Blogger: Rachel Kent
Location: Books & Such main office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
What’s in your files?
An author should be able to open up his or her files (typically in a filing cabinet) and find a bunch of information. Here’s what I suggest you keep:
1) Copies of all of your royalty statements and sales figures.
You should be able to pull these out for each book to get an idea of how well your book is doing, and also you need to include sales figures in future proposals. It’s a good idea to create an Excel chart with title, publisher, date of publication, and the most current number of copies sold.
2) Check stubs for all royalty checks.
Believe me, you need these for taxes. 🙂
3) Copies of contracts and contract addendum.
Make a copy of your contracts for yourself when you sign them and keep them on file for reference.
4) Copies of marketing plans given to you by the publisher.
Check these frequently to see if there’s something you could be doing to help the publisher get the best results from the marketing they’re doing. For instance, if you know the publisher is running an advertisement with your book featured in a magazine or on a website, invite people to check it out on your Facebook page or blog. Even if your fans don’t go look, you’re still obtaining exposure for your book without directly saying, “Go buy my book.”
5) Copies of reviews from your books.
These reviews can be included in future proposals and promotions. A quote from a great review might end up on future book covers. Even if a review is really nasty, keep it, maybe in a different file folder. It’s important to look at bad reviews now and again to learn from them, and you never know what they might mean to you 20 years down the road. Maybe you see it as a nasty review now, but give yourself some distance, and it might become more meaningful.
6) Fan letters that were “gems.”
These letters can provide encouragement and laughs. Author Debbie Macomber has some really cute ones that she shares when she speaks at writers’ conferences. Keep some of your own for days of discouragement.
7) Receipts from business expenses.
These are also important to keep for taxes. If you make any money from writing in a given year, you can write off all of your writing-related expenses. Plus you can go for a specified number of years developing your craft and submitting projects without earning any money and still write off expenses. (Talk to a tax accountant to gather the specifics.)
Did I miss anything?
I’m married to an insurance guy. Several years ago I discovered that if I used my home for any writing related-purpose where someone could possibly be injured (for instance, if I do retreats at my home, or if someone could come by the house to pick up copies of books–anything where a person doing business with me would be on the premises of our property) I need to consult with the agent who writes my homeowner’s insurance to make sure I’m covered for that possibility.
In addition, check with your agent about any liability insurance you might or might not have concerning the content of your writing. (I for instance write things that make people really mad.)
So the rider or specifics about that would have to be in my records too so I could quickly find it.
Latayne C Scott
http://www.latayne.com
Great post. 🙂 I didn’t know about the tax write-off for someone in the developing/submission stage… Bring on the spreadsheet!
Great advice, Rachel. Even though I’m not at this stage yet, it’s much easier to start with a good system in place than to try to go back and organize after the fact. I’ll definitely be using this info!
I wonder if it makes more sense to group such files by title (in other words, having all files related to a particular book grouped together in the cabinet), or to keep all contracts together, all marketing plans together, etc. Or maybe some combination of the two?
Rachel, this is a terrific series of posts-so helpful. I plan to keep them–in a file, of course. 🙂
I’m not yet published, but this is another one of those blog posts that I’m going to save in my favorites. It’s not all about book signings, Amazon reviews, and fairy dust, eh?
Taxes. *Sigh* Even in in the topsy-turvy world of publishing/writing, one can count on taxes.
Thank you for your help, to all of the agents at Books & Such for sharing these last 4 posts. When I first started learning about publishing, this website was one of the first I came to. And I’ve been learning a lot from ya’ll ever since.
~Britt Mitchell
Oh, I also meant to say that rejections can be good reads at conferences, too.
~Britt Mitchell
http://brittmitchell.blogspot.com/
Lindsay, I think the system used for filing really depends on the author. I think I would have a file for each book and have dividers or sub-folders inside the main file.
This might work for some, but not for others.
Great advice. I use spreadsheets to track everything related to a project and it is great to have the info at your finger tips.
Thanks
Thanks Rachel for such insightful ideas. I would also like to add that you might consider scanning your contracts and saving them in a folder on your personal computer and perhaps on an office website. In case of fire or the sudden crash of a computer occurs, then your important documents are still accessible online at the office site you have stored them.
For reader e-mails and blog reviews, I have Word documents set up. I copy and paste the letter, name, email or URL, and date. It takes almost no time at all, and I’ve gotten a nice routine. Read email or review, copy & paste into document, respond.
Now that I have two books out, I have had to subdivide my hard copy files – reviews Book 1, reviews Book 2, marketing Book 1, marketing Book 2, etc.
Rachel – thanks for a very useful series! Maybe not as glamorous as “How to Tweet Your Way to the Bestseller List” but way more important.