Resources for Writers

Kobo Writing Life Community, Help & FAQ. Learn more about answers to specific questions by doing a search of the online FAQ and help documents available in the KWL community. Network and connect with other authors and publishing people in the online community forum.

Language+ Literary Translations is a team of translators, run and owned by translators. This experienced network of talented, book-loving professionals—several of whom are writers themselves—specialize in translating novels from the original language into English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch.  Books are translated in their entirety with all the verve and style of the original. Each language group follows up-to-date editorial norms to ensure readability.

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Publishers Weekly, familiarly known in the book world as PW and “the bible of the book business,” is a weekly news magazine focused on the international book publishing business. It is targeted at publishers, booksellers, librarians, literary agents, authors and the media. It offers feature articles and news on all aspects of the book business, bestsellers lists in a number of categories, and industry statistics, but its best known service is pre-publication book reviews, publishing some 8,000 per year.

 Canva Canva is a free graphic-design tool website which uses a drag-and-drop format and provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts. It is used by non-designers as well as professionals. It has a very user-friendly book cover design tool, as well as templates for all sorts of images to use of social media.

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The Bookseller has been the business magazine of the book industry since 1858; incorporating the even earlier Bent’s Literary Advertiser, established in 1802. It is one of the UK’s longest-standing magazines. The Bookseller has reported on every significant book trade event from the launch of George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss in 1860, Allen Lane’s launch of the paperback, the demise of the Net Book Agreement in 1995 and today’s Amazon-led competitive struggles. It’s based in London...

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Founded in 2012 by Orna Ross, The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is a non-profit association for author-publishers. Their global team of advisors and industry professionals offers a range of benefits, encourages ethics and excellence, advocates and campaigns for indie authors and forges relationships with the wider industry. Their mission is to foster the democratization of publishing through community, partnership and author empowerment.

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J.F.Penn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author as well as bestselling non-fiction for authors published under Joanna Penn. Joanna’s site for writers, The Creative Penn has been voted one of the Top 10 sites for writers three years running. She is a professional speaker on creative entrepreneurship, digital publishing and internet marketing, and was voted one of The Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013.

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Jane Friedman has more than 15 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media strategy for authors and publishers. Jane specializes in educating authors about the publishing industry (without drama or hype) to help them make the best long-term decisions for their careers. She is known for thought-provoking talks on the future of authorship.

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David Gaughran is an Irish writer, living in Prague who spends most of his time travelling the world, collecting stories. He runs the publishing blog Let’s Get Digital which offers great insight into the self publishing world. His work has been featured in the Huffington Post, The Sunday Times, and the Irish Times.

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Joel Friedland is an award-winning book designer, a blogger, and author. His  popular blog, The Book Designer, offers advice on book design, book marketing and discusses the future of books. He is also the creator of the new online training course, The Self-Publishing Roadmap.

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Passive Guy is an attorney, entrepreneur, former tech executive and writer. He started The Passive Voice as an anonymous blog so his snarky remarks would not show up when opposing counsel performed a Google search. He offers an interesting view on authors, self-publishing and traditional publishing.

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The Author Marketing Institute (AMI) mission is to advance the practice of author marketing for writers of any kind, in any genre, in any part of the world. They strive to provide a network of tools, training, data, learning and helpful insight and advice from today’s top selling authors and author services providers.

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Mike Shatzkin is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and a widely-acknowledged thought leader about digital change in the book publishing industry.  In his nearly 50 years in publishing, he has played almost all the roles: bookseller, author, agent, production director, sales and marketing director, and, for the past 30 years, consultant. His insights about how the industry functions are outlined in his blog, The Shatzkin Files.

Mastering Word for Fiction Writers is an online on-demand course published by Woven Red Author Services on the Teachable.com platform. Use it from any device with Word installed, anywhere, anytime, at your own pace. Joan is only a comment away on the private Facebook group. Plus, you can order an in-depth professional review of your first formatting project—the DO IT WITH ME option. The Self-Publishing Bundle consists of four courses that will take you from organized draft, to polished manuscript, and onto your fully formatted ebook and print book. KWL authors get an additional 25% off—email for your discount!.

ProWritingAid is a world-class, FREE online editing tool that goes way beyond just grammar. Even professional writers fall into the same common editorial pitfalls over and over: repetitiveness, inconsistency, writing in the passive voice, overuse of adverbs, and so many more!  We want your writing to be the best it can be and our software is continually evolving to make sure that your words are clear, polished and professional.  An editing tool won’t change your voice or tell you what to do. Its job is to flag up potential technical issues so you can reassess whether you have said it in the best way. It also won’t replace a human editor; instead, it will get your manuscript one step further along so that when your editor starts editing, she can focus on content and style rather than word choice and sentence structure.

Try it for free now, or use voucher code KOBO2018 to get 25% off your upgrade.

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Writer Beware are concerned not just with issues that affect professional authors, but with the problems and pitfalls that face aspiring writers. Their website addresses these concerns and provides warnings about literary schemes and scams, along with information about how writers can protect themselves. Their blog covers schemes and scams in real time along with publishing industry news and advice for writers. It also provides a forum for discussion.

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The KBoards is a forum that contains a great section for authors. The Writers’ Cafe forum offers advice on writing, formatting, publishing, marketing and much more. It is a great way of gauging opinions on the many changes faced for self published authors. It’s also a really good way of meeting other independent authors and getting advice directly from them about publishing on all independent platforms, not just Amazon.

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HOW DO YOU FIND THE RIGHT PUBLISHING PROFESSIONAL?  Bibliocrunch allows you to launch a project, hire a publishing professional, manage your product and pay with ease.  BiblioCrunch is for everyone who wants to publish a book. Whether you are a first time indie author or an established author you will at some point need to hire an outside professional to get your book out into the marketplace.