We’re writers and prefer to spend a lot more time putting pen to paper than anything else. Any resource that makes the additional projects that accompany the job simpler merits a gold star in my book. I think this online tool constitutes just about the best thing since sliced bread. The bonus is it’s free as well!

Among the most laborious things about submitting your piece of work can be keeping track of what you sent off wherever and when. Without some form of system in situ, you will discover yourself drowning in no time. Before you recognize it you’ve got papers or files everyplace with mysterious notes upon them, reminding you of particular stipulations from different publishing houses. It can all become very messy, very fast.

It’s utterly essential, especially if you’re dispatching simultaneous submissions, to maintain a record. A lot of editors do accept simultaneous submissions for instance on the understanding that if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere before they respond to you, then you advise them of that.

It is not merely polite and respectful to conduct yourself in that manner. No editor desires to squander their time going over a submission, simply to discover once they state they are interested that you’re already bound by some other contractual agreement. However if you sent off a slew of submissions en masse and can not recollect who required what in their guidelines, you’re asking for it when they clash. Do not anticipate any editor to be hotfooting it to read your submissions in the days ahead if you can’t be good mannered enough to follow their rules of thumb perfectly.

The good news is there’s an answer. It’s called The Writer’s Database: Market and Submission Tracker. You are able to add marketplaces, keep lists of your submissions and who they were dispatched to, update their status when you get word back from them, even keep track of how much income you have brought in with assorted manuscripts or articles.

The Add a Market section permits you to hold on to every last one of the editor’s particulars in a single place, company by company. It includes name, contact data, rates of pay, response time, whether it is online submission or a postal submission, what they accept (reprints, simultaneous submissions and so forth), contest and anthology submissions and any entrance money charged, plus room for additional notes.

The beauty of this submission tracker system is you do not need to return to every editor’s guidelines on every internet site you have ever added to your Favorites to check up on them all anytime you’ve something fresh to submit. If you need, say, somebody that takes on humor or a piece below 500 words, you could add tags to your entry that facilitate finding them at a glance. Using this method means you  only need do a speedy search within your markets.

(Whenever you have not visited their site for a while, it’s advisable to make certain the guidelines have not altered in that time obviously. The Submission Tracker saves you from having to plough through and through virtually hundreds of them if you’re anything like me to find a suitable one.)

They even have an area where you are able to browse shared markets. Other people have added these to their personal lists and generously made up their minds to share them in public. You’ve the choice naturally whether to share your own with others or not and any private stuff like your notes can be concealed from their view in this mode. Therefore you can still chip in something for the community’s benefit whilst preserving the confidentiality of your notes.

There’s a lot more features incorporated into this tracker. A nice one is you’ll be able to send off a submission to your selected markets once you add the piece to your own database. There’s entertaining and valuable resources as well, such as charting your word count daily on both how much you have been penning on a particular day or have compiled in total up to now. These are useful for nurturing your commitment to working on a regular basis.

See what you think. It is free to register and utilize as aforementioned. Please do toy with donating a couple of pennies to The Writers Database as a thank you if you deem them worthy. They say it’s welcomed but not required. I hope you find this writer’s tool handy! Feel free to comment on this and any other article here.

Kay can be found hollering atop the hill on writers, writing and anything she feels like at Hill Holler