A Year In Review

 

Happy New Year!

We completed another fifty-two weeks with the blog. I want to thank everyone who supported my endeavor. Most weeks, I managed to get you some information. I will continue next year with more apps and helpful tips. Hopefully, everyone found something helpful.

My initial idea for the blog included teaching classes about these apps to author groups. Covid stopped that plan cold. With fingers crossed, I’m hoping that in 2022, I can begin teaching and, of course, blog all the apps you can stand.

Today, I’m reviewing the 2021 blog. The apps break down into these categories: Productivity, Organization, Marketing, and Self-Care. Each item links back to the How-To post on my blog.

Productivity

• Vellum—A book formatting app for Mac only. It’s a powerful program that will get your books ready for publishing quickly.
• Scrivener—These posts discussed the huge update for the writing app, including a fantastic new template for National Novel Writing Month.

Organization

• Evernote—This note-card app is more than somewhere to jot quick thoughts. It includes complex ways to make schedules, deadlines, and clip webpages. It’s like Google Keep, with more bells and whistles.
• AirTable—This database app is a fantastic way to organize all your projects. You can outline a book, create a marketing plan, or fill in a complete story bible.
• OneNote—The app is part of the Microsoft Office Suite and works as a filing system. It’s great for keeping notes on all your projects, including story bibles.
• Notion—This app is a colorful, graphic project manager to help keep all your ducks in a row. It has a wide variety of templates to help you organize all sorts of information.

Marketing

• Title Generators—This series of posts includes several sites that generate book titles and more. It’s great for authors who get stuck (like me).  
• Portent 
• Adazing and Fantasy Name Generator 
• Reedsy, Cool Generator, and Imagine Forest

• Link Apps—This series of posts includes ways to shorten those pesky buy or social media links into chewable bits.  
• Linktree 
• Books2Read  
• Bitly
• Mail Chimp—One of several services to help authors create a distribute newsletters.
• Social Media—We covered many social media sites last summer, including  
• Facebook  
• Twitter
  
• TweetDeck
  
• Instagram 
  
• Pinterest 
  
• TikTok 
  
• Discord  
• Going Live on social media.
• Book Brush—This app is a graphic generator for authors. You can create ads, social media posts, and even book covers.

Self-Care

• HeadSpace—This app uses guided meditation, tracks good habits, and advice on healthy lifestyle choices.

I can see I need to step up the self-care and productivity apps for next year. Let me know if there’s an app you’d like me to review. Or better yet, contact me about guest posting about your favorite app. Email me at ginnyfrost@ginnyfrost.com

Here’s to a productive 2022!