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Just Released! – TrackerBox

Since I finished the draft of Questioner’s Shadow, I’ve been working on some software to track my book sales. The problem, of course, is that I’m selling my books in multiple places, but each place has its own format for reporting sales, and it’s quite frustrating to try to load them into a single spreadsheet to try to get any idea of what’s going on.

Thus, I wrote TrackerBox, and I’ve released it so that others suffering the same problems I am can have a solution to their problems.

TrackerBox imports data from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, CreateSpace and ARe. As soon as I get sample spreadsheets from other vendors, I will add them and put out an update.

TrackerBox handles multiple authors and pen names. Other solutions I’ve seen don’t.

TrackerBox can sort and group data by any column, and has easy to understand charts that give you an idea of what’s happening without having to look at lots of numbers.

And, just like with StoryBox, I will update TrackerBox as fast as humanly possible if problems are found. Some of you know that I’ve turned around StoryBox issues in less than a day.

TrackerBox is available at StoryBoxSoftware.com and has a 45 day free trial. It requires Windows XP SP3, Vista, or Windows 7, and the Microsoft .Net 4.0 Framework (a download link to the framework is on the TrackerBox download page).

Software

TrackerBox

This week, I’ve been working on a tool for tracking my book sales across all the sites I sell through. It’s been a fun break from writing, but I’m itchy to get back to working on the next Wizard’s Work book. However, I can’t stop working on the tool until it’s done.

I really want to get it to a finished state, which will hopefully be sometime early this week. We shall see. It’s already taken me longer than I wanted it to. Finishing software is hard.

Anyway, I will be selling this tool. It currently imports data from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and CreateSpace. If you would be interested in this tool, but have sales reports from other sites that it currently doesn’t support, email me a sample report to the StoryBox support email and I’ll make sure it gets in.

I should have more information about the tool, soon.

Fragments, Questioner's Shadow, Writing

Questioner’s Shadow Draft Finished!

With 4200 words today, I tagged the end on to Questioner’s Shadow. It feels good to have it in the bag. For the past three weeks, I’ve wondered if I’d get there, and now, I’m there.

You’ll notice, if you were playing along at home, that it’s a little shorter than the length I’d estimated, but the target numbers on the progress bar are always a guess. I’m not writing to a length. I’m trying to guess the size of the story from some very fudgy data. The fact that I came within 1500 words is awesome to me.

What’s next?

It’ll sit alone in the StoryBox kettle for a couple weeks to cure, and then I’ll pull it out and start working it into shape, adding whatever I missed, and basically trying to sort out any really egregious errors. Then, I’ll send it to my readers, and a month later, they’ll return it with all my failings pointed out. I’ll fix the problems they show me, and then I’ll work on publishing it. If all goes well, a few months from now, you’ll be able to read it in its final form.

During that time, I’ll be working on the draft of Fragments – the second book of A Wizard’s Work. I’m excited to get to work on it.

Now, off to watch a movie or something and relax.

Questioner's Shadow, Shattered, Writing

Shattered Paperback Now at Amazon!

2 Comments

Now you can get the Shattered paperback from Amazon.

I don’t have much else to say today because I have to go get some tires changed, but you can see that I’m making progress on Questioner’s Shadow. I started Act 3 yesterday. It’s all downhill from here, I hope.

What that means is that I get to start on Fragments, the sequel to Shattered, soon. Maybe early June.

Off to get the tires changed.

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 1.3.109 Released (Critical Update)

Please update to 1.3.109. I found a bug today that I thought I had fixed, but it turned out worse than I thought. I’ve fixed it, and you really should update to this build as I don’t know when I introduced it. I’m certain it goes back at least as far as the .106 build.

The problem had to do with rearranging documents in the document tree. Their order wouldn’t get updated correctly in the project, causing potential conflicts when viewing index cards or outlines.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm