Pricing
The information is free. Pay only to manage the work.
Every explanation, directory record, guide, template, and glossary term is free. Author and publishing professional profiles are free, too. Pay $40 once per book if you want to save progress, manage tasks and submissions, and use advanced directory filters.
Author Profile
Free then $40, once per book
Your profile, your author page, your contacts, your calendar, and your outreach cost nothing. A book is $40, once, and covers every edition and format of it, its public book page, and its media kit.
Published more than two years ago? Add it free.
Create your free Author ProfileNo subscription. All sales are final.
The free Author Profile and a book, side by side
| Free, with your Author Profile | What a book adds, $40 once |
|---|---|
| Your public author page, yours to edit and publish | A public book page and a media kit for that book |
| The contacts on your author page | Checklist progress for that book: saved statuses, dates, owners, and reminders |
| Your calendar, with a feed your own calendar app can subscribe to | Its records, notes, costs, confirmations, and results |
| The templates | Award and review submissions, with what you sent and what came back |
| Everything on the site that is free to read | Your outreach log: every agent, editor, publisher, reviewer, or bookstore you pitched, and what came back |
| Professional Search (the advanced directory filters) | |
| Its publishing contacts, the identifiers work, and the automatic checks | |
| Every edition and format of that title |
AuthorChecklist.com is built for first-time authors and useful for every author.
Everything that comes with your Author Profile
Your Author Profile is more than a page about you, and creating it is free. It's your home for the publishing work, information, and records surrounding your books. The cards marked $40 come with a book you add.
Your author page
Create a public page with the information readers, librarians, booksellers, journalists, and others may want to know about you.
A home for your author identity.
Your publishing checklist
See what needs to happen, when it should happen, who normally handles it, and what you should check before marking it complete.
Understand the process. Don't miss the details.
Your book page
$40 with a book
Give each book its own page with the information, links, and details you want people to be able to find.
One page for each book.
Your media kit
$40 with a book
Keep the materials someone covering you or your book may need in one place, without assembling the same files every time someone asks.
Make it easier for people to talk about your work.
Your calendar
Every due date, revisit date, publication day, award deadline, and review window on one calendar, with a feed your own calendar app can subscribe to.
Nothing slips because nobody wrote the date down.
Awards & competitions
$40 with a book
Find awards and competitions that may be a fit for your book, save the ones you're considering, and keep your deadlines, submissions, fees, and results together.
Know what you entered and what happened.
Submissions
$40 with a book
Keep track of submissions to trade publications, review outlets, journals, awards, and other opportunities without relying on email and spreadsheets to remember everything.
One place for dates, status, and results.
Your publishing records
$40 with a book
Keep important dates, decisions, links, results, milestones, and other book-related information together instead of scattering it across documents, spreadsheets, bookmarks, and inboxes.
Your publishing history, in one place.
Your publishing contacts
$40 with a book
Save your publisher, editor, agent, publicist, designer, distributor, and other book-related contacts with the book they belong to.
Stop searching old emails for the right person.
Collaborators
Invite the people helping with your book to work with you on milestones and publishing tasks. Publishers, editors, publicists, and other professionals can also purchase access for an author and collaborate with them directly.
Publishing may be collaborative. Your workspace should be too.
Your book
$40 with a book
Add a book for $40, once. Keep its important information, publishing details, milestones, links, and records together in one place.
One payment per book, every edition and format of it.
| Feature | Author Profile, free | With a book, $40 |
|---|---|---|
| Read the complete publishing checklist | Yes | Yes |
| Review and trade-publication directory | Yes | Yes |
| Awards and competitions directory | Yes | Yes |
| Identifiers directory and glossary | Yes | Yes |
| Official links, timing, ownership, and explanations | Yes | Yes |
| Your public author page, yours to edit and publish | Yes | Yes |
| Your publishing contacts | Yes | Yes |
| Your calendar, with a feed your calendar app can subscribe to | Yes | Yes |
| Templates | Yes | Yes |
| Professional Search (the advanced directory filters), and sorting and filtering the checklist for a book | No | Yes |
| Mark steps done and set a status on awards and outlets | No | Yes |
| Save progress and statuses for the book | No | Yes |
| Set dates, assignees, and reminders | No | Yes |
| Save notes, costs, confirmations, and results | No | Yes |
| Your outreach log | No | Yes |
| Add custom tasks | No | Yes |
| Export book records | No | Yes |
| A public book page and a media kit | No | Yes |
| Collaborator invitations, $20 per person | No | Yes |
| Subscription | None | None |
For publishers, editors, publicists, and agents
Free to set up, with two things included.
