Resources for Writers

We’ve put together this list of ebooks, courses and other resources for writers, so you can find one — or several! — that’s the best fit for you.

Blogging

• Start a Blog That Matters by Corbett Barr: Whether your goal is to build a business around your blog or just to have fun (or both), this course will build a great foundation for your blog. The course is now part of Fizzle. Read our review.

• Write Like Freddy by Danny Iny: A course that will teach you how to write great posts, get them published anywhere you want, and benefit from traffic, reputation and sales. Read our review.

• 31 Days to Build a Better Blog by Darren Rowse: An ebook designed to help you revitalize your blog. One step at a time, it will transform your blog into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of. Read our review.

• ProBlogger’s Guide to Your First Week of Blogging by Darren Rowse: An ebook that will guide you, day by day, through your first week of blogging so you can make the most of those critical first few days. Read our review.

• ProBlogger’s Guide to Blogging for Your Business by Mark Hayward: An ebook that will guide you through creating a successful online presence for your business.

• ProBlogger’s The Blogger’s Guide to Online Marketing by Darren Rowse: A comprehensive, 31 chapter blueprint for your blog’s ongoing profitability – right from the ground up.

• Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Course by Kristi Hines: This course will take you through dozens of different strategies to successfully promote your blog posts, helping you gain the exposure you need to get the results you want. Read our review.

• Beyond Bricks and Mortar by James Chartrand: Discover how to blog for business with profitable techniques and easy, successful strategies that reach out to the web and bring home real-world results – more customers, more sales and more income.

• Blog Wise: How to Do More with Less by Darren Rowse: If you are juggling work, family, social life and trying to keep your blog going – this ebook will show you how the pros make every minute count.
• Simple SEO by Nathalie Lussier: By following the super simple SEO tips in this video training, you can supercharge your site’s rank in the search engines in only 10 minutes a day. (Now part of Heartquarters Insider.) Read our review.

• Guest Blogging Course by Jon Morrow: Learn how to create and pitch guest posts to popular blogs in your niche, then leverage value from that exposure. Read our review.

Making a Living Writing

• Write for the Web by James Chartrand: An eguide that teaches you about what you need to set yourself up as a freelance writer so you can start your business, pitch for writing jobs, earn clients and succeed – without the hard knocks. Read our review.

• You Are a Writer: So Start Acting Like One by Jeff Goins: An ebook in which Jeff shares his journey of becoming a professional writer and the lessons he learned along the way. Read our review.

• The Writer’s Studio by Jeff Goins: An hour-long audio program in which Jeff shares the essentials of starting a career as a writer, in four professionally-recorded Q&A sessions.

• Turn Your Side Hustle Into a Full-Time Job by Alexis Grant: Explains how Alexis turned her side business into a full income, with an emphasis on making money from ebooks and growing a blog community you can monetize. Read our review.

• Paid to Blog by Tom Ewer: This comprehensive guide and course will teach you everything you need to know to make $100+ per hour from freelance blogging. Read our review.

• Social Media for Writers by Alexis Grant: A course that will teach you to use social media strategically to cultivate REAL-LIFE connections that will help you get where you want to be. Read our review.

• Brandgasm 101 by Ash Ambirge & Jamie Varon: A DIY design & copywriting course for online business owners and bloggers that will teach you to design like a professional, write magnetic copy, and make your marketing materials sell. Read our review.

• The Freelance Blogger’s Client Hunting Masterclass by Sophie Lizard: An online course that will teach you EXACTLY how to find and win high-paying clients, with real-life examples from a successful freelance blogging business. Read our review.

• The Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing by Chris Guillebeau: While it’s easy to start a freelance writing business, it’s much harder to actually run one. This guide will help your business thrive — not just survive. Read our review.

• Find Your Freelance Writing Niches: Make More Money for Less Work by John Soares: If you’re not satisfied with your income from freelance writing, you need to start specializing. This ebook will show you why and how. Read our review.

• Business For Authors. How To Be An Author Entrepreneur by Joanna Penn: Ready to make a living as an author? Here’s how to manage the business side of your writing habit.

• Freelance Writer’s Pitch Clinic by Carol Tice and Linda Formichelli: Do you send off pitch letters and get no response? Never send queries because you feel you don’t know how? Carol Tice and Linda Formichelli will teach you how pitch to editors and get the gigs you want.

Creating & Selling Ebooks

• How to Start Publishing for Kindle by Jeff Goins: A 50-minute audio course in which Jeff tells you everything you need to know to create an eBook, upload it to Kindle, and promote it on Amazon.

• Write Your Manifesto by Dana Sitar: A course that will teach you how to define your audience and clarify your Big Idea to draft the manuscript for your ebook. Read our review.

• Edit + Polish Your Manuscript by Dana Sitar: A course that will help you understand the levels of editing, build your team, and polish your manuscript for publishing.

• Kindle Kids Mastery by Jon Bard and Laura Backes Bard: This course guides children’s authors step by step through publishing illustrated ebooks using Amazon’s Kindle Kids’ Book Creator tool.

• Author Marketing Club by Jim Krukal: Want to sell more books? With tools that help with everything from formatting your Amazon description to finding more reviewers, Author Marketing Club can help you share your book with more readers.

• Learn Scrivener Fast by Joseph Michael: New to the popular writing program? Get up to speed quickly and learn how to make the most of Scrivener with this course.

• Kindle Launch Plan: $1400 in 30 Days & an Amazon Bestseller by Nick Loper: A step-by-step guide to writing, editing, publishing and marketing your Kindle ebook, based on strategies that creator Nick Loper used to earn $1,400 in his book’s first month on Amazon.

Traditional Publishing

• Unconventional Guide to Publishing by Chris Guillebeau: The plan you need to finally share your book with the world. This resource will help you make this your year of becoming an author. Read our review.

• Your Big Beautiful Book Plan by Danielle LaPorte & Linda Sivertsen: How to create a book proposal that will make you a visionary writer, a stronger business person and land you a book deal. Read our review.
• Book Design Templates by Joel Friedlander & Tracy R. Atkins: These ready-to-use templates for Microsoft Word are a reasonably-priced alternative to the high cost of professional book composition. Available for both print and ebooks.

• Media Kit & Press Release Templates by Joel Friedlander & Joan Stewart: These ready-to-use templates will help you create a Media Kit that wows journalists, bloggers, reviewers, agents, audience members, buyers—even big publishers.

Craft of Writing

• Tribe Writers by Jeff Goins: A course that helps you discover your voice and build a platform that gets you published.

• The Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers by Darren Rowse: An ebook providing a list of recommendations to follow, as well as pitfalls to avoid, as you write that next blog post. Read our review.

• How to Create Believable Characters by James Chartrand: Discover character creation techniques and crucial exercises in this guide to creating characters that seem real all on their own.
• Damn Fine Words by James Chartrand: An online writing course for entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers – and yes, even writers – who need to learn how to create the copy and content their business demands, quickly and stress free.

• Writing for the Web by Will Moyer: An ebook that explains how to present content in a digital format — giving you tools and processes to help you write better. Read our review.

Careers & Entrepreneurship

• Empire Building Kit by Chris Guillebeau: How to build a meaningful lifestyle business in one year by doing one thing every day.
• Make Sh*t Happen by Jenny Blake: A comprehensive 10-week course jam-packed with material, structure and support to help you make significant, sustainable progress on something that matters to you.

• Live Off Your Passion by Scott Dinsmore: The first course of its kind to give you the exact repeatable process and proven framework for finding your passions, choosing the most lucrative option and building a career around doing work that genuinely excites you. Read our review.

• The Bootstrapper Guild by Tyler Tervooren: An ecourse that will help you launch your microbusiness the *right* way in just 30 days.
• Renaissance Business by Emilie Wapnick: Learn to turn all of your interests into one business. Use your multipotentiality so that instead of it being an obstacle to income, it becomes fuel for income.
• The Confusion to Clarity E-Guide by Therese Schwenkler: Learn to navigate your way through life using a proven process and to consciously, deliberately evolve your way into your truest career and life path. Read our review.

• Become a Twitter Power User by Alexis Grant: A course that will teach you to use Twitter strategically to meet influential people and reach your big career goals.

• Get Unstuck Action Program by Laura Leigh Clarke: This course will show you EXACTLY how to get traction on your projects, by getting aligned with your natural talents, doing what you love, and getting an ACTION plan in just four weeks.

• Build Your Online Business by Natalie Sisson: In this easy-to-digest guide, you’ll learn what it takes to build your own highly-profitable online business doing what you love, what you’re already good at and what people will pay you for.

• Working on the Road by Nora Dunn: You’ve heard the stories about creating a location-independent career — and now it’s your turn. Master the skills to work from anywhere and take your career abroad.

Finances & Legal Matters

• The Mint Manual by Tim Murphy: An eguide that’s your shortcut to mastering and saving money with Mint.com.
• Unconventional Guide to Law & Order by Chris Guillebeau: Take the fear out of running your own business with this clear and comprehensive guide that covers all the topics that keep you awake at night: contracts, intellectual property rights, business incorporation, liability and taxes.

Tools & Apps

• Harvest: This time-tracking software provides an easy way to measure the time you spend on each project, record expenses and generate invoices. Test it out in a free 30-day trial.
• Freshbooks: This cloud accounting service makes it simple to track your time, manage expenses and create invoices. Try Freshbooks free for 30 days.
• MailChimp: MailChimp helps you create, send and track email newsletters. Customize your signup form and track analytics to learn about your readers and improve your content and subject lines.
• Paymo: The online services helps you manage your projects, from tracking time to creating invoices.
• RescueTime: RescueTime runs in the background and tracks the time you spend on each app and website — giving you an accurate, detailed picture of how you use your time.
• Scrivener: Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. It’s available for both Windows and Mac users.