Awesome Time-Saving Tools for Authors

As self-publishers, we have a lot to do every day to make sure our business is running smoothly. Every minute you save is useful–but remember, during tough times like these, it’s always a good idea to come to the desk refreshed and with a positive mental attitude.

So in this article, we’ll look at five tools you can use to save time in your self-publishing business.

RescueTime

If you want to save time, you need to know how much time you’re wasting. This is where RescueTime comes in. RescueTime keeps track of the websites you’re using and how often you’re using them–down to the minute. Basically, it keeps you accountable for the time you spend working. It’s terrifying knowing just how much time you’re wasting, but it’s a vital tool if you want to be more productive.

RescueTime operates in the background without you having to do any extra work. After you set up your account and details, the app will do the rest. RescueTime even categorizes the websites you use, so you can get a quick rundown of what you spend your time on.

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RescueTime has two different pricing tiers. The first is a free version which has quite a lot to offer:

Automatically track time on sites and in apps (limited to 3 months of historical data)
Set goals and see your progress in a weekly report
Use on all platforms (desktop, mobile, browser)

If you’re just getting started, the free version has more than enough. Or, you can upgrade at $6 a month, and with that, you’ll get added features:

A distraction blocker that you can set while you’re working.
Track the hours you spend offline.
Real-time alerts.
Highlights every day as opposed to every week.
You can set your work hours. For example, if you work 8:00 am to 5:00 pm you can only track time during those hours–that way, catching up on the latest Netflix documentary won’t skew your numbers.
Unlimited historical data.

If you’re serious about saving time and being more productive while on your computer, then you need to try RescueTime out, even for a week, to see where your time is going.

ProWritingAid

As writers, we often fall into two categories with editing: We either give it a quick once-over and hit publish or we spend way too much time editing our work and trying to make it read perfectly.

Both editing mindsets have their downsides, but editing at length can be pretty time-consuming. Short of hiring an editor, the best thing you can do to save time editing your work is to use ProWritingAid, an awesome piece of editing software.

When it comes to proofreading apps, ProWritingAid has two main advantages: the number of recommendations it gives you, and awesome integrations.

Not only does it have the basics like a web-processor, ProWritingAid also offers full integration with Google Docs and even Scrivener–which is a huge plus. The web editor pops up over your document and makes changes in real-time.

As for the edits and checks that you can do, ProWritingAid is amazing. While most editing tools offer basic spelling, grammar, and some style suggestions, ProWritingAid lets you check for a range of things like overused words, dialogue errors, sticky sentences, and more.

While the design and usability may not be as flashy as alternatives, using ProWritingAid will save you a bunch of time. With it, you can get a great initial edit of your novel finished in a fraction of the time it would usually take.

Publisher Rocket

If you’re ever looked at marketing for your books, you’re probably familiar with the fact that you need keywords to create effective ads and even to simply upload your book to your KDP dashboard.

While keywords are vital for a successful book marketing campaign, finding keywords manually can take days. And even then, there is no guarantee that what you find is useful. With manual keyword research, you’re doing a lot of guesswork to find out how popular and competitive specific keywords are.

It’s because of this that I created Publisher Rocket.

Rather than spend hours writing Amazon’s suggested searches down, with Rocket, all you have to do is type in a seed keyword (or any ideas you have) and the tool does the rest. Basically, Rocket finds potential keywords by using Amazon’s own data. Rocket also has searches for competitors and the search volume for a given keyword on Amazon per month. You’ll also get a ‘competitive score’ which is a 0-100 rating based on the competition for that keyword–the lower the rating, the better.

You can look into the competition for your potential keywords and check out what books you’ll be up against. You can see if a particular book is using the keyword in the title or subtitle, and you can even see an estimate of how many sales they’re making per month.

I also love being able to check out the book cover on Rocket, as you can do some market research on what makes a successful cover in a genre.

Publisher Rocket also helps save time with category selection. Rather than click through the kindle store for hours seeing what category you can target with your book, Rocket lays it all out for you.

Finally, Rocket also saves you a bunch of time looking for AMS keywords. If you’d like to know more about choosing AMS keywords (which you can do with or without Publisher Rocket), check out my free Amazon Advertising course.

StoryOrigin

As an indie author, you need to be a great marketer as well as a writer. Otherwise, nobody will ever see your books!

Finding other authors to cross-promote with is a great strategy to market your books on a budget–but it’s also a huge time-suck. It can take forever to find other authors to work with. Luckily Story Origin has made that a lot easier. The tool has plenty of features, but my favorites are the ones that help you connect with other authors:

Newsletter Swaps: Easily find other authors in your genre and swap shoutouts in one another’s newsletters.
Group Promotions: Work with a bunch of different authors to all promote a landing page that has everyone’s books on it.

So far, there are over 300,000 members, so you’ll find many people to work with. I particularly like how you need to include email list data for swaps. With just a few clicks, you might have free access to a list of nearly 7,000 readers.

Along with the cross-promotion opportunities, there are a range of other functions that will save you time.

Review Copies
Universal Book Links
Reader Magnets
Audiobook Promo Codes
Newsletter Exclusives

To top it all off, Story Origin is free for the time being too.

Final Thoughts

We all get the same twenty-four hours every day. What separates us is how we use them. These time-saving tools can help you get more done throughout your day, so you can reach your self-publishing goals faster.

Pick one and give it a try.

Cheers!

Photo by Malvestida Magazine on Unsplash

Dave Chesson is the creator of Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching advanced book Marketing which even Amazon KDP acknowledge as one of the best by telling users to “Gain insight from Kindlepreneur on how you can optimize marketing for your books.”