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Excel for Writers
Do you want to be a writer? Would you like to be more organized about your writing, but not sure where to start? Then Excel for Writers is the book for you.
It'll walk you through how to use Excel to (1) track your time spent writing and your word count, (2) calculate your potential income with both a trade publishing contract and a short story sale, (3) visually track your short story submission results, (4) use Excel to analyze a multi-viewpoint novel, and (5) much more.
If you have a basic understanding of Excel, this guide will show you the ways you can use Excel to support your writing. Each worksheet includes detailed commentary and step-by-step instructions on how to create your own version. (And if you're self-published then check out Excel for Self-Publishers too.)
It'll walk you through how to use Excel to (1) track your time spent writing and your word count, (2) calculate your potential income with both a trade publishing contract and a short story sale, (3) visually track your short story submission results, (4) use Excel to analyze a multi-viewpoint novel, and (5) much more.
If you have a basic understanding of Excel, this guide will show you the ways you can use Excel to support your writing. Each worksheet includes detailed commentary and step-by-step instructions on how to create your own version. (And if you're self-published then check out Excel for Self-Publishers too.)
- GenresWriting
58 pages, Paperback
Published May 25, 2019
1 person is currently reading
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 13, 2017
Humphrey provides clear and thorough instructions on using Excel to support a writing career without descending into tedious detail. With the first book aimed at authors looking to put their writing on a more structured footing and those seeking to be published by others, and the second aimed at authors seeking to publish their own work, one or both of these books will provide useful support depending on an individual’s career path.
Excel for Writers covers:
Tracking the time spent on writing, and calculating words/hour, time/project, and other basic ratios.
Tracking and comparing time and word-counts on a year-by-year basis.
Projecting possible income from publishing a novel through a traditional publisher and selling short stories to various markets.
Keeping track of short stories written, submissions sent, and any trends in acceptances/rejections.
Breaking down a story visually by chapter or scene to detect possible issues with pacing or over-focus.
Tracking character names
Excel for Self-Publishers covers:
Tracking advertising spending
Recording useful information for all titles published
Collating sales by distributor
An introduction to the Amazon Sales Dashboard and Amazon Reports
Calculating Borrows vs Sales for books enrolled in KDP Select
Calculating Average Customer Value
Tracking AMS Advertising
Comparing potential income from selling a book at various prices
Projecting number of sales needed to pass a certain income threshold.
These books are primarily focused on showing how Excel can be used to do certain tasks rather than why an author might wish to do the task. As such, these books supplement rather than duplicate other books on the business side of writing. That said, Humphrey does provide some thoughts on why they chose to collect or analyse certain data; this is particularly evident in the sections on analysing Amazon sales and borrows, and AMS advertising.
Humphrey states that they are pitched at authors who already have some understanding of Excel and that the reports are built in Excel 2013 so might not work (or display as clearly) in earlier versions. However, both books also include both a clear definition of terms and extensive appendices of methods and commands, and provide instructions for each report in fine detail, so authors with even basic experience of any Excel are likely to find each report easy enough to recreate.
While these works are titled … for Excel, so rely on a number of program-specific formulae, Humphrey includes sufficient explanation of the intent behind a step that authors are likely to be able to reproduce the reports in other office suites (such as Open Office or Libre Office) will a little extra effort.
Indeed, Humphrey mentions several times that the aim behind these books is to provide a perspective on how Excel can be used for the administrative tasks that surround actually writing, rather than to define a single perfect management flow.
Humphrey supports the text with screenshots of (where appropriate) both the spreadsheet with data and the spreadsheet with formulas visible; in addition, many of the larger or more complex spreadsheets also include screenshots of specific segments. While these are likely to reduce the effort authors – especially those of a more visual oriented nature – need to grasp the instructions, the images of reports that are many columns wide or use colour do not display well on all ereaders. However, as any author using these books will running a system with Excel or similar on it so can display the book in an suitable window, this is unlikely to be a significant issue.
Overall, I found these titles both useful and accessible. I recommend them to authors who have used a spreadsheet program in other contexts but are not familiar enough with one to already have created their own set of writing and publishing reports.
I received a free copy of The 2017 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle, which includes both these titles, from one of the contributors with no obligation to review.
Excel for Writers covers:
Tracking the time spent on writing, and calculating words/hour, time/project, and other basic ratios.
Tracking and comparing time and word-counts on a year-by-year basis.
Projecting possible income from publishing a novel through a traditional publisher and selling short stories to various markets.
Keeping track of short stories written, submissions sent, and any trends in acceptances/rejections.
Breaking down a story visually by chapter or scene to detect possible issues with pacing or over-focus.
