Despite the lack of structure, I enjoyed Wild Mind perhaps more than Writing Down the Bones. I read both books at once, and through them I’ve been brought back into my everyday writing practice, and hold a greater understanding that the writing process is a state of mind and way of living for me.

The reminder was because I have a copy of the followup books for writers written by this author. Unfortunately, I read them around the wrong way, reading Writing Down the Bones (originally published 1986) then Thunder and Lightning (published 2001) and finally Wild Mind (published 1990, as the first follow-up to Writing Down the Bones).

In a way, I’m glad I mixed the order up. Writing Down the Bones, as per it’s deserved and respected reputation (making it onto one of the ‘must-reads’ book lists for many writers), re-introduced a love of writing to me, and introduced an acceptance of bestowing a simple writing practice into my everyday. More on that below.

But I didn’t particularly enjoy my accidental follow-up – Thunder and Lightning. That book is designed to provide further tips for novel writers, but for me, wandered around too much. I require more structure than that provided in the approach in this book. After finishing Thunder and Lightning, I was left confused, although acknowledge I learnt much more of Natalie Goldberg’s life story after she first published Bones.

I moved onto Wild Mind, and returned to my own conscious writing. As a quickly published follow-up to Bones, the author wrote Wild Mind whilst in the midst of writing her own novel, “Banana Rose”. Through this, she uses examples from her own writing process (and confusion over things like what is plot) to really pinpoint the writing mind, particularly that wild mind that many new writers possess. There are a large quantity of short sections or chapters in this book, which can be delved into randomly or followed sequentially. Some will always be more relevant to the reader than others. And it’s worth – as with Writing Down the Bones – to return to Wild Mind at a later date, where you may well pick up something new again.

Much of what can be found in these chapters are examples and (sometimes random) thoughts out of the author’s life. Many of these thoughts are inspiring, motivational and sometimes very insightful. What particularly impressed me with Wild Mind is the end pages to many of the chapters – ‘Try This’ provides challenges or exercises to try in our writing practice.

Wild Mind Takeaways

Goldberg asks us to think about who we are writing for. Not long ago my normal response would have been that I write for myself. Through writing practice, I can see now how false this has become. I’m now writing for many other people other than myself. I’m practising writing to get to know my own writing better, and to eventually write and have published some of my writing. I’m writing for my daughter also – to show her that I’m not just a mother sitting at home, that I work at my writing. And to instil that work ethic into her also.

The lack of structure of the book – there is no links between one short chapter and the next – can sometimes put off some writers. As can some of the Zen stories, and name-dropping of writers who are friends of Goldberg. Much of Goldberg’s life is found within her books, showing perfectly the state of mind many writers live through. This wild mind metaphor works for me, as does writing around it – as a process, rather than product.

I actually enjoyed Wild Mind more than it’s predecessor, Writing Down the Bones, but as I read both together, tend to see both books as part of the overall picture.

Although the books may not appeal to all writers, there are some points which are really worth documenting and keeping to yourself. Alongside the guilt-free writing practice, and some interesting try this exercises in Wild Mind, the below are my take-aways.

Natalie Goldberg  gives four things you must do in order to be a writer and do writing:

1. keep your hand moving;
2. lose control;
3. be specific; and
4. don’t think.

Lastly,  her advice to would-be writers: “If you want to write, write. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait” (p. 45).

Wild Mind – Living the Writer’s Life

All of Natalie Goldberg’s books are available now as ebooks. My particular copy came via NetGalley’s Public Catalog, and Open Road Media Publishing. I have since purchased Writing Down the Bones, Wild Mind and Thunder and Lightning as e-books via Amazon’s Kindle store, and read all three via my iPAD.

You can learn more about Natalie Goldberg and purchase Wild Mind from the following video and in the following links you will find a brand new article written by Natalie on writing.

Links:

• http://www.facebook.com/NatalieGoldbergWriter?sk=app_205521576149308

• http://www.scribd.com/doc/60954971/How-to-Flourish-in-Your-Writing-Plus-Three-Writing-Prompts-by-Natalie-Goldberg-Wild-Mind-Writing-Down-the-Bones-Thunder-and-Lightning

• My Goodreads Review of Wild Mind

Transition from living your “oughtabiography” to your “artobiography”, so you can do more of what you love, more of the time! Sign up for a free class here!

Discover your true life story! Free, inspiring “Live Your ARTobiography” class is happening Thursday, Sept 8…sign up here!

Consider Part 6 of this series the addendum – here I’ll be listing alternatives to the apps I’ve recommended in the previous posts plus some additional apps worth taking a look at. All will be added to the summary table of apps found in Part 5.

File Sharing and Syncing

Also see Part 2 of this series for my favourite syncing App.

SugarSync (free)

Sugarsync is a synching service similar to Dropbox, and if you’re looking for an alternative with more storage, then consider this one. Dropbox is better supported by compatible apps which provide internal selection through to sync via DP, but there are some which are beginning to utilise Sugarsync also.

With Sugarsync, syncing takes place across PCs, netbooks, and multiple mobile devices, just as with Dropbox. Access your high resolution data (good for images, obviously) via the GB’s available at SugarSync. Currently this service is providing a 30 day free trial which gets you 30GB of storage, and after the free month it will cost $5 per month or $50.00 per year. Larger GBs are also available on subscription. Although the service is subscription based, the iPAD app to access this is free.

Link: SugarSync website and SugarSync App

Notes

Also see both Part 2 and 4 of this post series for some of my own favourite note and text editor apps.

Dragon Dictation (Free)

Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking is one of the most popular dictation-to-text software available on the market today, often recommended to journalism classes in writing, and by many writers who have some success with this. Although the software itself is commercial, Nuance Communications has released Dragon Dictation free as an app. Based on the software, the app provides some creditable attempts to translate your voice into text notes. I wouldn’t say that it can be relyed upon for note-taking, but it’s certainly fun to try out.

Having moved recently from spending a decade in the UK, I must say that my attempts using Dragon Dictation set on English (Australian) as the language, were quite successful, in comparison with that of my family, who still retain some hefty mid-English accents. Mine is a strange mix of Kiwi/mid-English, but with enough kiwi to have that success in translation. I couldn’t, for the life of me, get the App to pick up words like ‘November’ and ‘December’ however.

