A big part of what we do around here at WWW of course involves RESEARCH, especially for our Winner Circle content. Offering up the best author marketing tools involves plenty of time researching book clubs, book review sites, indie bookstores, finding the newest, coolest conferences and book festival and contests (oh my). It’s a continuous treasure hunt, and it’s exciting when we “strike gold” and unearth the latest, coolest contact that’s going to be useful to authors!

Then there’s the research we need to do just to keep up with all the new tech and daily changes to what pundits call the “digital disruption” of publishing (mostly a fancy term for uh-oh, we’d better start paying attention). Plus, there’s always new info and insights to be had about author marketing, social media, publicity tricks, in other words, all the stuff we blog about.

The windup is — we subscribe to a LOT of interesting sites and end up with a LOT of interesting e-books and white papers, some of which you may want to reach for yourselves.

So here’s the plan: Whenever one of our blogging days happens on Friday (we blog on “odd” days, so any Friday that’s odd vs. even), we’ll offer up our latest, most interesting options for you to pursue and download (always free) to your own resource library.

Let’s get started!

Social Media Marketing & PR Cheat Sheet: From Vocus, which social media tactics are essential? The cheat sheets (12 pages in all) show you the tips and tricks for Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and seven other social networkFacebook • Twitter • LinkedIn • Google+ • YouTube • Flickr • Pinterest • Vine • Instagram • Snapchat

Funds For Writers: From the always on-top-of-it and helpful C. Hope Clark, this nifty e-handout about author funding streams from Clark’s Authorpreneurship panel at PubSmart 2014 includes a wealth of resources and sites for the freelancer in you. And if you haven’t subscribed to their cool newsletter yet, CLICK HERE to do that, too!

Seven Critical Considerations Before Self-Publishing: By Randy Kuckuck, CEO/Publisher at PublishNext. A decent overview in 36 pages of considerations, including Expectations, Finances, Editorial, Marketing, Design, Metadata, and Publishing Paths.

Have a resource to share with fellow writers? Please do share it with your comment below!