Keeping Records--veinglory My thought for the day is this: keep records.

I have always been bad at this but recently I started to both archive and print out and file sales reports, royalty payment receipts, contracts, extensions and any other important emails and documents. You never know what you might want to write off against taxes, so also keep receipts.

My thinking is firstly that it is important to preserve information and not rely too much on a single computer or email provider. Computers and online service providers--unlike elephants--will suddenly and catastrophically forget things.

Archiving and printing these documents also reminds me of things. Which publisher has the best terms? Which has the best sales? Which pays the most reliably? When are books going to outside distributors and are they selling well there? Are promo efforts resulting in sales upticks?

And finally, even the best epress typically has a hundreds of authors and thousands of books. Eventually mistakes will be made and we should be able to catch at least some of them. For example are the royalty payments consistent with the sales figures? Have expired contracts been properly terminated or renewed?

And finally, nobody expects things to go wrong, but when they do it is important to have proof. When were you last paid, for how many copies, from what source? What was in the contract, what was said in email and by whom?

So my questions is, what records do you keep and how do you keep them safe?  ¶ posted at 6:06 PM by Emily Veinglory