Tracking character names
Excel for Self-Publishers covers:
Tracking advertising spending
Recording useful information for all titles published
Collating sales by distributor
An introduction to the Amazon Sales Dashboard and Amazon Reports
Calculating Borrows vs Sales for books enrolled in KDP Select
Calculating Average Customer Value
Tracking AMS Advertising
Comparing potential income from selling a book at various prices
Projecting number of sales needed to pass a certain income threshold.
These books are primarily focused on showing how Excel can be used to do certain tasks rather than why an author might wish to do the task. As such, these books supplement rather than duplicate other books on the business side of writing. That said, Humphrey does provide some thoughts on why they chose to collect or analyse certain data; this is particularly evident in the sections on analysing Amazon sales and borrows, and AMS advertising.
Humphrey states that they are pitched at authors who already have some understanding of Excel and that the reports are built in Excel 2013 so might not work (or display as clearly) in earlier versions. However, both books also include both a clear definition of terms and extensive appendices of methods and commands, and provide instructions for each report in fine detail, so authors with even basic experience of any Excel are likely to find each report easy enough to recreate.
While these works are titled … for Excel, so rely on a number of program-specific formulae, Humphrey includes sufficient explanation of the intent behind a step that authors are likely to be able to reproduce the reports in other office suites (such as Open Office or Libre Office) will a little extra effort.
Indeed, Humphrey mentions several times that the aim behind these books is to provide a perspective on how Excel can be used for the administrative tasks that surround actually writing, rather than to define a single perfect management flow.
Humphrey supports the text with screenshots of (where appropriate) both the spreadsheet with data and the spreadsheet with formulas visible; in addition, many of the larger or more complex spreadsheets also include screenshots of specific segments. While these are likely to reduce the effort authors – especially those of a more visual oriented nature – need to grasp the instructions, the images of reports that are many columns wide or use colour do not display well on all ereaders. However, as any author using these books will running a system with Excel or similar on it so can display the book in an suitable window, this is unlikely to be a significant issue.
Overall, I found these titles both useful and accessible. I recommend them to authors who have used a spreadsheet program in other contexts but are not familiar enough with one to already have created their own set of writing and publishing reports.
I received a free copy of The 2017 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle, which includes both these titles, from one of the contributors with no obligation to review.
October 27, 2017
Part of The 2017 NaNoWriMo Writing Tools Bundle.
This is a basic intro, specifically for writers. So it lists how to add up your word counts and make tables for it.
Step-by-step instructions plus pictures and some warnings of what it may look like if you do something wrong. [always an issue with spreadsheets] for daily, yearly and several years worth of words.
[I did wonder what other writing they did, but their website lists pseudonyms of Alessandra Clarke and MH Lee.]
Plus income projections… down to dollar rates per hour of work. oh god no, don’t do that.
Short story submission tracking…
Chapter and scene analysis… [*whispers* scrivener will do that colour coding for you in the metadata]
Tracking character names… [always obvious when someone has every character start with the same letter… did they only read that far in the baby name site?]
The last quarter of the book is an appendix of excel functions.
3 stars
This is a basic intro, specifically for writers. So it lists how to add up your word counts and make tables for it.
Step-by-step instructions plus pictures and some warnings of what it may look like if you do something wrong. [always an issue with spreadsheets] for daily, yearly and several years worth of words.
[I did wonder what other writing they did, but their website lists pseudonyms of Alessandra Clarke and MH Lee.]
Plus income projections… down to dollar rates per hour of work. oh god no, don’t do that.
Short story submission tracking…
Chapter and scene analysis… [*whispers* scrivener will do that colour coding for you in the metadata]
Tracking character names… [always obvious when someone has every character start with the same letter… did they only read that far in the baby name site?]
The last quarter of the book is an appendix of excel functions.
3 stars
April 25, 2018
Excellent ideas to inspire writers to use Excel! I'm an Excel geek myself (like the author, I'm also an MBA grad) and I thought this book had all sorts of practical and creative uses of Excel to help authors track important metrics. I've been getting more serious about writing lately, and already intended to use spreadsheets to keep track of my progress. Luckily M.L. Humphrey already did most of the leg work for me! All I had to do was copy her (?) examples and I had ready-to-use worksheets. I really appreciated that she gave me an excellent starting point, which spurred me to come up with some of my own variations. Everything was super clear, and I think it would be extremely simple to follow even if you're a complete Excel newbie. Formulas worked flawlessly, and everything works well as a cohesive whole. 5/5 would Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V again!
Short, but useful!
Short, but useful!
January 1, 2018
I'm a complete Excel novice, so I found this incredibly useful. I can see myself coming back to it often.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews