Last week, I recommended a book to you by April L. Hamilton, which was first published in 2014: “the indie author guide. self-publishing strategies anyone can use.”

I love Hamilton’s common-sense approach to publishing. She stresses the importance of hard drive & E-Mail “housekeeping and organization.”

I’ve been freelancing as a writer for many years, and know that it is vital to save each new draft of any text I write. If you write a book, you’ll re-write it numerous times. If you self-publish a book, you’ll also edit it numerous times. You need a filing system on your computer which lets you identify each draft quickly and confidently. Once you’ve finished writing, and editing, and proof-reading your manuscript, you’ll still need to upload it to your (self-)publishing platform where you’ll end up formatting and re-formatting your manuscript several times. Then there’s distribution, and marketing, and press-relations, etc. etc. etc. You really do need a good digital filing system, and you should design it before you get serious about publishing your first book.

I’m in the process of developing a digital filing system that’ll fit my needs. It’ll be different from the one Hamilton describes in her book; her system simply doesn’t suit me. But I do need a better filing (and back-up!) system for all my digital files than the one I currently use.

Step one in getting organized? Delete old files! If you’re anything like me, you’ll have several thousand files saved on your computer or laptop, on USB sticks, on external harddrives, or “in the cloud.” I don’t use cloud services, but man, do I have a lot of documents and photos saved on USB sticks and on external hard drives!

I spent all day today and yesterday deleting stuff. I deleted more than ten thousand documents and photos. Some of those files which I deleted today were first saved around the turn of the century.