool like the book description generator, you can get excited as the hardest part about selling a book is getting the blurb or if your book is on an online store, the description right. You may be able to write a book of 80,000 words but how do you summarize it into just 150-200 words or 4000 characters? It’s really hard and a tool will come handy.

So How Does the Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator Give You a Good Blurb?

Wait a minute. The Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator is not going to tell you how to make that first line draw the reader’s attention or explain how you can summarize your protagonist’s story in the most appealing way.

You will have to create an effective description by using effective keywords and crafting an interesting summary.

The book description generator provides a code to enter into an online ebook-selling platform say Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Kobo for a perfectly formatted description. So the goal of this tool is formatting.

How the Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator Works

The instructions are clearly stated on the page.

You need to select which platform you want to format the description for as each format has a different set of rules. For instance, Amazon does now use Headings or strikethrough anymore.

There are instructions about how to paste your text without the accompanying CSS.

Depending on which platform you choose, the formatting options that are not available for those options gray out.

Enter the text and format as required.

Then generate the code.

Features and web editor of Kindlepreneur Book description generator
Enter your text and choose the platform where you will be entering your book.
Generated Code which you can copy
Generated Code that you copy into the Book Description

Kindlepreneur Book Description Generator: Recommended or Not?

Yes but not to write your book description, only to format it for specific platforms.

Looking for professional help to design your book and take it to next level? Check out our formatting services.

Author Resource: Research the Right Way With Elephind

The internet is a knowledge magnet but if you are a writer and you want some primary sources for your fiction or non-fiction research, a newspaper (even a local one) can spring up a lot of unexpected information. Especially for crime fiction and historical fiction writers, reading the newspapers of a specific period of time can help you trace the narrative arc of how events unfolded at that moment.

With Elephind you can browse through old newspapers and scour headlines to get a feel of the time, language and use of phrase, setting and general milieu or you can do a more specific keyword search to find out more about a specific event.

Four Solutions You Can Find With Elephind

  • Historical newspapers online at one place
  • Search engine with a focus on digitized newspapers
  • . Provides intimations to signed up readers whenever a new newspaper collection is added.
  • Conducts newspaper digitization projects for customers like Cornell, Princeton, the National Libraries of New Zealand and Singapore, etc.

How to Use Elephind

Browse newspaper publications.

screenshot of elephind historical newspaper archive
Search on Elephind

Search using keywords.

Search Results for Titanic on Elephind
Search Results for Titanic

Elephind: Recommended or Not?

Great resource for family historians, genealogists, and researchers.

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.

Author Resouce: (Free) Mock Up Covers For Marketing with Placeit 📚

Book mockups are an effective marketing tool for your book promo campaign. Placeit offers over 60,000 ready-to-use templates, designs and mockup tools. We will be focusing on the book mockup options they have on offer.

What Kind of Marketing Solutions Does Placeit Provide?

  • Create lead magnets and promo material for social media.
  • The other options available at Placeit allow you to design stationery, mugs, animations, t-shirts and templates. It’s pretty exhaustive.

How to Create Book Covers on Placeit with Free Templates – It’s Easy!

Creating book cover mockups is really simple with this tool- there are 30+ free options. First, you decide if you want your book to be presented as a hardcover or soft cover and against any specific background (wooden table in the instance below). Then click on the image of your choice and upload the front cover of your book from your device or import the image.

screengrab of template of Placeitmockup template featuring hard cover book placed on wooden table
Moving On by Jaya Jha

There is also an option to add text and logo to the image (the image below is slightly altered from the original). The final image is a high-resolution watermark-free one

Screengrab of placeit template of girl holding a book while sitting down on a wooden floor
Moving On by Jaya Jha- A Romantic Read

Placeit- Recommended or not?

Worth trying. This tool is free and the image created is commercially usable.

 

Looking for a professional cover for your book? Check out our cover design services.

Author Resource: Use Freedom App for Distraction-free Writing Time 💂

We live in a world of excess. There is no shortage of apps and writing tools. What we really need is time to execute our projects. If we are perennially distracted by social media, how will we work-from-homers get the job done?

Freedom app is a website blocker. Since going down the internet rabbit hole is what writers end up doing, this is the app that could get them to write instead!

Five Benefits of the Freedom App

  • Focus on your goals and work towards them
  • Productivity
  • Control over what you do with your time
  • Block the internet when you are using your device
  • Choose what you want to block and schedule distraction-free times

How to Use the Freedom App- It’s Easy!

Download the app. It works on Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, and Chrome. You can do the seven-use free trial and then go for the monthly, yearly or forever plan.

Screengrab of freedom app website blocker
What does the Freedom app block?

Freedom App: Recommended or Not?

For sure.

 

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.

Author Resources: Get Your Novel Plot Perfect with Plottr 📙

Plottr is a simple and fun-to-use drag and drop story development tool developed by Ryan Zee and Cameron Sutter.

Six Ways Plottr Helps You Create a Story

  • Helps arrange chapters, plotlines, scenes and character arcs.
  • Generates an outline based on the visual story cards.
  • Helps generate character and setting templates
  • Provides interesting templates to plan your hero’s journey.
  • Exports to Word and soon to Scrivener
  • Autosaves data so you don’t have to worry about losing
How to Use Plotter- It’s Easy!

