The reasons for keeping all your book/series info in one easy-to-access place are many. From giveaways, newsletter swaps, uploads to services...the list goes on and on.
As your list grows, the info-tracking can get unwieldy, but if you're organized from the beginning, you'll be in much better shape as your list grows. And if you're already deep in the trenches, it's never too late to bring some order to your life.
For the last few years, I've used Google Drive to track my info, but have recently moved to Airtable. Let's take a look at both services, so you can choose which one suits you best.
Google Drive
In Google Drive, create a Book folder if you haven't one already.
Track Book Info:
Start a document and name it, creatively, "Book Info." (Google documents work similarly to Word documents, so this isn't rocket science.)
Add the title of your series, highlight it and click on the arrow in the styles box in the toolbar. Hint: by default it will say "Normal text". Choose Heading 1.
Beneath that, add your book title, highlight it, and choose Heading 2 from the styles menu.
Here's what to add:
ASIN
Price
Goodreads
Vendor Links
Affiliate Links
Book Description
Now you'll have a clickable table of contents in the sidebar, with the info in a document on the right. :)
Track Finances:
Create a spreadsheet to track your sales and inventory.
Create a Sheet for Monthly Sales
You can track all your books on one sheet, or create new sheets for each book
Inventory
Series Sell-Through
Events
Cost vs. Profit
Use formulas to calculate your totals, so you can track your progress as you go along. I'm not a good math person, but I'm sure you can find some great trackers that'll help you.
Airtable
Thanks to an awesome writer friend, I'm totally in love with Airtable and moving more and more things there.
In Airtable, create a base for your book data. I called mine Catalog. I just realized I actually named mine CATALOGUE—a leftover from my Canadian days. 😜
Track all the same info, but in this case, you can create tables with your book info, and your sales info all in one base. Supercool!
The above image/base has three tables: 1) Book info, 2) Monthly Sales, and 3) Royalties.
I also love how I can view my catalog as "cards" by using the Gallery view:
You can make whatever you want to see viewable on the cards. For instance, if you want to look at this gallery view and see at a glance how much money that book has made for you in its lifetime, you can set that up, too!
I also use Airtable to track all my "book bible" stuff. Each book gets its own "base" and I can track whatever is important for that book--from characters to magic spells to monsters and more. The sky's the limit! Scratch that--your imagination is the limit!
In case you were wondering, I haven't yet hit the paywall with Airtable. At some point I expect to have to start to pay for the service, but so far, it's all been free. Free is good. I like free. :)
I hope you found this helpful! What methods do you use to track all your bookish info?
