As an indie author, your words are your business. Yet every week brings new tales of writers losing manuscripts to crashed hard drives or watching years of subscriber lists vanish into the digital void. One author lost three years of work when both her laptop and external drive failed simultaneously during a power surge. Another watched helplessly as a hacker deleted their author website, taking their entire blog archive with it.
Whether you're crafting your first novel or managing multiple series, protecting your work isn't just good practice—it's essential to your author career. It’s also essential to do it correctly, however, so your files are safe and retrievable when you need them. Here are IAM’s ten tips to making sure your writing stays secure so that your story doesn’t become a cautionary tale of its own.
1. Choose Your Primary Guardian.
Think of your primary backup as your manuscript's first line of defense. Cloud services like Google Drive, offering 15 GB of storage for free; Dropbox, which offers 2 GB free; or OneDrive, which offers 5 GB free, offer your work a secure home in the digital realm while keeping it at your fingertips.
Each platform brings something unique to the table—Google Drive shines for collaboration and automatic version history, Dropbox plays nicely with Scrivener and maintains deleted files for thirty days, and OneDrive meshes seamlessly with Microsoft's ecosystem while offering built-in ransomware protection.
Pro Tip: Set up automatic syncing between your main writing folder and your chosen cloud service. For Windows, right-click your writing folder, select your cloud service's sync option, and let technology do the heavy lifting while you focus on crafting your next chapter.
2. Double (or Triple) Your Protection.
Cloud storage might seem magical, but even magic can fail. Think of a secondary backup—like an external hard drive or USB stick—as your safety net. A 2 TB external drive, which typically costs around $60, can store years of manuscripts, research, and marketing materials. For ultimate peace of mind, keep an offsite backup that's safe from physical threats like fire or theft. Many authors pair a local hard drive with a 128 GB USB stick for $20 that is stored in a secure location, like a safe-deposit box or a trusted family member's home.
Also harness built-in tools like Apple’s Time Machine or Windows File History for scheduled local backups. Set weekly backups to run during your downtime—Sunday nights work well for many authors—to ensure you’re never far from a recent copy.
3. Embrace Automation.
For the tech-savvy wordsmith, automation tools like Zapier, free for one hundred tasks per month, or Make.com, free for one thousand operations a month, can transform your backup routine from a chore into a well-oiled machine. Create workflows that automatically shuffle your words to additional storage locations—imagine your Google Drive drafts appearing in Dropbox without you needing to lift a finger. You can even set your Scrivener projects to perform automated backups of your work every time you save.
Configure alerts through Zapier or Make.com to notify you via email or text if a backup fails, so you can troubleshoot without breaking your creative flow. Test your automation monthly to ensure everything is running smoothly.
4. Fortify Your Digital Home.
If you've built an author website—especially one hosting a blog, shop, or custom content—backup plugins are your best friends. Tools like UpdraftPlus for WordPress, which has a free version available, can automatically safeguard your site to offsite storage, ensuring your platform survives even if disaster strikes. The premium version for $70 per year adds incremental backups and multisite support.
Pro Tip: Schedule digital housekeeping tasks for 3 a.m. local time, when your site traffic typically dips and the internet gremlins sleep. Keep at least three months of weekly backups for your website—you never know when you'll need to restore an old blog post.
5. Consider Professional Protection.
Sometimes the smartest move is letting the experts handle the technical maze. Professional security and backup services like Carbonite, for $6 a month, or IDrive, for $79.50 a year for 5 TB, can shield everything from your manuscripts to your website. These services often include features like continuous backup and mobile access to your files.
Pro Tip: Look for services that include automated threat detection and ransomware protection. Many services also offer discounts for annual subscriptions, if you’re looking to keep costs down.
6. Guard Your Reader Connection.
Your mailing list is pure gold, with potentially years of careful relationship building with readers behind it. Most platforms, including Mailchimp, Substack, and ConvertKit, let you export subscriber data in CSV format. Make it a habit to download and secure these precious connections regularly, including custom fields, segments, and engagement data.
Set a monthly reminder for the first Monday to export your list, or better yet, automate it through Zapier. Store copies in at least two locations, and always encrypt files containing reader information.
7. Spread Your Safety Net Wide.
Think of your backups like investment portfolios; diversification is key. Spreading your work across your computer or multiple devices, external storage, and cloud services means you're covered even if one location goes dark. Consider geographic diversity too—cloud services often store data in multiple regions, which you have the freedom to select.
Pro Tip: Try to follow the 3-2-1 rule for backing up your work: three copies, with two different media types and one offsite location. For a novel manuscript, this might mean keeping one copy on your computer, one on an external drive, and one in the cloud.
8. Keep Your Story’s History.
Every draft tells a story of its own, and saving versions of your manuscript tracks your story's evolution as much as it secures it in case of emergency. Plus, sometimes those “deleted” scenes find new life in unexpected places.
Major cloud platforms keep automatic version histories: Google Docs saves every edit for thirty days, and Dropbox’s version history varies by plan. Check the support pages of your platform to see how your program records old files. Then, use version control features like Google Docs’s history or Scrivener’s snapshots to keep your drafts organized without cluttering your workspace.
Label major versions clearly, like “FirstDraft_Complete” or “PostBetaRevision.” Your backups can also provide a historical record of how your story evolves in case you need to revisit an idea or reference an old version of a scene.
9. Lock Down Your Secrets.
For unpublished manuscripts or sensitive reader data, consider adding an extra layer of security. Encrypting your files before backup ensures your work stays private, even if your storage gets compromised. AES-256 military-grade encryption is the current standard for secure storage. Tools like Boxcryptor, free for personal use, or VeraCrypt, a free open-source service, can add that extra lock to your cloud storage, or use built-in password protection features in your preferred platform.
Keep your encryption passwords in a secure password manager.
10. Test Your Safety Net.
A backup is only as good as its restore function. Every quarter, try recovering a few files from each of your backup locations. Think of it as a fire drill for your digital assets—better to find problems during practice than during an emergency. Create a test document and run through your entire recovery process.
Pro Tip: Bundle these checks with other routine tasks like quarterly subscriber exports or website updates. Make it part of your regular author business maintenance. Document your backup and recovery procedures in case someone else needs to help you recover files.
By building a robust backup routine and letting automation handle the heavy lifting, you're free to focus on what matters most—crafting stories that captivate your readers. Rest assured that your words, your website, and your reader connections will stay safe, come what may.
Chelle Honiker