Authors' Tools I Use Every Day

Stealthy. Like a ninja.

As my backlist has really taken off, I'm basically running a medium-sized business in my kitchen these days. Designing promo art, running ads, keeping up with my blogger friends. It's a lot of work. I get a lot of questions about what tools I use to steer the ship. In case you're curious, here goes!

I use MailChimp because their free-for-the-first-2000-members sucked me in, like it does everyone else. But now I stick with this tool because they've integrated it with all my other services. So I have no plans to leave even though I'm paying for it. And the interface is clean and easy. Also? The other decent emailers aren't much cheaper. My number one tool is Squarespace! In fact, I now design websites for other authors in Squarespace because I've created some very special tools that make an author's life easier. The ecommerce features rock, and the 24/7 customer service is a lifesaver.For art I use three tools, depending on what I'm doing. I keep the paid version of PicMonkey because I really like their filters. They're intuitive. I hate the fact that you can't store works in progress there, so I'd like to cut the cord. But... ooh, pretty!I've gotten over my issues with Canva simply because I like the way I can go back and edit stuff. For any repetitive art-making, it's handy. I have a version of Photoshop Elements which set me back only $60 and is invaluable for putting text on art that really matters. Like book covers!I use Insightly CRM software to keep track of which bloggers have worked with me in the past. To be honest, I don't love Insightly. The syncing and mail functions are just meh. But Google contacts is just not robust enough to track relationships, so I needed something better.Booktrakr sends me an email every morning telling me how many copies I sold the previous day at Amazon, B&N, Kobo and iBooks. It doesn't handle D2D, unfortunately. And there are bugs, but it's still a free Beta so I expect that.My ebooks are formatted in the new version of Vellum, which I love. I don't expect to regret paying for the full version.My works in progress are in Scrivener, which I could not live without.Because Facebook Messenger's TOS offends me, I use a buggy third-party app called Friendly.I love Tweetdeck as a chrome plugin.  I use Hootsuite to schedule posts to groups and Latergram.me to schedule Instagram posts.

That's a lot of tools! Yikes. What are your faves?