The small tools that get books finished
Nineteen tools, free and without a sign up, in the order a book actually needs them. These are the everyday tools our own editors and authors use, with a plain note on what each one is good for. Nothing you paste into them is uploaded anywhere.
Before you start
Whether the date, the length and the budget agree with each other.
Works backward from your launch date and gives every milestone a deadline, from the last page of the draft to the day the files go live.
Finding out whether the date you have promised people is actually possible.
Open the tool →Turns a word count into a printed page count for a given trim size, type size and leading, front and back matter included.
Getting the page count that every print quote and spine calculation depends on.
Open the tool →Adds up what the book costs to make, then works out how many copies it takes to earn that back at your list price.
Deciding what to spend before you spend it, rather than after.
Open the tool →While you draft
Measuring what you have written without leaving the desk.
Counts words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, and estimates manuscript and printed page counts.
Checking a manuscript against a publisher word count before you submit.
Open the tool →Splits a manuscript on its chapter headings and charts the length of each one, so the shape of the book is visible at a glance.
Finding the sagging middle before a developmental editor charges you to find it.
Open the tool →The record a copy editor keeps: spellings, names, hyphenation, numbers and the house choices, exported as a file you hand over.
Keeping book two consistent with book one.
Open the tool →Editing
The passes a manuscript goes through before anyone sets it in pages.
Finds the adverbs, filler, filter words, passive constructions, repeated openers and echoed phrases that a line editor would mark.
Cleaning a chapter up yourself before it goes to someone you pay by the word.
Open the tool →Flesch, Flesch-Kincaid, Gunning Fog and SMOG scores, plus sentence length and the passages slowing readers down.
Children’s and early-reader work, where the age band is the specification.
Open the tool →Applies standard manuscript format and gives you a Word-compatible file: title page, double spacing, indents and running heads.
Getting a file into the shape agents and editors expect to receive.
Open the tool →Production
Turning a finished text into files a printer and a retailer will accept.
Spine width from page count, paper stock and binding, plus the full cover wrap size with bleed.
Building a cover wrap that will not be rejected at upload.
Open the tool →Draws the full wrap at its true size with trim, bleed, spine and safe area marked, and downloads it as a scalable file your designer can open.
Handing a designer the exact canvas instead of a page count and good luck.
Open the tool →Assembles the copyright page a printer expects: notice, edition line, ISBNs, disclaimer, credits and the rights reserved wording.
The page nobody remembers until the file is being uploaded.
Open the tool →Validates the check digit on an ISBN, converts between the 10 and 13 digit forms, and formats it the way a copyright page should show it.
Catching a mistyped ISBN before it is printed on ten thousand covers.
Open the tool →Finished runtime from your word count, the studio hours behind it, and what narration costs per finished hour or on a royalty share.
Deciding whether the audio edition pays for itself.
Open the tool →Publishing it
Metadata, money and the words that do the selling.
Builds a retail description a section at a time and counts it against the limits each store actually enforces.
Rewriting a description that is doing none of the selling.
Open the tool →Seven keyword slots checked against the character limit, against your own title, and against the terms retailers ignore or reject.
Getting some use out of seven boxes most authors fill in badly once.
Open the tool →Writes the same bio at three lengths, because a retailer, a festival programme and a press kit all want a different one.
Never writing your own bio from scratch again.
Open the tool →Hook, synopsis, credentials and housekeeping, each held to length, with a check for the openings agents see forty times a week.
A one page letter that does not read like the last two hundred.
Open the tool →Net royalty per copy across Kindle Direct Publishing, IngramSpark and direct sales, with print cost worked out from your page count.
Deciding a list price before you commit to a wholesale discount.
Open the tool →How long will your book take?
Writing five days a week, not seven. Editors plan the same way, because the two days off are what make the five sustainable.
Ninety minutes, four steps
Reread yesterday’s last page only. No edits, just to find the voice again.
Sixty minutes of drafting with the internet off and one timer running.
Log the word count and the scene you stopped on, in the same file every day.
Write one line about what happens next, so tomorrow starts warm.
Tried the tools and still stuck on chapter four?
Send what you have. Even a half-written manuscript is enough for a reader to tell you what it needs.