Thanks to Frances Caballo for including my:

Best Tools of the Self-Publishing Trade: Running An Author Business from Alliance of Independent Authors in her Indie Author Weekly Update:

You don’t have to spend a fortune to access all the tools you need for your author business. Many companies offer free tools aimed at entrepreneurs just starting out, with scalable pricing plans offering more features as your business needs expand.

Some of the software developers who only have a paid version, offer a free trail period to allow users to test drive their offering before committing to a purchase.

Resources and Tools are broken out by writing and self-publishing category and include a link to company websites so that you can find out more about these writing and author tools our ALLi members have recommended.

I haven’t included pricing in this post, but there is a link to every website mentioned so that you can do your own research on the tools that interest you.

If there’s an author tool you swear by, and couldn’t live without, please let us know about it in the comments section.

Who is Frances Caballo?

Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for her free email course.