Dragon Dictation may be useful to you as an interesting note-taker, especially if using the iPAD at a distance, and as a writer who likes to – or needs to – walk around when creating ideas.

Link: Dragon Dictation app

Reading Apps

Writers are good readers. If we’ve fictional writers of a certain genre we often read in this genre or around it, to keep up to speed with it. As non-fiction writers we keep abreast of news and markets with the reading of newspapers and magazines. In Part 4 of this series I recommended several newspaper reading apps or amalgamates. Here are the must-have apps for reading, and additional feed readers of interest to the pro-bloggers out there.

iBooks (free)

Apples’ own iBooks is a free library app, and of all of these, I much prefer the reading interface within iBooks, which converted me over to e-books for fictional reading. You can find quite a few free iBooks to pick up from the iTunes store, but the commercial listing is much less than e-books found in the Amazon Kindle store, which is a pity.

The iBooks app provides a catergorisation feature where you can setup several different libraries, and put books into these. This is used everyday in my own family, where there is a library full of children’s and young adults readers for my daughter, and my own books of choice are hidden away from her eyes in a thrillers and chillers library.You can also sort books by title, author or category, and of course there is an excellent bookmarking and search function within.

I also enjoy the open-page interface and flip-book rendering more than that of the Kindle, plus the function to turn up or down backlighting on the pages for differing light settings, and the choice of fonts for readibility (no jokes about aging eyes, please).  iBooks also supports PDFs.

Link: iBooks app

Amazon Kindle App (Free)

The Kindle App makes iPAD reading all the more worthwhile, with the ability to read up to 950,000 books and magazines and blogsites via the Amazon Kindle store. Unfortunately, due to some changes in terms of service from Apple, most e-readers have now taken out the internal buttons/links to access their book stores automatically, so Kindle for iPAD users are now forced into using the less-than-friendly (in my opinion) iPAD Safari browser to purchase books before these are sent to the Kindle App.

Background colour and font size are changeable in the Kindle App, and there is a nice page-flipping interface, and dictionary lookup. Like iBooks, the Kindle reader app ‘remembers’ the last page you left off reading on and returns you to it when you open the app again.

Link: Kindle for iPAD

Zinio (Free)

Zinio is perhaps the world’s largest service for digital magazines, providing you with the ability to subscribe to many digital editions of popular international magazines in many categories – including sports, womans, crafts, DIY, hobby magazines and from many countries. Registration with the service is free, then you purchase either a termed subscription or individual copies of your choice of many magazines. Now living in Australia, I find through Zinio that I can still access several UK magazines I enjoyed, and the digital editions are often much less expensive than the same magazines bought as imports in a local news agency or magazine store.

Magazines are kept stored on the Zinio web servers, and can be downloaded onto your computer into a desktop App, read online, or downloaded onto several mobile devices for off-line reading.

Which is where the iPAD’s Zinio App comes to the forefront for off-line reading. The magazines are glossy with high resolution images, and flip-page technology provides an enjoyable reading experience. Inside the App you will find your own library – which can be sorted through monthly editions, featured mags, and a Zinio store link.

Link: Zinio App

Reeder for iPAD ($4.99)

Reeder for iPAD gets excellent reviews, and deservedly so.

As a Google Reader user myself, Reeder gives me access to my feeds on my iPAD, including shared items from my friends. I obviously need to have wireless access for this, but once synched, I can also send to Instapaper, or Readitlater for later reading, of course.

Link: Reeder.

(Note – as an alternative, try Feeddler - picked as a top iPAD app, which has a current version upsetting some users with annoying animations).

Read it later (Free)

Read it Later is a good alternative to Instapaper, if you want one. With extension apps for Firefox, Google Chrome browsers, Internet Explorer, Safari and others, the iPAD free app allows you to also download your pages and these later offline.

Link: Read it Later List (website) and Read it Later app

Bluefire Reader (free)

Nowadays there is some progress in providing e-books and publications with DRM protection. Several publishers are using Adobe’s ebook Digital Rights Management service for this. These DRM pdfs and e-books in ePub format can be downloaded and read on computers via Adobe’s own Adobe Digital Edition software. You can download and use this for free once registered with Adobe.

To read these same e-books with DRM protection on the iPAD you require a free reader device supporting e-Pub and PDFs with DRM. Bluefire Reader provides this as a free app. An alternative to Bluefire is BAM, created for the Books-A-Million service.

To transfer the publication from Adobe Digital Editions to the iPAD with one of these e-readers, you need to authorise both the computer and device to use Adobe DRM. This may be a matter of simply plugging in the iPAD to your computer – Adobe Digital Editions automatically picks up the device and requests authorisation before transferring the file over. An alternative is to simply authorise Bluefire with your Adobe ID when first opening it, then using the iPAD’s Safari browser to login to your bookstore account and download the book from there. The iPAD should pick up your Bluefire Reader to download it into. Mine did, thankfully.

Link: Bluefire Reader app or BAM app.

Brainstorming, Mindmapping and Outlining

In Part 4 of this series, I featured my favourite apps under this planning category. Here are some more.

OmniOutliner for iPAD ($19.99) and OmniGraffle for iPAD ($49.99)

OmniOutliner is based on a successful MAC software, by the makers of the very popular OmniGraffle (discussed below). Designed with a very beautiful-looking interface, OmniOutliner is based on the appeal of having a quick and easy functional app for creating – um, outlines. Some of the interesting features include the ability to drop in any images you can copy and paste from within the iPAD, as well as making links inside become html links. Claims are towards syncing with email, and the Mac’s iDISK facility, and compatibility with OmniOutliner on the MAC.

The current version of OmniOutliner does not support folders as document structures, a feature I personally look for in usage.

OmniGraffle was recently a popular and rich-featured graphing app on the iPAD. However it has some problems – according to comments – with building shapes and defining connection points for flowcharts. At 24.7mb, the app is reasonably large but contains a lot of charting templates, useful for those like me who like to flowchart storylines or timelines.

However, with such a pricetag for both apps, I have not personally used OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle for the iPAD. For those using it on the MAC, however, the iPAD apps may be a valuable addition.

