I used to love technology.
Not many people know this but the first money I ever earned was from a magazine publishing a computer program that I wrote when I was 14. I think I earned the princely sum of 12 quid. And 12 quid was quite a lot back in those days. My pocket money at the time was only 2 quid a week!
My job at the BBC was quite techy – I did a lot of camera work myself and even a bit of editing. And then when I left, I went onto teach music technology in the school.
But although I’ve always considered myself a bit of a techie person, as I get older, I’m finding it harder and harder to get to grips with new technology. A new mobile or a new app can have leave baffled and frustrated.
Becoming an author has meant learning a lot of new stuff. I didn’t know about tracking changes in a Word document. Essential when returning corrected manuscripts back to my editor. I didn’t know how to add captions to an Instagram reel. I had endless trouble setting up my relatively simple WordPress website and trying to set up my mailing list initially had me completely stumped.
And how have I overcome all these problems?
YouTube.
I’ve often used YouTube in the past when I didn’t know how to do something. For example, when we first got our caravan and didn’t know how everything worked. There are some great ‘how to’ writing videos on there too. I particularly like this one: Refuse to Be Done: A Digital Writing Workshop with Matt Bell.
There are thousands of useful YouTube videos out there for writers, whether designing your website, setting up your mailing list, making a reel to market your book or looking for a creative way to do your cover reveal. Here are a few you might find useful:
Build your WordPress.com Website
Mailerlite Tutorial: A Step-by-step Guide to Setting up your Account (2023)
Drag & drop email editor walkthrough – MailerLite tutorial
CapCut for PC & Mac – COMPLETE CapCut Video Editing Tutorial
Creating VIDEOS with Canva | The Ultimate Guide [2023]
Paint.net: Learning the Basics
How to make an image to tease a book cover reveal in Canva (this is by fellow RNA member and romantic novelist, Rhoda Baxter, and she has loads more useful videos on her YouTube channel).
Although this isn’t YouTube, I also wanted to mention the incredibly useful website of author, Charlotte Duckworth. As well as writing books, she designs websites for authors, but she also has a lot of very useful free resources on her site, and she’ll be launching a course soon about building your own website. Sign up to her mailing list to find out more.
And finally, if you’d like to see the sorts of things I used to make before I became an author, here’s one of my YouTube videos: an interview I directed with the amazing writer, Maya Angelou.
