WRITING | WRITING ADVICE

What I Love About Reedsy

It’s much more than just a marketplace for editors.

There are so many writing resources that it sometimes seems complicated to figure out what serves your needs. At least I have that problem. Today, I want to talk about one organisation that I find particularly helpful — Reedsy.

Many seem to know Reedsy as a marketplace for finding freelance editors, but Reedsy has much more to offer. Especially if you are a self-publishing indie writer, the resources are precious. And here we are right at Reedsy’s mission statement. The company, founded by four writers in 2014, wants to help change how books are published by empowering authors and publishers.

Come along, and let’s explore Reedsy’s features together.

The Reedsy Marketplace

Yes, I promised to reveal everything beyond the marketplace, but let’s start with the Reedsy offer that most writers now. In the marketplace, you find freelance professionals registered with Reedsy.

We are not only talking about professional editors but designers that create your brand, marketers that help promote, and ghostwriters that write your book if you don’t want to do it yourself.

These professionals maintain profiles in the marketplace, showcasing their portfolios and past experiences. Within the marketplace, you can request offers for certain services, let’s say, editing a short story as an example. Once the offers come in, you can see them in comparison and decide with whom to go forward.

Reedsy’s support doesn’t stop there. You can collaborate with these professionals. Reedsy Marketplace and the Reedsy Editor (covered next) feature automated contracts, secure payment, messaging, file sharing, and a collaborative writing tool.

The Reedsy Editor

If you publish outside Medium, formatting is a huge thing to consider, especially if you plan to self-publish your stories. In what style do you want to format your short stories or novels? What software are you going to use for formatting?

Maybe you are not a programming enthusiast that wants to do everything with LaTeX. Or possibly latex just isn’t your thing. There would be more accessible solutions like scrivener, but most of them cost money and require you to get familiar with the process.

Along comes Reedsy Editor. I won’t go into step-by-step detail about how it exactly works. My friend JF Danskin already did a fantastic job at that. The essential points are that it’s free and straightforward to use. Reedsy Editor is a great way to get started, especially if you have zero experience with formatting.

Reedsy Discovery

“To boldly read where no one has read before.” I think paraphrasing this famous line from Star Trek hits home here. Every year, millions of books are published, but especially many indie books never get discovered and reviewed — according to Reedsy, more than a million every year.

Reedsy Discovery is similar to Goodreads. Every day experienced reviewers publish their reviews of indie books. Reedsy offers to read every book’s first chapter for free and to rank how you liked them. You can also follow your favourite reviewers and get notifications when they publish a new review. You can also apply to become a reviewer.

Reedsy Blog

Do you have questions on how to develop characters or a storyline? Do you have no idea how book marketing works? Or maybe you finally want to know what a Haiku is.

Reedsy Blog probably covered most of your burning questions on and around writing. Of course, their blog also covers news about new Reedsy features. I really enjoyed most of these crisp and to-the-point blog articles.

Reedsy Learning

Do you know the advice that says free stuff isn’t worth considering? Probably, yes. Did you ever buy a writing course by a published author that turned out to be utterly useless, poorly prepared, and so dull that you fell asleep? Well, I did, and it is sometimes hard for me to fall asleep when I actually want to sleep and am not watching a video tutorial.

Reedsy Learning is similar to the Reedsy Blog and covers a broad area of topics related to writing and publishing. The courses are usually spread over ten days and are delivered in canapé-sized 5-min lessons.

Reedsy Live

Why stop there? That is probably what the folks at Reedsy thought when they came up with the idea for Reedsy Live. That’s the name of their podcast meets live seminar. Every week, Reedsy invites writers, editors or other professionals related to writing and publishing who will share their knowledge and experience. Everybody can register and participate in the discussions.

Reedsy Book Cover Art Gallery

This Reedsy feature lets you browse book covers designed by professionals in the Reedsy Marketplace. It leads to Reedsy’s paid offers in the marketplace, but it is also a great source of inspiration if you want to design your book covers.

Reedsy Prompts and Weekly Writing Contests

Last but not least, my favourites are the Reedsy Prompts and Reedsy Weekly Writing Contests. At the time of writing, Reedsy features 1354 prompts (see screenshot) that can be filtered by genre. Not every prompt is a highlight, of course, but there are some outstanding ones that I used in the past.

Reedsy releases five new prompts every Friday as part of the Weekly Writing Contest. Every registered Reedsy user can use those prompts and submit a story between 1.000 and 3.000 words. Being a Reedsy user is generally free of charge, but if you want to have a chance for the weekly prize money of $250, you need to pay a submission fee of $5. That’s how Reedsy finances the prize money.

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