Link: OmniOutliner for iPAD. and OmniGraffle for iPAD

Popplet ($4.99)

I’ve been a fan of the popplet platform on the web for some time now, and am happy to find Popplet for iPAD. Popplet lets you capture ideas or brainstorm or create interesting graphs using text and images. These can also be created online at Popplet, and synched to the iPAD. The Popplet diagrams can be colloborated with online, and PDF versions shared.

There is a Popplet Lite version available for free which allows you to play with one popplet, but once you upgrade you can’t import this to your full version due to constraints through the iPAD operating system. I find Popplet an excellent format for personal brainstorming sessions.

Link: Popplet (full version) for iPAD and Popplet Lite.

 Helper Apps and Miscellaneous

There are some apps which defy categorisation. However, I included a Misc category within Part 2 of this series (which included two good dictionary apps), and here are some more of interest.

Alpha Writer ($4.99)

Designed by Montessorium, Alpha Writer looks interesting for those wanting to provide a writing boost for pre-schoolers. An Alpha mode presents the early writer with a screen of icons to choose from. Once chosen, a voice will name the icon (bee, dog, bus, etc…) and the child can then play with various letter sounds from an alpha strip above.

In Write mode, they can use the icons to build a storyboard. Once the board is complete, the young writer can then show this to his or her proud parents, and explain the story they made up. They can also use a camera to take a snapshot of their storyboard to share as a photo. Designed to Montessori principles – where writing comes before reading – Alpha Writer looks a good fit for the very young speller / reader and writer. However, there are some comments on the iTunes site suggesting that not all children get on with this app. My viewpoint on this is that it should be easier to trial an app before full purchase (but when have you ever had to trial software off-the-shelf like that?) and writer’s are in need of some decent storyboarding and timelining apps (and software) in total.

Link: Alpha Writer

Story Tracker ($7.49)

I also use Andrew Nicolle’s Artwork Tracker, and Story Tracker is based on the same premise.

Providing a database app for writers, you can input your story title,wordcount, genre, and notes, setup markets to submit these to, and input financial data on your story successes. Response times are based on market responses, but can be over-ridden. Guidelines for submission markets can also be entered, and your submission history viewed. Submissions are sorted in date order.

Backups of the full database over Wifi and your internet browser, and CSV imports/exports from and to your desktop spreadsheeting software. Story Tracker has apps for the iphone and other mobile devices also.

Note – there is a Story Tracker Lite version (free) which provides 5 stories, 5 submissions and 5 markets, and backup of the database onto the web so that you can import it back into the fully paid version if you choose to upgrade.

Link: Story Tracker (paid full version) and Story Tracker Lite (free)

Total Submission ($2)

Total Submission is another submission app for writers, on sale until December for this price. There is limited details on the iTunes store, but I believe the app provides functions to input title, genre and market sent to, and automates a response date. There is also an export function to a spreadsheet. Although lacking in sorting features, and backups etc, Total Submission has a really nice looking interface – the app displays a graphical notebook with labels on sticky notes, and a hand-drawn menu structure.

Link: Total Submission

Read the other posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (this post).

In this final post I will summarise all the apps and links from the series. For more details go to the blog post linked to, or take a look at the app in the iTunes store.

Read the previous posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series (this article)

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

Summary of iPAD Apps for Writers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Note Taking, Researching and Brainstorming & Task Management.

iPAD Apps for Note Taking, Researching and Brainstorming & Task Management

Whether writing your country’s next greatest novel, writing for blogs or writing non-fiction, most writers require some helper apps for general note-taking, research and planning tasks and projects upfront. In terms of Productivity apps, the iPAD is well stocked. These are my favourite for writing.

Task Management

Task Management is important for writers, particularly those who write for multiple projects, or have daily deadlines. Here are a few apps which allow for this.

Things ($20)

Things is based on the Things for Mac task management software, but you can still use it on the iPad as a PC user should you wish. It has a hefty price-tag, but provides a GTD-like format with Today/Next/Scheduled/Someday management categories of your tasks, plus a projects area, and logbook.

Syncing wirelessly with the desktop version for Mac is also available. The interface for Things makes it a popular choice.

Link: Things at iTunes

Task PRO ($2)

I like Task PRO for task management, although there are so many other apps in this productivity area to look into. Task PRO contains a reasonably minimalist interface with List views, due, overdue, starred and priority items. You can tag each with ‘personal’, ‘work’ etc, and set reminders for the tasks.

Unlike many other task management checklist systems, Task Pro allows nested tasks so  you can set up a top-level project as a task, and add sub-tasks to these. Alphabetical, date and manual sorting of tasks also. Task Pro also integrates with the online Toodlelo system, and contains a built-in email app allowing you to email out your tasks. Really important tasks can be starred so that they appear on the home screen of your app.

Link: Task PRO

More Notes

I’ve listed several note-taker apps in Part 2 of this series, but the following are popular due to their synching facilities – to your computer desktops, and onto the cloud, and for their multiple note types, including taking images and text from websites you browse to; and sketching or handwriting your notes.

Evernote (Free)

Evernote is popular in general, and the iPAD app is free, allowing for you to synch notes from mobile, desktop and the web, categorise into notebooks, and even add hand-drawn notes and audio recordings to your notes database.

Note that currently the Evernote app hasn’t all the features of it’s desktop brother, due to the iPAD platform itself. Notes typed and edited on the desktop version can contain rich-text features whereas on the iPAD app, you can not edit these notes.

Synching between versions of Evernote is a premium feature also. This costs $5 per month / $45 per year.

Link: Evernote at iTunes

Penultimate ($2)

Penultimate is the creme-le-crop if you’re after an elegant handwriting note-taker. You can draw your quick notes on a photorealistic paper notebook, save into different notebooks. Good for quick sketches and the rendering of the ink is excellent.

Note that these notes can be exported only as image files meaning you can’t access them as text files for editing.

Link: Penultimate at iTunes

Brainstorming, Mindmapping and Outlining

Most writers require some outlining or planning before entering writing. In Part 2 of this series, I outlined a couple of writing apps which provide Index Cards – a good method for outlining and planning larger projects. I particularly like the app called Index Cards for this. Here are some more.

Corkulous

Corkulous is a fun app. You can have multiple corkboards – with nested corkboards inside of these, and through a filing cabinet you can choose labels, sticky-notes (with colour options), contacts,  simple to-do check lists and images to stick onto these corkboards.

Boards can be password locked, and exported as PDF files (an image only, sadly).  For brainstorming together a pinboard of writing thoughts and elements, Corkulous could have it’s place on your own toolset.

Link: Corkulous

iThoughtsHD ($10.49)

Although expensive, iThoughtsHD receives a lot of good feedback regarding the mindmaps you can create on this App. The interface is really nice, and actual map features are excellent – lovely branches, icons (90 built in) and images allowed, and easy to add to. Maps can be hyperlinked together.

iThoughts mindmaps can be exported to many popular desktop mindmap tools including MindManager, ConceptDraw and Freemind. There is also export to PDF or PNG format, and one-tap synchronisation via Dropbox.

Link: iThoughts HD

Read the other posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for the Blogger

iPAD Apps for the Blogger

Bloggers can get on well with several of the Apps I listed in Part 2 and Part 4 of this series – research, notes and writing apps are all relevant to the blogger’s life. But here are some specific apps ready for the productive blogger.

Unfortunately, it’s currently my own opinion that for blogging, the iPAD in total, is lacking many apps and inbuilt functions naturally used by bloggers.

1. The iPAD lacks an internal filesystem you can get to, so you have to use third party apps for file management, meaning you need to find ones which are compatible with the files you do create on your iPAD apps and your desktop / laptop devices; and because of the lack of USB port, you also need to find good file sync apps between the two also.
2. Blogging apps are lacking. This is very surprising to me, given the several good text editors and word processors available, but blogging apps lack either image management, post management or basic HTML formatting and some remain hindered by bugs.
3. Image management apps are also limited in functionality. You can get apps which can resize, crop and edit your images, but the functions are not close to those found on most desktop image editors. Most of the blogging apps also have problems with image placement, and deal only with those saved back to the iPAD photo files.

Posting to Blogs

There is a remarkable lack of proper blogging apps for the iPAD. And using your blog admin panels via Apple’s native Safari browser on the iPAD isn’t much fun either. But here are a couple of apps which may make things a little better.

Note that there are other apps – for Squarespace, and Tumblr, built for the iPhone, but both currently contain too many bugs to attempt for me, according to the comments and ratings on iTunes.

WordPress (free)

Many major blogs are run on the WordPress platform, and bloggers on this platform can now make use of the WordPress app for iPAD.

This app currently is lacking in features when writing your blog posts (such as difficulty in adding hyperlinks within a post, and no rich-text editing) but will provide a good platform for drafting out a post, including allowing the insertion of photos sitting on your iPAD photo album.

You can also use the app for viewing your published blog posts, and for your blog statistics, and administering comments.

I don’t particularly enjoy using the WordPress app on my iPAD at this moment – it doesn’t differentiate drafts from published posts, and when writing a new post you therefore only have a publish button on the editor. You must cancel from this editor before being given the option to save as draft. This makes writing and editing a new draft difficult to do without accidentally publishing it up. And without the option to post to your blog in draft format either. Without HTML editing, and the inability to use different heading and font styles, your posts from the iPAD are currently a little rudimentary also.

However, the App does bring in posts, pages, and statistics on your blog, features which are often looked for by bloggers.

As my iPAD is not 3G, I often encounter connectivity problems even within my wireless range, on this particular app. But Automatic, the makers of this app, continue to release upgrades for it, and I hope that the WordPress app will eventually become more usable.

Link: WordPress app on iTunes

Note – a newer app is QuickWordPress which allows for exactly that – quick wordpress blog posting. Currently it appears to not be available at the iTunes store, however.

Blogpress ($3)

Blogpress has won some accolades for it’s HD Video-blogging functions in particular (and uploads to YouTube). It claims to support most major blogging platforms including Blogger, Squarespace, Tumblr, Typepad and WordPress – but WordPress users in the comments suggest you may be better off using the WordPress app above.

I’ve not yet tried Blogpress, but will be doing so for the Facebook / Twitter integration and for my own Tumblr blogs in the future.

Link: Blogpress

Blogsy ($5)

Blogsy is a recently added new blogging app finding some favour amongst bloggers. Supporting WordPress and Blogger, there are good features regarding uploading your photos onto Flickr, your blog image gallery or Picasa also. The interface has a swish looking browser to the side and once you provide authorisation details you can access your Flickr and other media right from those toolbars.

Blogsy also allows for rich text editing (what’s called the Rich Side) , html editing (on the Write Side) and you flip between the two of these. Once you have input your blog details in the settings, you have access to your blog’s categories and tags to select from.

Blogsy also supports local drafts and multiple blogs, which could well make this the application of choice for me currently when wanting to write and post to my blogs – once I get past the actual writing errors I’m currently encountering.

Unfortunately, my own attempts to write a post in Blogsy have left me stuck without a writing function on the rich text editing side (no keyboard function or tap ability on the main rich-text writing panel). I can input text with the virtual keyboard or my physical keyboard on the title area, or on the html write side, but this is slow going. I don’t appear to have some of the settings functions spoken about inside the program also, so can’t set location. With these errors, I currently am unable to fully assess Blogsy fully, but hope to see the bugs ironed out soon.

Link: Blogsy

Social Networking, Browsing and Feed Reading

Most bloggers keep a hefty social networking agenda, along with reading a fair amount of other blog and websites, to keep abreast of their topic and themes. The iPAD provides some excellent ways to do this, and importantly – because of the iPAD nature of only allowing one app to the forefront at a time, you can’t be distracted from actual writing work with multiple windows or views open.

Twitter and Facebook Apps (various)

I was a fan of Tweetdeck on the PC, and the mobile version on the iPAD was supposedly just as good. However, with the recent acquisition of Tweetdeck by Twitter itself, the Tweetdeck app is no longer available for the iPAD in the iTunes store.

Tweetdeck offered channel facilities for your Twitter feeds, but fortunately there are several other terrific Twitter iPAD apps available. A popular one is Twitterific – available in free and Pro versions.

Unfortunately, Facebook is not nearly so well catered for on the iPAD, although Facebook itself is currently working on releasing it’s own official iPAD app which is due any day now.

Link: Tweetdeck website.

MultiTask ($1)

MultiTask provides a browser app which does two things at once – on the left your Twitter stream runs, while on the right you have updates from your RSS feed reader.

