Someone asked me to do a recap of lessons I learned from the month I spent doing QA checks. I thought it was a great idea. I’m writing a book about it, but it might be helpful for people reading the blog.
To summarize, for the last month, I spent almost every day checking my books to make sure everything was OK. This included but was not limited to:
- making sure the right version of the book was published
- the book was set at the right price in all formats in all currencies
- the book had the proper version of the book description published
- fixing any broken links or formatting quirks that popped up since original publication
- and more
But I did NOT go through and fix typos. I only focused on the packaging and quality issues.
I have 67 books, which is a lot more than the average author, so it’s a smart strategy to check in on my books every now and again because things happen.
Here are the lessons I learned from going through my books:
#1: It takes a lot of time, but not as much time as it will take if you don’t do it. It took me a lot of time to document everything and get my affairs in order. I did things willy-nilly or by whim most of the time over these last seven years, so much that the way I saved my files and documented things was haphazard. However, it took me a month to do this, but that’s way better than not doing it at all and spending a lifetime suffering.
Case in point: I used the service Elance regularly before it became Upwork. Well, when that merger happened, they deleted all of the Elance project data. So if I needed an old receipt or documents from my editor for my earliest books that I contracted for on Elance, those are gone to time. Completely gone, with no way to get them back. Lesson learned. That’s why you document everything immediately, before your book goes into production. This way, if you ever have a question on who did something, how much you paid, or what your editor might have said about a certain character, it’s all there for you.
My point is that I should have done this when I had 10 books, but I’m glad I did it now instead of at 100 books. It’s never too early but also never too late.
#2: Shit happens to your books after a while. If you have external links in your books that don’t go to your website, those things break over time. I had an entire book FULL of broken links because I made the rookie mistake of linking to random blogs, podcasts, news sites, and more. Six years later, all those links are broken. Where did they go? No idea. I don’t care how careful you are with producing your books—links can and will break eventually. You have to check them periodically or you can end up with bad reviews if you’re not careful.
Also, even links on your site will break. I upgraded my WordPress theme in 2016, hated the theme, and so I switched back to my old theme in late 2017. Well, I had a special bonus link in one of my books that went to a page on my site. Because I changed the WordPress theme, it broke the page and I didn’t realize it. That damn page had been broken since 2017!!!!!
This exercise taught me to be extremely careful with links. And I was careful before because I thought I had learned my lessons. The reality was that I had no idea.
#3: Mistakes happen when you upload. There’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll accidentally type the wrong price in Australian dollars, for example. Don’t be too hard on yourself. The key is learning how to catch it early.
#4: Document all your licenses. Any time you get a design from a designer, make sure that you know what stock media and fonts they use. If they won’t or can’t tell you, they’re a bad designer and you potentially have a copyright infringement exposure. Thank God I was smart enough to get that info early in my career, but I wasn’t always consistent about it.
#4: I learned that saving my books in multiple formats is a smart idea, but Vellum doesn’t exactly make that easy. You get an export to PDF and ePUB, but what happens if those files get corrupted? Nope, make sure you save a .DOCX version of all your books and keep that in your records.
#5: My file backup strategy continues to pay massive dividends. I use Backblaze to back up all my work in the cloud and on my computer. This way, if anything happens to them, I can always access a backup. Even more, I can access previous versions of my backups. Back up your work!!!!
#6: I spent a lot of time moving my books to a versioning system, but it’s going to be very, very good for me in the long run. For example, if you now look at the copyright page of any of my books, you’ll see a “Version X.X” on the page. This tells me which version of the book is in production. I can now tell immediately if the WRONG version of a book is published somewhere. There were several instances where Apple did not publish the version I sent it, and I had to reach out to support. If I hadn’t done my QA checks, I would have never known. Imagine fixing a bunch of typos or formatting issues, and then running a promo, only to find that you sold a bunch of copies of the WRONG version. Tall glass of nope…
Next, you’ll see versions on all my book descriptions at the end. This also helps me manage those. Same risk.
I keep track of all my versioning. It’s a few extra steps, but I always know the date uploaded and version a book should be on, and that’s powerful. I also keep a small log that describes in general what changes I made. Frankly, this should be something that all major writing apps offer. It’s a shame that I have to create something like this myself.
#7: The Achilles heel in my workflow up until now was that I never followed up after publishing my books. I’m very much a “get it done and move on” person, but that spells trouble. Moving forward, I have added a step in my publishing workflow to follow-up and do a quick QA check on my new books at all retailers. This check is a calendar reminder that hits my inbox approximately 4 days after publication, so that it gives the book enough time to be published everywhere. If I had done this to start, I probably would have had fewer issues.
#8: Almost no one provides any information on international pricing. Ask “What’s the best range to price my book in India?” And people will look at you funny. It’s a huge gap we have in our community. How do you know if you’re pricing a book too high or too low in an international currency? You don’t, especially if your books aren’t selling. So all you have is a guess.
But the important thing is to educate yourself and go in with a strategy. I have a currency worksheet that maps different currencies to USDs, so that when I’m uploading my books, I can remember what the corresponding currency is.
Over the years, I’ve probably underpriced my books in the UK, Japan and India, so I increased the book prices there. I dropped my prices in other currencies. So I tried to rebalance my currency strategy and we’ll see how it goes. But the key is that I have a strategy. I don’t know many who do, even among professional writers.
#9: Being organized has so many benefits. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow, at least your heirs will know how to manage your books. That’s possibly the most valuable thing that came out of this exercise, honestly. Cleaning all this up and documenting what should be and why is the first step in preserving my legacy after I’m gone.
#10: Even when you’re in control, you don’t always know what’s going on with all your books at all times. And you have to be okay with that.
#11: Last year, I created a way to automate my sales reports. In about 30 minutes, I can aggregate all my sales reports for all retailers and see how much I made everywhere. Now that I have a system for managing my IP and making changes, I can make a change and now monitor how it impacts my income, if at all. That’s huge. For example, did my currency strategy update work? Or did I choke off my income in a particular country? I can now monitor that.
#10: Being done feels really good. It feels like I have some control over things again.
Anyhoo, that’s a high level of the lessons I learned. Hope that was entertaining.
Oh, and folks, don’t forget about the NaNoWriMo bundle I’m participating in. Early feedback is that the books are FIRE and people are finding it very helpful for the challenge. 16 books, pay-what-you-want, and some really good advice. www.storybundle.com/nano
