To build an author career, you need to start growing a newsletter and getting an email list. My go-to is Mailerlite. It is free up to 2,000 subscribers and reasonably priced after that. It has amazing drag-and-drop features, all the apps and special tools are included such as polls or voting or quizzes and surveys, and I love the tool's simplicity.

Another one I have not used but that comes highly recommended is AuthorEmail. It is built specifically for authors.

I also use BriteVerify when I get a giveaway list to weed out spam and inactive accounts, so I don't tank my email statistics with the email providers.

Once you scale your readership and/or start selling directly to your readers AND you use Shopify, Klaviyo is the go-to because it aligns with your Shopify store and allows you to gain those insights. I wouldn't get rid of my Mailerlite because you will have readers on MailerLite who will never buy anything FROM you - they are following your journey as an author and will only ever buy from book retailers. Klaviyo is strictly for readers who will buy FROM you (which is excellent because Klaviyo is super pricey).

You need a website. 

In the past, I used GoDaddy Websites+Marketing for my website because I've had it since 2014. I really liked the interface and just everything I could customize. It wasn't expensive either; however, I had to pay a lot to turn it into an e-commerce site, so I decided to move platforms when I started selling my books directly to my readers off of my website.

I had heard good things about Nrdly, and Nrdly was made and designed specifically for authors.

I tried Nrdly in December 2022, but WordPress and I just didn't get along. My author friend has used Nrdly for years, and its a great service for the money. She pays for someone at Nrdly to maintain her website, so she never experienced the joys of WordPress.

I've now migrated to Shopify to scale my readership, but I wouldn't go to Shopify until you have a backlist of which to bundle and sell or if you want to sell something to your audience. Other options for selling directly are PayHip, Gumroad, ThriveCart/SamCart, etc. I also have ThriveCart which I bought during a liftetime subscription. Right now, Shopify has disallowed ThriveCart and SamCart to integrate with it, but I plan on using ThriveCart for my affiliate sales so I don't have to pay for a monthly subscription through Shopify. Its in the works, so I will update once I get there. AND yes, they all work with BookFunnel digital book delivery service.

I use PayHip to host my site for authors, so it doesn't interfere with my Facebook pixel for my readers. I also use PayHip as my backup store in case Shopify shuts down my store for whatever reason. It's completely free - they only take 5% of transactions and if you want them to take less then you can pay a monthly fee. I can't say enough about PayHip!

If you are sticking with Amazon, first go with with the BookReport Chrome add-in since it's free to track your sales. Once you make $1000 a month, you will have to start paying for it. Once you start having to pay for a revenue tracking service, if you are going to stick with Amazon, Author Helper Suite (formerly Readerlinks) is amazing for tracking sales, ad spend ROI, book links, etc. The downside is you must manually import your other sales and expenses. I used this software for a good chunk of time before I went wide and then it became too cumbersome to put in my royalties at other retailers and my own store.

I use Manager.io to maintain my financial, tax, and accounting books. The desktop version is free, which is amazing, and it's completely customizable. The downside is that I have to manually input everything, which takes about half an hour every month.

If you are going wide and/or selling direct, ScribeCount is uhh-mazing and they are constantly adding feeds for automated dashboard reporting including automated feeds from ACX, Findaway, Draft2Digital, Apple, Google, B&N, Amazon, BookFunnel, and now Shopify. There is almost no manual entry needed which for a busy author is awesome and why I made the switch. The link is a referral link so I get a small commission at no cost to you if you signup using my link. :) Because I don't want to share a breakdown of my revenues here, I am using the homepage screenshot to show you what it looks like. 

I use HeroPost for my social media scheduling. I bought a lifetime access license for really cheap during a Black Friday sale, and it's been good for the price. The only platform it does not integrate with at this time on my plan is TikTok.

Trello is an amazing productivity tool that tracks to-do lists and obligations. It's free, and I used it so much that I needed a tool that helped me organize all of my to-do's a little more, so I migrated to ClickUp. I will say I still use Trello for my personal life, I'd be so unorganized without it. If you are wanting an easy and simple organization tool with a Kanban type flow to it or even organize by weeks or months instead of by status, Trello is it!

I started using ClickUp because I needed more features than a simple Kanban board like Trello offers. The basic plan is still free, and you can also import your Trello boards into ClickUp, so I didn't lose any work.

I have whiteboards, automation workflows, and a dashboard, which is nice. It essentially uses a Trello-type input as a database, and you can customize the information you want to see on the dashboard. It is more involved, obviously, so if you want to keep it simple, I'd go with Trello.

Lastly, because I don't have the best handwriting, I recently asked MySign Studio to have a professional develop a really cool signature with a training guide so I could sign my books. I modified it to fit what I could write, but you can see what it looks like on this TikTok.

I worked with a dear friend who started a design company a few years ago to create my publishing company's logo and it's been featured on all of my new books and special editions. I just love it. I asked for a symbol that was indicative of my writing: a story within a story with overlapping themes of how choices made in one generation affect the next and the next. I thought she did a great job. You should totally check her out!

I would also highly recommend setting up a Business PayPal account—it will save you so much time down the road. It's free.

You can also convert your personal account to a business account for free.

you need an ad service to reach readers. I use Amazon Advertising (AMS), Meta, Pinterest, TikTok, and BookBub, so you'll need to create business accounts on the platforms you use to advertise and probably take some free classes or paid classes to figure out how to run them effectively. Kindlepreneur has a free class on AMS ad setup and Bryan Cohen has a free 5-day challenge he does twice a year on AMS ads as well. Both are good and both have helped my AMS ads start off on the right foot.

Reviews make or break a book—even bad reviews. But low reviews usually equals low sales. I'm a member of Revvue, where authors and readers can review books and make sure they never get their reviewers' books, so everyone stays compliant with book retailers' (primarily Amazon) Terms & Conditions.. Sign-up if you are interested. It is 100% free for all the features you need! There is an option to go pro, if you so desire. My referral link is below.