Software to Manage Your Submissions: The Ink Byte Tracker
Steve Beisner -- December 1, 2006
Writers, whether they pen short stories, poems, novels, how-to articles, memoirs, plays, screenplays, self-help books, creative non-fiction, history, songs, or even jokes, all must sell their work. For most of us that means submissions, lots of submissions... and rejections, lots of rejections. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone handle it for you? The Ink Byte Tracker software won't do all the work, but it will make the process into an easy routine. In addition, it can help you extract useful information from that mountain of rejection slips, information that will make you smarter about what you submit, to whom you submit, and when. Oh, by the way, Ink Byte Tracker is free software.
You don't have to hang around writers for very long before they start taking about publishers, agents, editors of journals, and rejections. It's not uncommon for even good writers to have a piece which gets submitted dozens, or even a hundred times before it finds a home... or the writer gives up.
If you've submitted a growing number of creative works to a largish collection of markets you've probably experienced moments of confusion or information overload. The Ink Byte Tracker can turn the chaos of your sales efforts into a source of information that will help you plan how to do a better job of getting things published. The problems are the same no matter what kind of writing you produce and where you try to sell it, but for an example let's assume you've got a stack of short stories that you're sending out and you've compiled a list of literary journals and magazines that might conceiveably be interested in your work.
Here are some things you might want to know:
- How many OPEN submissions do I have? What are they?
- What journals or markets have bought this kind of material from me in the past?
- Where have I already submitted Story ABC?
- Have I submitted anything to Journal XYZ recently?
- Who was that editor who told me last year that even though he was rejecting Story ABC, he liked my work and would like to see more?
- What were my most recent 25 submissions?
- What stories have I submitted to Journal BBB in the past?
- How long has it been since I sold a story to Magazine AAA?
You can always dig out answers to these sorts of questions if you keep good manual records, but even then it will be work, and the problem gets harder the longer you write because finding the answers means sorting through a growing mound of records in different ways. Pretty soon that mound of submissions and rejections begins to look like Mount Everest.
Ink Byte Tracker
If you're familiar with computers you've no doubt run into software, perhaps in a business office, to deal with this kind of problem. The solutions range from simple spreadsheets that can be sorted in various ways to full blown database management systems with sophisticated query systems.
Tracker is different. It does one thing well. Once it's installed on your computer (either Apple or Windows) you don't need to know anything special to use it. Tracker is designed so that you don't have to re-enter information that's already in the system. For example, once you've submitted an article to a particular magazine, you never have to type the magazine's name or the article's title again.
Instructions and help messages appear in Tracker's windows as necessary, so you shouldn't need to interrupt what you're doing to try to find help in a separate manual or online help system. (Though we provide those resources, as well!)
Tracker is easy to understand: you record your submissions and the actions (acceptance, rejection, etc.) that result from submissions. You generate reports and summaries from the information you've previously entered, selecting what you want to see from a menu of choices.
There are just four kinds of "things" that Tracker keeps track of: Works, Markets, Submissions and Actions.
- A Work is a novel, a short story, a poem, an article, a book, a script -- any creative work that you want to submit, e.g. for publication, etc.
- A Market is some person or organization you might submit to: a literary journal, an agent, a publisher, the editor of an anthology, etc.
- A Submission is created when you summit a specific Work to a specific Market. A Submission will have Actions associated with it.
- An Action is a single event in the lifetime of a Submission. Generally the first Action of a Submission will occur when you first contact a Market, sending them your Work, mailing them a query letter, etc. After that there may be any number of Actions that you may want to record, including phone conversations, letters, meetings, etc. Generally, the last Action for a Submission is either an acceptance or a rejection.
Getting and Installing Ink Byte Tracker
The Ink Byte Tracker can be downloaded from the Ink Byte Software Page. There are two versions: one for Apple computers and one for Windows. The software is free, part of Ink Byte's commitment to help fellow writers.
Installation is easy, but if the idea intimidates you, ask someone who is more comfortable with such things to help you with the installation.
Installing on Apple: After downloading the Apple install package, tracker-XX-YY.dmg, from the Ink Byte web site, double click on the file to open it in the Finder. Then drag the program, from the Finder window to the /Applications folder. Start the program as you would any other by opening the /Applications folder and double clicking on the Tracker icon. (Warning: Tracker has only been tested on Apple's OS-X version 10.4 and later.)
Installing on Windows: After downloading the Windows install package wxTracker-XX-YY.exe, double click on the executable file to unpack the self-extracting archive. Before proceeding with the unpacking process, the program will allow you to specify a folder where the wxTracker-XX-YY folder will be placed; be sure to select a folder that you can find easily. Putting it directly into the C:\Program Files folder is a good choice, since that's the preferred place for software. To start Tracker, double-click on the file Tracker.exe found inside the wxTracker-XX-YY folder. Depending on how you have your personal copy of windows configured, you may or may not be able to see the '.exe' in the file name. You may want to create a shortcut to Tracker.exe on your desktop.
