Tools I Use as an Author on My Mac

by Kevin Cullis

I am an avid PC user, which you can tell from my "Tools I Use" post here. However, I'm so glad that Kevin has offered to share his expertise on tools for Mac users. Enjoy!

FREE

Gmail - I use Gmail for most of my daily email, but I reserve special email addresses for businesses and customers.

iLife - Apple free multimedias suite, GarageBand which does music and audio files, such as for podcasting. iMovie to do movies for things as book trailers. iPhoto to manage you digital photos and albums and book cover or interior images. iDVD to make DVD of your digital files. http://www.apple.com/ilife/

WordPress - blogging software and tons of free plugins.

TextEdit - FREE Mac text editor that can do most anything.

TextWrangler - The next level above TextEdit that allows you to clean up text for various reasons. If you are familiar with Regular Expressions, this will get you to clean up your text more than TextEdit. http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

QuickTime Pro + GarageBand/iMovie - I use Quicktime Pro to record my screen video of what's happening on my Mac and GarageBand/iMovie to record my audio/video at the same time. I then combine both into iMovie for a great little online video. Each come FREE with each Mac. Just make sure you have a good microphone for the audio part.

Dropbox - I have multiple online accounts, this is my first one. The reason? In case something happens to one or the other accounts. http://www.dropbox.com/

ZumoDrive - Online storage, but I like the automatic updates to all files that are loaded into a file folder. Just be careful that if you're working on a file that you don't place it into the "Saved" folder until you're done with it as each CMD + S saves and it it automatically uploads the saved file, each time it is saved. http://zumo.cc/dr/dir/10jdMjMwOG

PDF Conversion - This is built into every Mac under Print > Save to PDF. You can also "Save to Postscript" in some case when dealing with some PDF issues.

Hootsuite - Great for watching all of my social media accounts.

HTML editor - I use WordPress as my blog site, so I use the browser editor and does all I need.

ECWID - Powered by Amazon Web Services eCommerce engine, I'm just getting started with this, but looks MAAAVELOUS for startups. It has a number of plugins for various web sites and great for setting up your own online store. It was recommended to me and I'm just about to start using it so I can track all of my ebook sales. http://www.ecwid.com/ I'll be using it for all of my digital products going forward as I get things set up.

Smashwords - for affiliate links for selling my Ebooks, but am looking elsewhere to handle this, maybe EDWID can do it, but have not gotten to that point yet. While it is free to use, they take a transaction fee for each download, that's how you pay for it and depending on where your Ebook is sold depends on the commission you'll get. https://www.smashwords.com/

Avery templates - I use Avery templates for MS word for CD/DVD covers and use iWork Pages to make any labels that I see fit.

Square - While a FREE iPhone/iPad credit card application, it takes a transaction fee. Great for selling books on the go. https://squareup.com/ If my transactions get too big, I look for another route to go, but for now, it's a great setup for beginning retail selling.

FileZilla - FREE FTP software that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

MailChimp - email autoresponder for beginners. Has a WordPress plugin to use. http://mailchimp.com/

One Time

iWork - It includes Pages, page layout and word processing (read book design here as well), Numbers for spreadsheet, and Keynote for presentations. http://www.apple.com/iwork/

While I could have used Microsoft Word, I choose to see if I could write my book completely in Pages. Turns out, I was able to do the interior AND the book cover in Pages. I showed it to a professional editor in Denver and she gave me a B+ on my design. If a $79 Apple suite can get it done, so can the rest of Apple's software.

Lineform - Illustration program similar to Adobe's Illustrator, but much cheaper for beginning Mac users. I use Pages to do most of my work until I need a heavier lifter such as Lineform.

Pixelmator - Photoshop like program that's less expensive. http://www.pixelmator.com/

Transmit - FTP software for the Mac if you don't want to use FileZilla. http://www.panic.com/transmit/

Recurring (Monthly or Yearly)

Bluehost - provides WordPress hosting for my blog. http://www.bluehost.com/. I pay a yearly fee.


As future expansion comes with more sales I'll look into each new solution for my Mac as I get to it.


http://www.MacStartup.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kcullis

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