I came up with a killer idea to help me manage my books today, and it was 100% free.
A few days ago, I logged into my KDP dashboard and noticed that Amazon had flagged one of my books due to a broken external link. It was easily fixed, no big deal. This sort of thing happens. The link in question was to a website that changed the page name. Nothing I could have done and no way I could have known. Or IS THERE a way I could have known and prevented this from happening?
However, it got me thinking—I can’t control links. Sure, I can control the links to my site, but any external link I make is liable to break at some point. That’s why I try to avoid linking to stuff unless it’s absolutely necessary.
I got the idea to create a master link depository—a spreadsheet that contains all the links in all of my books, filterable by book and type of link (external/internal). Fortunately, the free tool Calibre can get you a .CSV of all the links in your book in seconds. Using this feature, I compiled all the links in all of my books in about an hour and a half.
Looking at an Excel sheet of all the links in my books really opened my eyes to a few things—some of my CTA links were inconsistent. In one series, I was sometimes linking to my website to buy the next book, and sometimes to Books2Read. In another book, I discovered a super old Bit.ly link I was no longer using. In other words, I spotted things that I missed during my originally quality checks. The good news was that all the links were valid—my quality checks ensured that—but the inconsistency and old links bothered me. It gave me a punchlist of items to correct, which I did post-haste today.
With all of my links in one Excel sheet, I wrote an Excel macro that checks all the links and lets me know if they’re valid. I can now run macro this once a year to determine if any links broke. Every time I publish a new book, I can add new links to the spreadsheet. Just takes a few seconds.
But, my point is that links break all the time and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Some examples:
- What if a former book cover designer goes out of business and I don’t realize it because you don’t work with them anymore? (But you linked to their books on your copyright page)?
- What if something breaks on my website, taking a bunch of my page links with it?
- What if I redo my website and forget about a rogue page that I linked to in one of my books?
- What if a service I recommend in one of my books is acquired and therefore the domain is no longer valid?
Again, my best practice is to avoid linking unless absolutely possible. But external links always come with risk. This will help me control that risk moving forward.
In seconds, I can know if any broken links exist in any of my 66 titles…without having to open any of the books in Vellum or hunt for where they are. Wow—there’s so much available to help us manage our books that’s already on our computers for free.
I keep saying that Calibre is one of the best, most underrated tools for authors on the Internet. It’s a must-have for Indies. It would literally blow your mind what I can do with this app. Maybe I’ll put a Calibre course on my to-do list. Any takers….?
Anyway, this topic is more important than you think. Retailers are within their rights to refuse one of your books if the links go bad. If that happens, even on a book that has been for sale for a while, that could be pretty awful to have it removed from sale, especially if you’re dead. Your heirs might not even find out about it until it’s too late, especially if they don’t know how to command your publishing business. And then, will they know how to fix it….?
I’d argue that coming up with a smart link strategy is one of the best ways you can ensure your book doesn’t have any quality issues in the future. For novels, this really isn’t a problem as you’ll mostly be linking to your website, maybe your editor or designer’s websites. But nonfiction authors have to be careful here.
Another thing I’ve done is encode external links into Pretty Links so that if a link breaks, I can fix it on my website versus reuploading the book. You can go overboard with this, and it’s a lot of extra work, but probably worth it in the long run.
Anyhoo, I got the link situation locked up and my portfolio is looking really, really good.
This kind of stuff is not sexy nor is it fun. But creating a well-managed estate of IP is incredibly important to me. I want a reputation of having well-managed IP. That increases the value of everything I create. It does so in many subtle ways that add up:
- When all of my books have a set pricing strategy in each currency, they present better to readers, increasing my sales.
- When all of my books have valid links and no quality errors, readers don’t get distracted by little stuff.
- When all of my production elements are tracked and documented (licenses for stock images, for example, or contracts with editors or cover designers), then that protects me from any misunderstandings that might arise in the future.
- A well-managed estate is easier for heirs to take over when you die, therefore keeping your books in print and in circulation for much longer. Think about it: when you die, your books will decompose with you unless you take steps to stop that from happening.
Anyhoo…
I got the cover for Indie Author Confidential Vol. 7 finally done, so I’ll be publishing it tomorrow, with an announcement to come probably Friday.
I also got some more planning done for the Microsoft Word macro course.
Also got hardcover proofs back for my Android X Complete series book. Can’t wait to get that into hardcover. My designer is now working on a hardcover for the Moderation Online series. A lot of really cool stuff is in the pipeline right now.