Create a free professional account, claim your listing, explore the process with a private book of your own, and give one free book to an author you work with. Professional Search (the advanced directory filters) is available separately.
Setting up your professional profile is free. Two more things come free with the account. A book of your own: use it for a real book you wrote and make it public, or keep it private and try the system out. And a book for an author you work with, so you can collaborate on their book through your portal.
See every author and publication date in one place, along with the work assigned to you, the items waiting on you, and the results the author chose to share.
The author sees what you’re handling. You see what’s waiting on you. Both sides can work from the same record without sharing everything in the account.
How professionals use the siteProfessional Search
The advanced directory filters, for using the whole AuthorChecklist database as a professional research tool. It includes:
- Advanced filters on every directory, and several of them at once
- Filter by specialty, genre, service, client type, submission preference, and place
- Saved searches you can come back to
- Saved lists and prospect lists
- Alerts when a listing changes or a window opens
- News alerts by email, daily or weekly, on the topics, deals, and listings you choose.
- Exports of what you found
Professional Search: $75 a year. Until October 31, $50 for your first year. A 12-month pass, paid once; nothing renews on its own, and another year is another pass. Searching a directory by name or place is free for everybody. It never comes with a book: owning one, being given one, giving one away, or working on somebody else’s book changes nothing about it.
Claim and verify your listing by October 31 and Professional Search is free for a year.
Get startedFree access helps someone understand and navigate the publishing process. Book access lets someone manage a specific book. Professional Search lets someone interrogate and use the broader AuthorChecklist database as a professional research tool.
Questions
What does the Author Profile cost?
Nothing. Creating your Author Profile is free for everyone. Your public author page, your publishing contacts, your calendar, and the templates come with it, and there is nothing to pay to use them.
Are professional profiles free too?
Yes. An editor, publicist, agent, publisher, book coach, or marketing consultant sets up a profile at no charge, and it comes with a book of their own and a book for an author they work with.
Is an older book free?
Yes. A book whose publication date is more than two years back is added to your Author Profile free, with no payment step: the full checklist for it, its public book page, its media kit, its records, and its recommendations. Professional Search (the advanced directory filters) and the outreach log come with a book you buy, so a free backlist book does not open those two.
Is this a subscription?
No. A book is a one-time $40 purchase. Another book is another $40, once. There are no recurring charges, and all sales are final.
Is the checklist really free?
Yes. Every explanation, directory record, guide, template, glossary term, and official link is free to read without an account.
What does paying for a book cover?
A book adds its own public book page and media kit, the checklist progress for that book, its records, submissions and results, its publishing contacts, the identifiers work, the automatic checks, and the advanced directory filters. One payment covers hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, and later editions of the same title. A different book is another $40. With two or more books, a book selector appears so you can switch between them.
What changes on the site once I add a book?
The information doesn't change. A book lets you save and manage the work for it: mark items done, filter what applies, set dates and owners, record award and review results, and publish its page and media kit.
I already paid. Am I worse off?
No. Everything you bought is still yours. Your profile and your books stay exactly as they were, nothing is charged twice, and any book credits already on your account are still good.
Will completing the checklist guarantee reviews, awards, sales, or library purchases?
No. The checklist helps an author understand and manage the work. Outside organizations make their own decisions.
What if my publisher handles an item?
Assign it to the publisher, mark it Waiting, and save the confirmation when it arrives. You're not trying to duplicate the work. You're making sure it happened.
Can my editor or publicist work in my account?
Yes. Inviting a collaborator is $20, once per person. They can edit your Author Profile and the books you choose: statuses, dates, notes, submissions, results, and the content of your public pages. Only you can publish pages, buy more books, or invite people.
Can you just do it for me?
Yes. Set It Up For Me is $250 for the agreed setup list for one book. We handle the work the outside services allow, record what we did, and meet with you for the accounts only you can access. You can also hire us for one step. We never ask for passwords. The full list is on the How we can help page.
I work with a publisher, an editor, or a publicist. Can they pay?
Yes. A publisher, editor, agent, or publicist can buy the book for an author they work with, and every professional account comes with one free book for an author they work with. The author's profile is free either way. The professional-account page explains what each side can see and edit.
What does a publisher, editor, publicist, or agent pay?
Setting up a professional account and its profile is free, and it comes with two things: a book of your own, and a book for an author you work with. After that you pay only when you give another author their book, one license each. Every Author Profile is free.
Ready when you are.
Your Author Profile is free. A book is $40, once, and covers every edition and format of it. A book adds its own public book page and media kit, the checklist progress for that book, its records, submissions and results, its publishing contacts, the identifiers work, the automatic checks, and the advanced directory filters. No subscription, and all sales are final.