There are several similar multi-tasking apps now – including one called Multitasking which combines the Safari browser, Facebook and Twitter in the one app. Check out the reviews on these while you find them, as some suffer some problems.

Link: MultiTask

Split Screen ($1)

Spit Screen does something similar to MultiTask, but offers you two browsing windows side by side.

This is good for when you want to be reading a website (say, a news site) on one side, and have a web-based chat screen open at the same time, as one example.

Or open your blog site and blog on one side, and have a research site on the other.

Link: Split Screen

The Early Edition ($5)

Early Edition presents a lovely interface for reading your news via a news site’s RSS feed. You can import feeds from Google Reader or OPML file, and even categorise your feeds into sections like a traditional paper. The paper updates quickly when you want it to, and provides a truly elegant viewing of your daily news reading.

Link: The Early Edition

Flipboard (free)

My choice for reading my popular feeds for the blogs I read daily is via Flipboard. The interface is awesome, need I say more for this popular app?

You can choose from the large listing of popular blogs and sites or add your own. Flipbook also provides a book-like interface for your Facebook and Twitter streams. Plus an awesome way to look at your Google Reader, Flickr and Instagram feeds. The magazine layout for reading all your best reads is sure to keep you enthused. And it’s free!

Link: Flipboard website

Instapaper ($5)

Instapaperhas long been a favourite way to keep hold of pages you browsed to, to read later. The Instapaper app lets you do this on the iPAD.

Browse to a webpage, and save in Instapaper and you can view these offline at a later date. You can browse via your desktop and save to Instapaper via a Read Later bookmarklet, or on your iPAD the Safari browser has this already.

Excellent for reference sites, and research. And for train commutes.

Link: Instapaper.com – create a free account.

Link: Instapaper App on iTunes.

Read the other posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers (this post)

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

iPAD Apps for the Writer

Again, there are many opinions on the best apps for the writer on an iPAD, but these are mine, categorised into areas I think important for writing. Of course, more and more apps are coming out all the time, and at some point I will need to update or replace my own.

File Sharing / Synching Apps

If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably be running multiple computer systems, storage devices and writing on several of these. My own main writing is done on my software of choice on my laptop, with additional storage of the backup files etc on an older PC, and external hard-drives. Sharing of files became much easier with cloud-computing (or storage on the internet), and many people use apps and services like Dropbox to share these files across multiple devices.

Dropbox App (free)

With a free signup to Dropbox with quite a lot of file storage, and Dropbox on my PCs, I quickly placed the Dropbox App from the iTunes store onto my iPAD also. Photos and files can be dropped into the Dropbox folder on your desktop, and opened on the iPAD once synched. When you’re away from home, you can also access your Dropbox folders on the internet by logging onto the website.

My iPAD isn’t a 3G one, so I make sure that any files I want to use have been shared through Dropbox via my home wireless network firstly, before going out and about.

Several well-reviewed writing apps for the iPAD also have an automatic Dropbox synch feature built in. You can choose to email files out of the apps, or simply drop them into your Dropbox, and have these synched through the Dropbox servers.

Link: Dropbox website – signup if you’ve not done so already. The basic package is completely free and offers 2GB of file storage and transfer. If you write – a lot! – and need more storage, other plans are available to purchase.

Link: Dropbox App in iTunes.

Simple Notes and Text Editors

For ideas and notes, nothing beats having some very simple notes apps, or text editors. Creating files with .txt extensions is also often necessary when importing/exporting between your own PC / Desktop based writing software and the apps you will use on portable devices like the iPAD.

Simplenote (Free)

Simplenote is simply that – one of the best ways of creating quick and simple notes – lists, ideas, and text files. You can create these in notebooks (journal, shopping, Todo, Writing, research…) and tag them as you see fit.

Simplenote is a web-based platform, and you can sign up to create an account for free. There are compatable simplenote apps for the Mac, and apps for mobiles such as the iPAD, and a few which work with the internet server for PC users (I use Resophnotes on my PC).

For those writers on Macs, who use the popular Scrivener Writing software, Simplenote is the confirmed app for compatibility with text files created between both. There are also plugins and extensions designed for Firefox or Google Chrome browsing.

This ability to synch – quickly and easily (and encypted for security) – across from your PC to the net, to your mobile devices is what makes Simplenote so popular. Multiple backups of these notes are also an excellent feature – drag the version slider to go back to previous versions.

The free version of the Simplenote app provides a small advertisement at the top of your notes list, and ten version backups for your notes. If you don’t want these ads, you have an option of paying $5 to have these taken off, or going Premium. Premium provides 30 backup versions of your notes, and features such as email note creation, for $20 per year.

Link: Simplenote website

Link: Simplenote Free App at iTunes

Reading and Document Management

Writers often need to read and keep several types of files for research purposes at hand. Here is my own choice for an excellent document manager. Also take a look at Part 3 – Blogging, where I list some good browsing apps and in Part 4 there are some good apps for research.

GoodReader for iPad ($5)

GoodReader is one of my favourite apps for PDF reading – and commenting. It has won many accolades for the fast handling of large multiple paged documents in PDF or text format. And for offering multiple mark-up functions on these files – you can type in notes, hand-draw comments, add sticky notes, and lines and arrows to your PDF files.

GoodReader is fantastic for PDFs and large text files, but also supports MS Office .doc, .ppt and .xls documents, iWork documents, HTML web-archives, high resolution images and even audio. The app also allows the management of files into folders, and the renaming, moving and copying of them. It even zips and unzips for you.

Importantly, the GoodReader app is compatible with synching software across servers, such as Dropbox.

My writing process using GoodReader – For large research notes I have gathered on my laptop, I export these as PDFs (most writing and office software offers a free PDF export nowadays), drop them into Dropbox, and synch these onto my iPAD. I then open the dropbox files in my Dropbox app on the iPAD, and there is an option to read in GoodReader. This option transfers the PDF over to GoodReader, and I can delete from Dropbox if I wish.

Link: GoodReader at iTunes

Helper Apps and Misc

There are a lot of little (and quite big) helper apps useful for the writer. Here’s a few on my own iPAD which I think are worth the space.

Dictionary.com App (Free)

This App is large – 47.2MB in download size. That’s because it doesn’t require an internet connection – the dictionary and thesaurus sit on your iPAD. And did I mention it’s free! (With a tradeoff of getting some adverts in the interface). Lookup meanings, phonetic and audio pronunciation, example sentences, word origin and history.

