Time Savers for Writers
By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Frequently I find that I need the same information over and over again for a wide variety of different tasks. I might be signing up to have my book considered for translation, or pitching BookBub, or submitting my book to a library for consideration. I spent a lot of time looking the same information up online over and over again.
I finally realized that I would save myself a good deal of time if I compiled these things into a document that I could easily put my hands on…and do it for all of my books.
Amazon Affiliate links for all books in digital and print form. I’m an Amazon Affiliate, which means that when a reader clicks on one of my tracking links to get to my books on Amazon, I get a small commission based on what they buy when they’re on the site. It’s a passive way to make a little money. For a while, I was plugging in my book’s links into the Amazon Affiliate link generator, copying the link, and putting it wherever I needed to list it (Wattpad, Facebook, etc.)
Now I’ve got a document on my computer with each book’s print and ebook Amazon Affiliate link. I can just pull up the document and copy-paste it. It’s especially a time saver when I need to list all of my books (like in the backs of my Kindle ebooks).
ISBNs and their corresponding books, if we use ISBNs. Same principle, here. Sometimes libraries and other sites will ask me for ISBN numbers and I was having to look them up on either retailer sites or on Bowker’s site. This has saved me a good deal of time lately.
Bios. I need different types of bios for different types of things. Sometimes I’ll guest blog on a site that needs a short bio. Sometimes I need a micro bio (for sites like Twitter). Sometimes I need something long if I’m speaking at a library and they want something to put in their program.
Keywords for series. When I’m uploading a book, I can quickly pull up the keywords that I used for the other books in the series. Keywords are something that need to be tweaked later, but at least when I’m uploading the book, I’ve got good keywords to start out with.
Lecture notes: libraries, writers’ groups, schools. I tend to talk about similar things when I’m asked to speak at libraries, schools, and conferences. By saving my notes and PDFs of my PowerPoints, I make life a lot easier for myself when I’m asked to speak.
Tax info: write-offs, subscriptions, ads, supplies, cover design/formatting, website hosting costs, domain costs, literary agent fees, tools like Feedly Pro, Hootsuite, home office costs, postage costs, mileage, conferences.
Book descriptions. There are many times when I’m submitting my book for something (most recently AmazonCrossings) and they ask for my book description. I’ve found it helps to have all of my descriptions in one play.
Book covers. I used to file my covers in the folder with the rest of the book documents (drafts, formatted epubs, mobi files, etc.), which does make sense. But it also makes sense to have these covers in a folder together when I need them (and I tend to need them a lot for creating ads, uploading my information to sites, etc.)
How-tos. I use my own instructions for things that I’ve figured out to refer to later: MailChimp giveaways, SoundCloud, box set formatting, etc. It takes so long, sometimes, for me to figure out something that I want to avoid the time suck of figuring it out again…and just make a cheat sheet for myself.
Speaking of cheat sheets: I also keep cheat sheets of my book plots, characters, etc. This has saved me a few times when book clubs have asked me to speak on a book that I wrote years ago.
Book bible: I’ll go ahead and list this here because it’s a time saver, in a way, too. Whenever I give a detail about a character’s past or their likes or dislikes, etc., I list it in a book bible to refer to whenever I’m writing a new book in a series. This is a good way to avoid continuity errors in later books in our series (and readers do catch them!)
Back matter: I’ve already mentioned above that I keep a list of my books that are hyperlinked to Amazon Affiliate links in a document. But I also keep other back matter: my bio, a call to action to sign up for my author newsletter, etc. in a document. This helps me remember the different elements I like to include in this important section of my book.
These are some of the things that I keep track of to help me save a minute here and there (especially when I was feeling scattered). Do you do this too? What types of things do you keep track of and document?
Keeping records and organizing docs can save writers time:
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Image: MorgueFile: Dianne Hope
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