What should an author dashboard track?
- Six core categories: manuscript, tasks, assets, submissions, sales, CRM.
- One unified view, not five separate tools.
- Reviewed weekly at minimum.
- Per-book and across-career data both visible.
- Most working authors maintain 1-12 books in active states across these dimensions.
An author dashboard should track six categories: manuscript status (drafting, revision, editing stage), tasks and deadlines (per book and per quarter), assets (covers, metadata, marketing materials), submissions (queries, R&Rs, contracts), sales (royalties by retailer), and CRM (reviewers, contacts, newsletter subscribers). One unified dashboard prevents context-switching between five different tools.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Authors who track work across multiple disconnected tools (Trello for tasks, Notion for CRM, spreadsheets for sales) lose hours per week to context-switching. An author dashboard consolidates the data so weekly reviews take 20 minutes instead of 2 hours. The right tool is the one that holds all six categories.
Chapter ii·What to include
- Manuscript status per book (drafting, revision, editing stage).
- Tasks and deadlines per book and per quarter.
- Assets: covers, metadata, marketing materials, ARC files.
- Submissions: queries, R&Rs, contracts, offers.
- Sales: royalties by retailer, monthly trends.
- CRM: reviewers, contacts, newsletter subscribers.
Chapter iii·Example
A working novelist's WriteLoom dashboard tracks 8 active books across all six categories. Weekly review (Friday morning, 25 minutes) catches a slipping deadline on book 6's developmental edit, a metadata issue on book 4 (still in pre-order), and a reviewer who replied to book 7's outreach. She acts on three things in 25 minutes — work that previously took 2-3 hours across five tools.
Chapter iv·Related questions
WriteLoom is a publishing-specific author dashboard — manuscript, tasks, assets, submissions, sales, CRM in one project.
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