There is also a daily Word of the Day which pops up once you turn the iPAD on. Through location setting you also get real-time popular, trending and nearby word searches – which would be particularly interesting if sitting in a writer’s cafe. Change the background too.

Link: Dictionary.com App

Advanced English Dictionary ($1 – on sale at the moment by 90% off)

Many blog posts and writers suggest AED for a dictionary, and it has good comments in the iTunes store.

However, at this point there is no iPAD version of this app, so 2x on the general app makes the words slightly fuzzy, and the App doesn’t do landscape format meaning it is awkward to use when I’m using my landscape stand / keyboard setup for my iPAD. Searching for the word ‘Qwerty’ brought up the erroneous ‘No Results Found’ with the phrase ‘QWERTY keyboard’ defined underneath, which makes the search criteria seem defined on case sensitivity and full phrases input to the database.

Download size is 14.6 on this app, but it again doesn’t require a wireless connection, and the definitions – when you get them – are very precise and helpful. AED also contains detailed biographical, geographical, scientific and technical data, pronunciation guides, and a random word shake.

Despite the minor faults, if you’re after another dictionary as a writing tool, Advanced English Dictionary provides this, and it’s currently a bargain on sale.

Link: Advanced English Dictionary

 PortaPoet ($2)

This is quite a helpful app for those creating poetry which rhymes (and presumably some songwriters also). PortaPoet contains an inbuilt rudimentary text editor where you can type in your poem, then select and search for rhyming words to complete the poem. The rhyme database is kept on the device, making it portable and not necessary to hook up onto the internet. Poems created in PortaPoet can be saved, emailed out, or shared on Facebook.

My eight year old daughter really appreciates this, when given poetry homework. It’s amazing what a little techy app will do to motivate her into writing. She also thinks the name is a bit funny – as in, Portaloo.

Link: PortaPoet (Aussie iTunes, as the search wasn’t working on US).

Writers Muse Plus ($3)

I quite like this idea spinner for writers, and have successfully used it to trigger some interesting short story scenarios with my eight year old daughter. There are plenty of random idea generators on the web, but Writers’ Muse Plus has a nice spinner interface, and you can edit all the categories, add your own (for instance, I added Point of View, and Genre/Type )with accompanying elements). Then, spin the tumbles to see what you writing challenge you come up with.

Link: Writers Muse

TextExpander ($5)

TextExpander adds abbreviation functions to your writing. You create a library of short abbreviation shortcuts for snippets of text you frequently use (addresses, phrases, names perhaps). Tap that abbreviation you’ve inserted in your writing (in apps which support Text Expander) and it is immediately populated with the full snippet. For instance, “ddate” will insert today’s date.

Some of the Writing Apps below support TextExpander.

Link: TextExpander

Writing Apps for the iPAD

It’s a shame that so many decent full writing programs for desktops haven’t got an iPAD app, so most writers are forced to deal with compatible file formats, and moving these around apps on the iPAD and synching these between mobile devices and their desktops. Despite this, there are a few apps which provide most of the features required for writing larger documents on the iPAD.

• Apples’ own Pages app has great reviews, providing many almost desktop-publishing features, but as I am not a Mac user I don’t have the desktop side of this app, and therefore don’t use it on my iPAD at this point.
• Office2HD is another I don’t currently use, but it sounds good as it allows the iPAD user to create, edit and view MS Office Word and Excel files.
• Writer’s Studio is a large app available for only $2. It contains so many features I’ve not yet worked out how to use it. Not only is there a text editor but there are copious graphic tools inside for drawing, audio tools for recording and book publishing facilities via PDF or Airplay. For the price, it may be worth checking out if looking into a publishing app.

As a fictional writer I am looking primarily for a couple of areas in writing apps, but haven’t as yet found all of them in one app. I’ve come close, though.

I want to be able to keep research and planning / outline notes close by with character and setting profiles, and the actual writing needs to be in Chapter and multiple document form. All of this needs to be in the same project location, so I therefore need a file storage system which allows for multiple and nested documents and good sorting functions for moving documents around.

Add to that a need for a distraction-free writing environment, and good spelling check and export / file compatibility options, wordcount and stats functions, and you have a list which currently isn’t completely do-able on the iPAD without resorting to a few apps.

Recommendations

• For on-the-fly notes (spur of the moment ideas, action points, very high level planning) , I use Simplenote.
• For  a simple writing editor I recommend iAWriter or perhaps My Writing Spot for it’s colour-coding of documents.
• For my own larger fictional writing projects, it’s a toss-up between using Notebooks alongside of Index Cards, or Manuscript. Both offer some very good structural writing features.
• When keeping a journal, I like the look and feel of Chapters, keeping my portable diary away from my other writing projects.

iAWriter ($5)

This app is a favourite among writers, providing a simple interface without a huge amount of distractive features. Wordcount at the top, and a ‘focus’ mode provides distraction-free writing by turning off all the screen features leaving you with the last three lines of writing. iAWriter has keyboard extension meaning you can navigate using arrow keys etc, and TextExpander Touch Support (TextExpander is another app which provides abbreviations to text snippet inserts. See above.)

Writing created in iAWriter can be moved into another App like Notebooks (see below) and also synched via Dropbox.

Link: iAWriter

Notebooks ($9)

Notebooks can import many formats of documents – RTF, PDF, MS Office, photos, and create notes from web archives or the clipboard contents; and create PDFs for further export.

You can create multiple notebooks (called Books) and nest notebooks inside of these. Notes can be moved and renamed. Multiple notebooks are available so you can setup a project notebook for your research and planning notes, a daily journal notebook, and a tasks notebook should you wish. Books can also be colour-coded. This hierarchical structuring ability within Notebooks is a fantastic and winning feature for many writers.

Notebooks also has a good task management facility – you can convert notes to tasks, and set due dates. It’s falling is perhaps the fact that you can’t manually sort notes from within a notebook. New notes are input in a consecutive order, and datestamped like that. These can then be sorted by title or modification date, but you can’t put them into any manual order logical to yourself. You can also password-protect notebooks.

Notes can be formatted using html markdown language, and there is a stylus or finger drawing function to create notes with also. Notes can be linked through the notebooks with internal hyperlinks.

With writing, task management and document storage functions, Notebooks also integrates with Dropbox and TextExpander. The App has been designed as the ultimate portable notebook, but as you can see from my notes above, it still requires some additional sorting and organisation functions for ease of use.

With so many functions, you may need the help of the manual – which you will need to download from the website. It comes down as a zip file which you can open in Notebooks and hold the full manual as a Book –  an example of some of the uses for Notebooks in document management.

Link: Notebooks

Chapters ($3)

Chapters is a little similar to Notebooks in that it allows you to create multiple notebooks with notes inside. The large screen writing in a note has a nice interface, with date-stamps automatically put onto each entry. A main feature is the ability to attach photos to the entries inside a Chapter (document). Fonts and sizes can also be selected. Export options include sending entries to Google Docs, email, creating PDFs or web pages – which include the photos.

I tend to use Chapters more as a journal because of this, rather than seeing it as a full writing experience (mainly because as a fiction writer I want to be able to hold character and setting notes closeby to my actual writing).

Link: Chapters

Index Card ($5)

Many writers like index card software for planning out chapters, parts and scenes. Index Card provides a creditable experience on the iPAD, with multiple cards, stacks of cards, labels, a corkboard background, and an outline mode.

Importantly, your work can be exported as RTF files, mailed out of the iPAD or Index Card is also compatible with Dropbox.

Link: Index Card

My Writing Spot for iPAD ($5)

My Writing Spot is designed for writers with autosave and wordcount features, and containing a web-based dictionary/thesaurus lookup providing auto spell-checking. It synchs via a Google account with the free My Writing Spot webapp, which provides a backup of your writing project online for you.

Of course, to make use of the dictionary spell-check and web backup, you will need to have your iPAD accessing the internet also, so when I’m out of range of my own wireless network, I don’t have access to these functions.

You can choose your font sizes and fonts, and there are two modes – daytime and night-time modes. Documents or notes just appear as a list within the one ‘My Document’ area – you can’t separate out entries into separate notebooks. Entries can be colour-coded which also sorts them via this colour system, so you could feasibly use the colours to donate journals / chapters or perhaps different elements of your story.  For novel writers this may work, but would become problematic once you move onto another project perhaps.

Despite the lack of organisation functions, if you’re after a simple editor with dictionary lookup, My Writing Spot provides this.

Link: My Writing Spot

Manuscript for iPAD ($7)

Manuscript looks like it is made for novel writers, with a beautiful interface, and features not found elsewhere. Writing can be divided into separate books, and you can start by adding a several lined pitch, a synopsis and then a chapter outline for each story.

Inside there are also index cards which can be colour coded (characters, scenes, settings, whatever…). And there is a wordcount function, naturally.

The writing editor within Manuscript has the chapters on the left, and a writing screen on the right. The left pane can go, leaving you with a large distraction-free writing pane. Research tools are inbuilt – you can move quickly to Google, Wikipedia or a thesaurus with two taps (wireless connectivity required). Fonts and background paper types can be changed too.

Export options are via HTML, RTF and TXT formats, and Manuscript is compatible with Dropbox.

(Black Mana Studios also does Screenplay for iPAD).

Link: Manuscript

Read the other posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer (this post)

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers

Touch-tapping is okay on the iPAD or iPhone or other smaller mobile devices, to a certain point. You can get by with tapping onto a virtual keyboard for quick notes and the like, but when it comes to any bigger writing projects – notes, actual novel writing, or even writing a blog post, it becomes crucial to use actual keyboards. iPads don’t have USB connection points, so iPAD writers need to turn to bluetooth as the connection device for any keyboards.

Apple provides a relatively okay bluetooth keyboard with docking station which looks useful for desktop typing at least.

Some docking stations only allow the iPAD itself to be put into one particular viewing format – the Apple dock only allows portrait. For many writers, it’s better to have the iPAD screen in landscape format (although I’ve noted that some apps aren’t compatible with this). You don’t even really require a dock, although this adds stability to the setup.

Desktop Use, and Traveling Without a Keyboard.

For desktop use, I would most probably stick with a larger bluetooth keyboard, and sit the iPAD onto a stand which allows for both viewing formats. The iPAD doesn’t have to be docked when on a desk. For those on a budget, using a large book to prop the iPAD up on is fine for this, but I prefer having a proper and trustworthy stand.

iPAD covers and stands are very common nowadays, and every iPAD owner has their own preferences…

My own cover of choice for this, which is hardwearing, and has a swivel feature where you can sit the iPAD up in either portrait or landscape is a Targus Versavu Cover and Stand for the iPAD2. This is made of toughened leather and has a case the iPAD sits in which safeguards the back of the iPAD, and a fold over leather stitch-bound cover to protect the front. When closed there is a solid elastic to hold the cover shut. When open, you can rotate the full iPAD in its hard shell cover around to multiple positions and prop it up onto two different fold over stand grooves.

The footprint of the whole thing is not much bigger – or heavier – than the actual iPAD inside, and fits into a very small satchel I carry around. If I know I won’t be doing much writing, this is my portable cover of choice.

I would probably prefer a much prettier cover/stand, and there is so much choice – but am mindful that I want something which provides both formats and protects the iPAD fully. Perhaps one day, being a crafter, I will make a colourful and more feminine fabric sleeve for this setup.

Keyboards, Keyboards, Keyboards

Apple’s official option is the iPAD Keyboard Dock, but the iPAD works with any bluetooth keyboard (but you should check your Apps, some don’t support bluetooth keyboards completely). Keyboards include Apple’s own wireless keyboard. For portability you can even get roll-up plastic keyboards, but I would go for a more solid one for desktop use, particularly with good sized keys (I have large thumbs).

Keyboards made for the Apple products can also come with special Apple function keys, whilst generic ones like the portable keyboard I use, can provide an almost Qwerty environment, but with some differing placements for some of the numeric and character keys.

Check any that come with docks for the IPAD – Apple’s own solutions both tilt the iPAD back at different angles. If you can, check these out beforehand in the store, to make sure you’re okay with the setup when in use.

Keyboards on the Go

There is a lot of debate about the best iPAD keyboard cases out there, often reliant on what you can actually purchase in your own home country or locally.

