This will be the most un-sexy thing you read all day, I promise.
In real estate, there's a term called “property management company.” These are people who help landlords manage property—apartments, condos, strip malls, etc. They make sure the place is clean, well-maintained, screen, handle and evict tenants, etc. After all, if a landlord has a substantial number of properties, it's impossible for them to “keep their finger on the pulse” at all of their properties, with all of their tenants, etc. That would be exhausting.
As “landlords” of intellectual property, writers don't have that.
At the time of this writing, I have approximately 50 books—each book is in 2-3 formats, is available for sale at 30+ retailers, some in multiple languages. Each of my books has dozens of different data points that have a potential for error (wrong price, wrong book uploaded to Amazon, wrong book description used/errors in my book description, just to name a few). I'm small potatoes to other indie writers.
I have to schedule time regularly to patrol my properties, and it's virtually impossible for me to know what's going on at every retailer with my books. Absolutely impossible.
Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an intellectual property management company that “patrolled” all of my books and made sure that everything looked as I intended? What if they could let me know if I have the wrong version of my ebook (the one with a bunch of typos in the first chapter) uploaded to my retailers, or that my book is $39.99 in Australia instead of $3.99?
Wouldn't it be even MORE interesting if this property manager was an app? Most of this stuff could be programmed.
This isn't me complaining–trust me. (I know someone's going to be thinking, “must be nice to have that problem…”), but it just goes to show you that the more you publish, the more interesting your writing life problems become. Some of you might find this interesting.
My tip for today is to think about how you manage your properties online. Do you even do it at all?
Again, I told you—definitely the least sexy thing you've probably read today, but it's a fun problem to dig in to. 🙂