Using Ink Byte Tracker
The key advice I'd give anyone beginning to use Tracker is to spend thirty minutes just playing: invent the names of some works and some markets, create submissions (and actions) for them, look at the reports that can be generated from the "Reports" menu. The images of the screens shown below may look complicated, but that's because they offer context sensitive help to explain what you're seeing. The idea behind the program is very simple: You track the Submission of a Work to a Market by entering the information as directed by the on-screen instructions.
Once you've spent a few minutes playing with the program, you can create a new "for real" database using the menu selection, "File | New". Oh... don't forget to save your database after you've entered new information: that's menu item "File | Save" or "File | Save As ...".
Submissions Tab
The first time you run tracker it will ask for your name and some other information. Next it will open the main tracker window with a new empty database file. As you use Tracker you will populate the database with Works, Markets, and Submissions. You will save the database before exiting, each time you use the program.
After you have used a database and you restart Tracker, the previously active database will be automatically reloaded. But you can always work on an alternative database (perhaps you have one for short stories, another for essays) by opening a database from the menu, "File | Open".
When Tracker starts, the main window will show the Submissions Tab, the most important of the three pages, other two being the Works Tab and the Market Tab. You switch between these by clicking one on the "tabs" near the center top of the main window.
Most of your activity will be in the Submissions Tab. When anything interesting happens with respect to a submission (a letter from an agent, a sale, a rejection), you'll select the submission and use the "Add Action" button to add a new action recording the event. If the event changes the status of the submission make sure you double click on the submissions status field and change the status appropriately.
Works Tab
Remember that a Submission consists of a particular Work submitted to a particular Market. Although you can do pretty much everything from the Submissions Tab, you may want to introduce the Works and Markets of interest using the Works and Markets Tabs before using the Submissions Tab.
The image of the Works Tab, shows where you can enter a new Work into the system, when the time comes that you are going to be submitting it various consumers (i.e. markets).
Markets Tab
The image of the Markets Tab shows, in a way similar to the Works Tab, how you can enter information about markets, i.e. journals, agents, publishers, etc. that you will be sending your work to.
Reports
There is a lot of information captured in your database. Under the Reports menu you will find a list of reports that Tracker can generate for you from the information contained in the database. Currently, the following report types are defined.
- Submissions by ID # -- Each submission is assigned an ID Number when it is created. Since these numbers are in increasing order, listing submissions by ID Number shows them in the order they were created. This report is handy if you also keep a paper file of submissions documents. If you do, then it makes sense to scribble the Submission ID Number on the paper documents so you can tie them back to your Tracker system.
- Submissions By Market -- This report allows your to group together all the submissions you've sent to a particular market, so you can answer such questions as, "Have I submitted anything to Journal XYZ recently?," "What stories have I submitted to Journal BBB in the past?," and "How long has it been since I sold a story to Magazine AAA?"
- Submissions by Work -- This report allows you to look at the history and answer questions about a particular work's submissions.
- Open Submissions -- This report lists only submissions that are whose status is OPEN.
Reports are generated as HTML documents and are automatically displayed in your computer's default Internet Browser. From there you can save the report or print it. We know there are more reports that would be useful to some people. Give us your suggestions and we'll do our best to satisfy your requirements in upcoming releases of Tracker.
Making It Better
Tracker is free software. Your only obligation is to help us improve it by telling us about any problems you encounter, and to give us your suggestions for how we might improve it. Email, including bug reports, can be sent to us at editor@inkbyte.com.
- Tell us what operating system and version you're using. For Windows that might be "Windows 98," "Windows ME," "Windows NT 4.0," "Window XP Home Edition," and so on. For Apple that might be "OS-X 10.2," OS-X 10.4," etc.
- As clearly as you can, tell us about the problem you encountered, and as much as you can about what led up to the problem. If we can reproduce the problem ourselves, it's a cinch to fix.
- Use the menu selection, "Edit | Show Log File" to display the error and debug log in a web browser window. Using "Copy and Paste," include the log file in your email -- this often can provide us with the clues we need to fix the problem.
Acknowledgements
Ink Byte Tracker was authored by Steve Beisner. With her impressive volume of submissions Melinda Palacio assisted in prototype testing. Jocelyn Kremer performed world class testing and review of the design and the user interface. Tracker was implemented with 100% open software: the Python programming language and the wxPython GUI toolkit.
This is the first release of Ink Byte Tracker. We have tested the software on both Apple and Window's computers. The Ink Byte editors have used Tracker for the better part of a year for their own work. However, there may be some undiscovered bugs lurking about. Please do your part to help us make Tracker bug-free. Email us with problems and suggestions, as described above.