# Tools for Self-Published Authors — Liran Tal

If you're starting out as a new author, you're going to need all  the help you can get. I curated a list of tools that can help you get started with publishing content and books.

Canonical: https://lirantal.com/blog/tools-for-self-published-authors

Writing is a lot of fun and a great way to express yourself, share knowledge, and turn into a better teacher. It’s not easy, and takes a huge investment and dedication to put written content together at high quality but if you’re reading this, you’re probably enjoying it.

So, how do we make it easier to write and publish content?

In this article I am curating a list of resources, tools, and services that make it easier to write and publish content. I am not affiliated with any of these myself unless I’ve strictly written so, and I am not getting paid to promote them.

## Assisted writing

English is not my first language, and I am not a native speaker. If you’re in the same boat then you can easily relate to the difficulty in putting sentences together.

The following is a list of tools that can help you with writing, phrasing and grammar review and suggestions.

*   [Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/) probably needs no introduction. It’s a pretty popular tool that helps with anything from writing emails to blog posts. It’s also a great tool for improving your writing and making it easier to read, especially if you’re not a native speaker.
*   [Hemingway](https://hemingwayapp.com/) is a tool that helps you write better by highlighting difficult-to-read sentences and common errors. It’s a great tool for improving your writing and making it easier to read.

![Hemingway app](/images/blog/2023-01-13-00-40-59.png)

## Colors and Branding

If you want to apply specific branding colors to your content, it’s a good idea to use a tool that can help you with figuring out a color palette that works well together.

Here are those that I found very useful and am using myself for my own books:

*   [Color Thief](https://lokeshdhakar.com/projects/color-thief/) - A tool that extracts the dominant color or a representative color palette from an image.
*   [Coolors](https://coolors.co/) - A super fast color schemes generator.
*   [Tints.dev](https://www.tints.dev/brand/2522FC) - A tool that helps you generate a color palette based on a single color, and aims at `TailwindCSS` users.
*   [UI Colors](https://uicolors.app/create) - A tool that helps you generate a color palette based on a single color and provides a CSS snippet for you to use with the `TailwindCSS` framework.

## Publishing content

Once you’ve got your content written, you need to publish it. Publishing content means essentially that you need to convert raw text content into a published format. This can be an online HTML version of a book, or a digital book such as a PDF or ePub.

The following are tools that can help you with creating a published format of your raw content into a distributed format, such as a PDF or ePub.

*   [Magic author](https://magicauthor.com/)

## Courses creation and hosting

*   [Mirio](https://mirio.org/)
*   [scrimba](https://scrimba.com/)
*   [Lighthall](https://www.lighthall.co) - Fun, live interactive classes with teachers.

## More writing

[All writing →](/blog)

*   Sep 5, 2026

    ### [Self-Hosting Hermes Agent with Matrix E2EE on Proxmox](/blog/self-host-hermes-agent-matrix-e2ee-proxmox)

*   Aug 2, 2026

    ### [The Practical Second Brain: Building an LLM-Operated Markdown Knowledge Graph](/blog/practical-second-brain-llm-markdown-knowledge-graph)

*   Aug 1, 2026

    ### [Building a Second Brain with LLMs and AI Agents](/blog/building-second-brain-llms-ai-agents)


* * *

Liran Tal is the author of the book [Node.js Secure Coding: Defending Against Command Injection Vulnerabilities](https://www.nodejs-security.com/)

[Start Building Secure Node.js Applications ↗](https://www.nodejs-security.com/)

 [![](/_astro/nodejs-secure-coding-book-3d-style.DiTWpzFs_Z3c7s1.png)](https://www.nodejs-security.com/)