There's more to being a writer than just words -- especially in today's cut throat market. An author is expected to promote their own material. The easy way out is to hire a publicity firm to do the dirty work of selling for you. A valid option . . . but an expensive one. So most authors I know opt to slap on a graphic design hat and wing their way through hacking up a few ads on Facebook or Twitter or what have you. Thank God for web sites that make that a hair easier.

Normally I use Canva. It's an intuitive site to create sweet ads or invitations or whatever it is you want. It's free. It's easy. I love it. But (and I've always got a big but) the problem is I've exhausted a lot of their standard freebies. I could pay for more elaborate or new graphics, but my marketing budget is about as big as my new shoes budget. Translation: not much. I've tried other sites, but most of them are confusing or the learning curve is just too great for me to devote that much time to. So I've been using Canva simply by default.

Until today.

Recently I received an email request asking me to review a new graphic site. I put it off because I am crazy busy with deadlines, but I finally got around to playing with it today. Whoa baby. Canva just met it's match.

Allow me to introduce you to the new kid on the graphics block: FotoJet. Here are the pros and cons as compared to Canva . . .

Pros:

• New templates to play with
• A photo editor
• A photo collage creator
• Easy and intuitive to use, quite reminiscent of Canva

Cons:

• No infographic templates (would really love to see a site include this)
• Not as many ad /social media templates to choose from as Canva

Here's what I created in the space of a half hour:

Overall I think FotoJet is an awesome tool to put in your writerly tool box. You know you're going to have to promote, you might as well make it easy on yourself and give this one a whirl.