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Manuscript tracking
An anonymous lj user asked me here:
What do you use to track your submissions? I’ve tried lots of home-brewed databases and spreadsheets and have now resorted to one big plain text file, but then my volume is nowhere near yours.
I made my answer here, but decided to elevate it to a post in case anyone else was interested. So, to quote myself:
I use my marketing spreadsheet, linked to at:
http://www.jlake.com/resources/marketing_spreadsheet_blank.xls
It has two panes, one for activity (ie, drafts, sendouts, responses), the other for market tracking. These panes cross-reference manually. The activity pane is also my work diary if I am ever audited by the IRS, while the market tracker keeps me from double submitting, resubmitting, and other such sins.
Posted: 10:03 am Sun January 01 2006 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Chris
February 9th, 2012 at 6:59 pmHi Jay,
Thanks so much for this resource! I have played with the submissions tab and figured out most of its secrets, including how entering an “S” automatically flags a manuscript as “submitted”, and entering any number flags it as the response time for a rejection, coloring the submission red for attention.
What I can’t seem to figure out is how to mark a response time entered as an acceptance, triggering it and the “Sold To” row to turn mountain dew green, nor how you gray out the rows for sold and deprecated manuscripts. If you could illuminate these secrets, I would be in your debt.
Thanks again for the great resource!
-Chris
Jay
February 9th, 2012 at 7:44 pmActually, I move the acceptances up from the submission area by hand, and do the green color by hand. Likewise the gray. I never bothered to automated those. I’m glad it works for you!