Plottr is easy to use. You need to download Plottr and install it on your PC. Once you do this there is a 30 day free trial period.

You can go to the tour project to get a sense of how to navigate around the site.

First, you go to the File tab and create a new project.

Then go to the Timeline which is the centerpiece of this app. There you can visually create color-coded plot and subplot arcs.

You can filter cards by characters, places, and tags and also flip the timeline. Different perspectives of the storyline help in crafting the overall fiction.

The interface is not complicated at all. Here we created a story plot of Cinderella and evil roomie. The interface is not complicated at all, as you can see below.

Screengrab of the Plottr interface, showing various plot points in interlinked and color-coded boxes
A quick look into Plottr

Plottr: Recommended or Not?

Yes, yes, yes! Especially for the unique templates available and ease of use.

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.

Author Resource: How to Master Words with the Free Power Thesaurus 📘

A thesaurus as you know is not exactly a dictionary but a resource for word clusters, synonyms and antonyms.  Alexander Radyushin realized that a crowdsourced thesaurus made more sense in the internet age and created the Power Thesaurus.

What Makes the Power in Power Thesaurus?

  • The synonyms are suggested and rated.
  • This free service is quick to use and comprehensive.
  • Look out for great parts of speech filters.
  • Meanings are also provided.

How to Use Power Thesaurus- It’s Easy!

Pretty simple. Go to the website Powerthesaurus.org or download the app at PlayStore and type out the word you need synonyms for.

Screengrab of synonyms of dream on power thesaurus
Synonyms at Power Thesaurus

You can also look for antonyms, idioms or phrases:

Antonyms of dream at Power Thesaurus
Antonyms at Power Thesaurus

You can upvote or downvote a synonym, antonym, etc.

Upvote or Downvote functionality
Upvote or downvote?

Power Thesaurus: Recommended or Not?

Recommended.

 

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.

Author Resource: Editing like a Pro with ProWriting Aid 👓

There are a surprising number of grammar checkers that are available for budding as well as accomplished writers. ProWritingAid, based in London, is one such virtual writing assistant.

What kind of Grammar Perks does ProWriting Provide?

ProWriting Aid does a thorough grammar and spell-check of your manuscript. You are also alerted to repetitions.

The paid version is relatively cheaper than other grammar check apps.

The readability of your writing is evaluated according to the Flesch Reading Score.

The app is Scrivener friendly.

How to Use ProWriting Aid- It’s Easy!

ProWriting Aid can be used across the board on MS Word/Outlook, Google Docs and Scrivener. You can download a desktop app or install a plugin for Mac and Windows.

The free version only looks at the first 500 words of the text.

You can upload the document or add the text to the web editor.

screengrab of text entered at ProWriting Aid
Upload text and discover how you write!

Every document is scored based on grammar, spelling and style. Comprehensive reports are provided.

Screengrab of document scores given byProwriting Aid
The overall score

You also learn about your own writing better by breaking down your manuscript based not just on word count but also on sentence and paragraph count, vocabulary and word families are also scrutinized.

Screengrab of document statistics including word count, number of sentences, paragraphs and spaces, as well as vocabulary
Know your document with ProWriting Aid
Graphical representation of sentence length and measurement of style
Measure your writing style quotient

Editing with ProWriting- Recommended or Not?

Definitely worth a try as you get to see your writing in a new light and also worth considering the paid version. Also, ProWriting Aid is the most affordable grammar assistant available, though not the fastest spellchecker.

 

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.

Author Resource: Grammarly- Get the Writer’s Touch!✒️

If you are looking for an editing app, check out Grammarly, a comprehensive algorithmic tool that removes the ugh from editing.

Five Sticky Situations When it Helps to Use Grammarly

  • Wrote an email in a hurry, it’s full of typos and you need to send it to your boss right now?
  • Are you unsure about the British/American spelling variant of a specific word?
  • Did you miss out on your list commas in some places in the document?
  • You’ve done one edit and you want to run a grammar check on the document again.
  • You are all thumbs while texting and your sentence looks like this: I will write thrmrmo instead of  I will write the memo.

These are some instances where an editing app would be a godsend.  Grammarly has a free version and Premium version.

How to Use Grammarly- It’s Easy!

Grammarly works on multiple browser extensions and across multiple platforms.

There are a couple of ways to use this:

  • Paste your article into Grammarly, type directly into the tool or import your Microsoft Word document into Grammarly.
  • Install a Grammarly plugin on MS Word (not available for MS Word in Macbooks).
  • Use the Grammarly extension for your browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge), desktop and mobile applications.
Screengrab of grammar alerts Grammarly provides shown in the right-hand side of the document
Alerts Provided by Grammarly

Here we get an overall score of 97 out of 100. Any alerts are highlighted on the side. The free version is super helpful and the paid version has extra features like hiring a writing expert and plagiarism detection.

Grammarly App: Recommended or Not?

Highly recommended but always get a manual edit of your manuscript done first.

Looking for professional help to make your manuscript error-free and take it to next level? Check out our copy editing and proofreading services.