For instance, I like the look of the ZAGGmate with Keyboard for iPAD 2 which provides a solid aluminium iPAD cover and proper keys on a keyboard. However, this puts the iPAD into the cover without protecting the back of it – it’s not covered completely. The CLAMCASE iPAD 2 Keyboard Case looks excellent, and was due out last month, making the iPAD into what looks like a small notebook or netbook. Many other keyboard / case combinations utilise silicon keyed keyboards, which I find a little odd to work with.

But my own options were limited locally, so I have begun to work with one popular choice – the Gecko.

The Gecko Keyboard Folio for iPAD2 is extremely popular and hard-to-come by locally here in Australia. The common-place electronics store I shopped at told me that whenever it got new stock of these in, they ‘went like hotcakes’. The store manager didn’t put them out on display because they were played with too often, so we had to plead with him to get us one from out the back (kind of like iPAD contraband).

The Gekco case is stitched leather, and puts the iPAD into landscape format. In the case comes a nylon small keyboard – which you can take out and use outside of the case. In fact, the keyboard can be rolled up into a tube if you want. The package also comes with a USB power charger cable for recharging the keyboard with.

You can purchase this same bluetooth keyboard separately. It comes in a plastic tube.

When shut, the case gives a solid feel, and protects the iPAD and keyboard well. The footprint – particularly the depth of it – is slightly bigger than the Targus cover/stand I use also, due to the keyboard depth, of course.

Synching and setting up the bluetooth keyboard onto the iPAD is quick and easy. I find the keyboard usage a little difficult due to the placement of some keys – I hadn’t realised just how often I use the apostrophe in words until now (it’s bottom right on the keyboard). The stitched detailing on the leather cover also gets in the way of the space bar a little.

My other niggle over the cover is the less solid leather stand tab which props up the iPAD onto a desk, it’s like those found on small picture frames, so doesn’t feel particularly stable. And this case also doesn’t allow for the portrait format.

But for on-the-go writing, the combination of a light keyboard and the iPAD makes a large difference to my own writing practices. Now that I had a keyboard working, it was time to choose some decent writing apps, and you’ll find my choices in the next four posts.

Read the next posts in this series -

Part 1 – Keyboards and Covers (this post)

Part 2 – iPAD Apps for the Writer

Part 3 – iPAD Apps for Bloggers

Part 4 – iPAD Apps for Notes, Research and  Brainstorming & Task Management

Part 5 – Summary Table for all posts in this series

Part 6 – Addendum Post containing alternative apps, and more apps for the writer (listed in Part 5 table also).

- a free ebook : 5 Big Mistakes Creative People Make with Money, with a supporting free audio seminar.

- And another free workshop to attend – Creative Dreamboards.

Details below -

Creative People and Money

Mark McGuinness from his website, Lateral Action is offering several excellent resources.

Free Ebook – 5 Big Mistakes Creative People Make with Money

I have long been a fan of Mark McGuinness’ site, Lateral Action, from which he offers a free six month email course called ‘The Creative Pathfinder‘. You can still sign up for this roughly six month program for free, but now Mark is continueing on from The Creative Pathfinder with further content. From these origins lately, Mark has launched into looking at the financial world for creative businesses.

Recently launched is a small free ebook called ‘5 Big Mistakes Creative People Make with Your Money‘. This book has been written by Mark McGuinness alongside of MyCake – a website which provides financial tools and expertise for creative people. The ebook is available as an instant download from this link here.

This ebook provides a metaphoric storyline following the path of two particular creative ‘types’ and explains the common mistakes creative people make with their money.

Free Audio – 5 Essential Money Skills for Creative People

In response to feedback, the authors of this ebook are now providing a free audio seminar recording provided by Mark McGuinness and Sarah Thelwall of mycake.com. This 75 minute conversation goes again into the common mistakes, and then provides solutions for what to do to solve these mistakes. You need to provide your email address to receive the link to access this recording. It’s in MP3 format, so you can take it with you on most devices.

Links

• Download the free ebook 5 Big Mistakes Creative People Make with Money
• Access the free audio - 5 Essential Money Skills for Creative People
• Lateral Action and MyCake
• Signup for the free 26 week ‘The Creative Pathfinder’ email e-course.

Creative Living Workshop : How to Make a Dreamboard

Another fantastic creative coach out there for many people is Jamie Ridler. Jamie is soon providing a Creative Living workshop on making a creative dreamboard. You can sign up for one of two sessions, both are free and will be run online for 60 minutes.

• Thursday, July 28th at 2:00 pm EST. Register here.
• Saturday, July 30th at 11:00 am EST. Register here.

During this free workshop, where you will learn to make a dreamboard of your creative wishes, you will also be offered special pricing on Jamie’s A Year of Dreams teleconferences – meeting monthly to create a dreamboard.

Link: Jamie Ridler Studios details on the free Dreamboard workshops

Kindle Kash sells for around the GBP£34 / US$47 mark – through the WCCL Writer’s network of products. However, if you purchase the guide via Nick Daw’s own website and follow the links through to WCCL payment via MyHelpHub, the author is currently offering some extra bonus products which you may access once you’ve sent him your payment receipt.

Nick is offering three special bonuses –

• Instant Fiverr Goldrush
• 20 Great Products and Services Writers & Editors Can Sell Today on Fiverr
• Kindle Publishing Made Easy by Nicole Dean and Melissa Ingold.

On top of that, his publishers also offer six bonus downloads – find these in a link sent to you with your receipt. Unzip the file and you will find PDFs entitled -

• 50 Great Ideas for Kindle E-Books
• Essential Resources for Kindle Authors
• How to Create a Great Title for your E-Book
• How to Publish for the iPad & Other E-book Readers
• How to Publish Your Blog on the Kindle
• How to Publish Your Book on Lulu

Kindle Kash comes down as a secured report in PDF format – with your name printed onto the graphic cover. Unlike many guides, this particular one provides a genuine process to write authentic and original content to publish via Amazon’s ebook service. There are many out there promoting the (overuse) of PLR content into Amazon Kindle format, and Amazon is coming down on this.

If you are after a proper guide to becoming an ebook author for your books, then this package provides a lot of bang for your buck, particularly with all the bonuses coming with it. Read more about Kindle Kash from Nick Daw’s blog (link below).

Link: Kindle Kash via Nick Daw’s blog.