You have been designing for a minute. You are really finding your stride in the industry as a designer. Yeah, it's scary to actually call yourself that, but you are owning the title. You have a pretty good rapport with magazine and yarn companies, and getting more and more work everyday.
Fantastic, right?
So, what's the problem?
The problem is that there are a lot of steps to go through from the time you put the proposal together and hit send, to getting that "Yes, we would love to include your design for publication," to the publication actually going live, and you receiving payment for your work.
There is a lot to keep track of. You are having a hard time keeping up and keeping track of all your submissions. You are sending out a lot of proposals to many different publications, and you are at various stages of the publishing process with all your submissions: from initial proposal to acceptance to finished pattern and sample to publication, and payment.
This is a simple, yet powerful tool to help Crochet and Knit designers manage their submissions to maximize efficiency and increase acceptance.
It was easy when you were only self-publishing or selling a handful of designs each year. But now you are selling more and more of your designs. Things can really get lost in the shuffles if you are just writing it all down on note cards or on paper. What if you lose track of a deadline? Besides it being really embarrassing, you could loose credibility with the publication editor. And that could lead to less of your proposals getting accepted. The Submission Tracker was built to help you maintain your credibility.
With the Submission Tracker you have at your fingertips, 24/7 your entire submission portfolio and each one's stage in the path to publication. Also, you can track your rejections so you can be sure to not re-submit the same proposal to the same publication. Yikes!
BUY NOW
The Submission Tracker is for you if (Check all that apply):
- You are a designer (knit and/or crochet)
- You design full-time or part-times
- You submit design proposals to magazines and yarn companies Call for Submission
- You submit more than a handful of designs and need a way to track your submission
- You don't currently have a system for tracking your submissions. Right now, your only "system" is writing general information on note cards.
- You want to grow your design business
- You want to find trends in your design portfolio. What design proposals are being accepted/rejected and by which publication in order to better craft specific proposals.
Read how The Submission Tracker helped E, a knitwear designer:
The Submission Tracker help me to be strategic with submitting proposals. Before I would just send out proposals to whatever Call for Submission I found on Ravelry that the deadline had not past. I would do this without considering the deadline for samples and pattern. This wasn't a big deal when I wasn't getting a lot of designs accepted.This really bit me in the butt when I had 3 designs accepted at different times (yay!), and all having the same deadline for the finished sample and written pattern (yikes!). When I accepted the terms from the publishers, I didn't realize the deadlines were all the same. It was a frustrating 6-weeks. I would go to work at my day job, come home, have a quick dinner and family time, and work on the samples until late into the night, only to get up the next day and repeat the cycle. During this time I lost a lot of sleep and missed out on precious family time with my husband and daughter.
Last year I make a conscious decision to grow my designing business and to send out more proposals. Now that I have The Submission Tracker, I have had a clear picture of the status of each proposal. I know when everything is due so I don't over book or miss a deadline. It was a hard lesson to learn and now with The Submission Tracker I have all the information I need to make smart decisions about my design business.
Be like this knit designer...
E. was able to increase her submission and thus, her acceptance rate by carefully tracking what designs were being accepted and rejected from which publications. With this tool, The Submission Tracker, she was able to find trends and better craft proposals specific to the publication she was submitting to.BUY NOW
Never miss a deadline and most importantly, never lose track of when payments are expected and when the exclusivity period ends and you self publish the design.
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