Ugh day today. I made a lot of progress, but I had to sacrifice writing for something a little more urgent and important today.
BACKGROUND: I developed a system to take all the sales reports I receive each month and aggregate them into a single database so I can run reporting to see what’s selling, where, etc. I accomplish this through Microsoft Excel macros.
It’s a little complicated, but I outline the process in my book, The Author Income Problem: https://www.authorlevelup.com/theauthorincomeproblem. It’s a tiny little book but it has a lot of information in it.
Anyway, I prefer this method because it gives me the most flexibility and keeps my data private unlike some of the browser extension solutions that exist right now.
I’ve been needing to update my sales report macros for about the last year, and I’ve been putting it off because I developed minor workarounds.
My current programmer is ill and may not return so I am having to hire someone new. Kind of a PITA honestly but that’s an occupational risk you take.
What am I getting updated?
ACX recently updated their sales report to include an extra column which completely screwed up my macro. D2D also did something similar. Google Play Reports now include a breakdown of ebook vs. audiobook. Findaway Voices now has a proper report that is much, much better than what they used to have. IngramSpark also improved their reporting recently. So, all very minor stuff, but it’s a lot of little stuff.
Overall, it’s going to cost me about $300 for these updates, which is actually quite cost effective. I paid about $300 back in 2020 and these updates lasted me over 2 years, so I actually only paid about $150/year. These updates should last me at least another 1.5 to 2 years.
If you pay for Scribecount for example, you pay $20/mo if you earn more than $1000/month. That’s $240/year. And your data is stored on a server somewhere and can be hacked. I’m not saying Scribecount is bad—I actually like the service a lot. But the point stands.
All my sales data is private and local to my computer, and of course backed up and encrypted. I like that a lot better, even though it does require a little more work and upkeep. But when it works flawlessly, it works flawlessly, and very fast.
It’s by no means perfect and it’s not for the faint of heart, but I get to control my data on my terms and I can customize the reporting any way I want.
Anyway, I need to go write so this won’t be a zero word count day. Have a great night.
YTD Word Count: 202,750
Plan: 1,252,000
Words Left to Write 1,049,250
Words Over/-Under Plan: 21,250
Days Ahead/-Behind: 7.73
Projected Annual Word Count: 1,121,269
Projected Decade Word Count: 11,212,689
Deadline: 12/31/2023
Days to Go Until 12/31/23: 424
Word Count Average: 3,072
