I’d like to introduce Published! – a manuscript submissions tracking software that I’ve just released on the Mac App Store.
Being a long term Scrivener user, I have lurked in the Scrivener forums, and much of the design (and functionality) of Published! is influenced by the desires expressed by the forum users for a tool of this kind.
The software is Mac based and handles: Submissions, Works, Revisions, Publishers, Contacts, and Income and Expenses pertaining to Works. It has powerful search capabilities and a good set of reports.
I have a trial version available on the product web site, which is:
Went to your website. Interesting program, but your image moves much to fast for any useful perusal, apart from downloading the program. Suggest you set it up so that the viewer can decide when to go to the next screenshot. As it is, it is very frustrating and could be a turnoff for any prospective customers.
I don’t think I have a need for this program as I rarely have more than one submission out at a time; however, I wish you well in your endeavor.
I’m inclined to agree with dspady about the speed at which the images move. Otherwise, nice website and it looks like a clean, useful program. I might well be interested, though at the moment I’m using querytracker to keep track of my queries. But - what are the specs, exactly? I couldn’t find any system requirements on your page. This is an issue for me, since I have a G5 iMac running Leopard. Will your program run on my mac? And how much do you intend to charge for it?
Good luck, in any case. It seems like a neat program.
Thanks for your comments. The application has been developed for the Lion but might work on Leopard – but I’ve not tested that. Please do download the free trial from publishedsubmissionstracker.com/downloads/new and try it out. It is priced at 39.99 in the Mac store.
Mary
I also double checked on my end. The application will not work on Leopard. You will have to upgrade to Lion as this application uses some Lion specific features.
In order to keep this thread on topic about Harsh’s hard-worked-on program (congratulations, by the way, Harsh, on getting this out there!), I have split the comments regarding iCloud and hardware/software obsolescence into a new thread:
Hi Harsh,
I have downloaded Published! Manuscript Submissions Tracker, and it has a clean, clear interface. I do have a few questions on the design, though:
(1) Would it be possible to specify the date format to be used, please, perhaps automatically picking up the system default if it is too much trouble to give the user free rein? I almost always get my dates the wrong way round if asked to use mm/dd…
(2) Is there a reason why Publishers and Contests are rolled in together? I think of them as being completely separate things, so I am struggling with this conceptually. For example, take Scenario 1: Big Newspaper runs a competition for which the prize is a publishing deal with Massive Publishing House. Big Newspaper is not the actual publisher of the winning work, so shouldn’t be classified as a publisher in this context, yet submitting the competition entry to Big Newspaper does not constitute an approach to Massive Publishing House, so they aren’t the publisher either (at least in tracking terms). Furthermore, I might consider submitting feature articles to Big Newspaper and a novel to Massive Publishing House separately, in which case I would want both organisations listed individually as publishers, completely unrelated to any contest, so that I can track all submissions to them properly. Then there is Scenario 2: the competition organiser isn’t a publisher at all, and the writing contest is not intended to result in publication; I would prefer not to classify such organisers as publishers, because doing so muddies the waters. For me, competition entries are not a regular thing (I enter them very rarely, essentially from frivolous or opportunistic motives), so I would wish to keep them separate from my “serious” publication attempts. These are both real-life scenarios, by the way; I have entered only a handful of writing competitions since my schooldays, but one was similar to the first scenario and the other to the second.
(3) There is nothing about Agents in the interface.
I suppose what I am really asking is whether the Publishers screen could be split into three separate screens (publishers, agents and competitions) each with side-buttons in the application, because I would imagine wanting to track them separately and differently.
Otherwise, this looks attractive, interesting and usable. Good luck – I hope you do well with it.
Thanks for your review and valuable suggestions. Your advise on splitting the Publishers screen into three screens (publishers, agents and competitions,) makes sense. I hope to have this change incorporated in the next release.
I am pleased to announce a new release of the Published! Manuscript Submissions Tracker app. This release includes the changes recommended by Siren (thank you very much for that.) The changes in this release are:
1. A new screen to record Agents.
2. A new screen to record Contests.
3. Publishers/Agents/Contests URL can be launched from within app.
4. Date-pickers added for date selection.
5. Reports and search functionality added for Agents and Contests.
For a limited time, we are also offering a 25% discount on the application. The price of the application is $29.99 (from $39.99) on the Mac Store for the duration of the offer.
Thank you all for your input. We will continue improving the application.
This looks like it has lots of potential Harsh! I have not been able to try it, because I do not have Lion. But when I do, I will certainly give it a whirl, as it looks like it might give a single home to things I currently do through several apps at the moment.
Would you consider having some kind of time-line function for deadlines of competitions?
Why? There are many many thousands of competitions. I currently use Evernote to try to keep a handle on what is out there. After grabbing the data the chief problem is putting it into a useable chronological sequence, so that you can see which competitions are coming up when, through-out the year. Obviously without this forecast function, a list of several thousand competitions is almost useless.
At the moment I use Caliander, which is a neat app and worth looking at. It does not quite do the trick, with competition deadlines for a number of reasons, the main one being because Caliander has problems representing large numbers of deadlines occurring together. You end up with a page several miles deep below the bottom of your screen! But the dynamic timeline idea is very helpful.
So having a single app which can manage deadlines, competitions, publishers and agents, really would be a godsend.
Thank you for your suggestion. I am always looking to improve Published! and would certainly consider incorporating a contest timeline if I receive enough requests for it. This is because I’d like to avoid “feature-creep” and only implement features that would help a majority of writers. So, I do have your request on my backlog and if I get more requests for this feature, I will implement.
I am guessing this is a useful app but price does that seem high compared to all those apps out there? its just a comment, not being critical as I am guessing it took lots of time and effort to do, and I am quite new to Apps as I have just got my ipad 3.
I’d like to point out that when you sell an application on the Mac store, Apple takes 30% of the takings. Then there are income taxes to be paid on the sales. At the end of the day, a developer about makes “lunch money” on each sale. But, its not “per-sale” that a developer has his eyes on-- it’s about making a product that is creative, aesthetic and useful. And the money is just to keep him motivated: to improve the application, to extend it, to moonlight some more!
However, I do have an idea that will enable me to bring the price down . I am thinking of creating a version of the app that could be directly downloadable and sold from my web site (in the manner of Scrivener.) I would be able to pass on the 30% that I give to Apple to the buyer. This would bring the price to about $22-23 (I would still have to pay about 10% to firms like Esellerate that would provide the credit card cart services.)
I also note from your post that you have an ipad3. Published! does not work on ipad (yet.) It is a Mac application. If there is an interest in an iPad app., I will certainly work on it.
Hi Sorry I thought it was a ipad app and most of them are well below that price, I realise that there is a lot of work and was not critising you, was just working out the price in coparison to other apps. I am guessing that buying from your wenbsite while a good idea is not a possibility with the ipad, I dont know about the mac, but it actually would make the warranty invalid.
I am pleased to offer Published! as a direct download from my web site, (in addition to it being available on the Mac Store.) At $24.99, it is 17% cheaper than the Mac store price. I hope that this lower price will make it more affordable.
Black Friday is this week. Published! is at 20% off from Friday, November 23, 2012 through Monday, November 26, 2012. You can buy Published! for $23.99 (regular $29.99) during the sale period.
Two important product enhancements also released this Thanksgiving: Published! now has a full text editor and a Finder (tree-view) like interface for organizing works. This is a free update for existing users.
