The Brain Behind the Operation: Why Airtable Is the Secret Weapon for Author Businesses

One database to rule them all—from character eye colors to email click rates

I have a confession. I used to be a spreadsheet hoarder.

One Google Sheet for my series bible. Another for tracking releases. A third for character details (that I never updated). A fourth for event schedules. And somewhere in the chaos, a lonely CSV file holding pen name information that I’d exported from... somewhere? I honestly couldn’t tell you.

Sound familiar? Most authors I know are running their entire careers on a patchwork of spreadsheets, Notion pages, Scrivener projects, and sticky notes that have achieved sentience. And look, it works. Kind of. Until you’re hunting for that one character’s eye color across forty-seven documents at 11 PM the night before your deadline.

When I built StorytellerOS, I needed a backbone that could handle the beautiful chaos of author life. Something that could connect pen names to series to books to chapters to characters to worldbuilding—and let me actually find things when I needed them. That’s when I went all-in on Airtable, and I haven’t looked back.

Let me show you why.

The Spreadsheet Problem (And Why Your Current System Is Lying to You)

Spreadsheets are fantastic. I’m not here to trash-talk Google Sheets or Excel. They’ve served us well for decades, and for simple lists, they’re absolutely the right tool.

But here’s the thing about spreadsheets: they’re flat. Every piece of information lives in its own little cell, completely unaware of what’s happening in the cell next door. Your spreadsheet doesn’t know that “Aurora Quinn” in your pen names sheet is the same “Aurora Quinn” listed as the author in your releases sheet. It just sees text. Dumb, disconnected text.

This means when you want to see all the books by Aurora Quinn, you have to manually filter. When you want to update her bio, you have to hunt down every place you’ve typed her name and update each one. When you want to know which series she writes and what characters appear across those series... well, you better have a good memory and a lot of coffee.

I spent years doing exactly this. Duplicating information across sheets. Copying and pasting pen name details into multiple places. Trying to maintain consistency across documents that had no idea they were supposed to be talking to each other.

It was exhausting. And (here’s the kicker) it was totally unnecessary.

Enter the Relational Database (But Make It Pretty)

Airtable looks like a spreadsheet. That’s part of its genius. You open it up and see familiar rows and columns, a comfortable grid that doesn’t immediately scream “I’m going to require a computer science degree.” But underneath that friendly interface is something entirely different: a relational database.

Here’s what that means in human terms.

In Airtable, you don’t just type information into cells—you create relationships between pieces of information. Your pen name isn’t just text; it’s a record that can be linked to other records. Your series connects to your pen name. Your books connect to your series. Your chapters connect to your books. Your characters can appear across multiple books and series.

Everything is connected. Everything knows about everything else.

Let me give you a concrete example from my own setup.

I have a table called “Author Pen Names” where each pen name lives as its own record with all the relevant details—bio, genre focus, brand voice, social handles, the works. Then I have a “Series” table, and each series record has a field that links to the pen name table. I don’t type the pen name again; I select it from a dropdown that pulls from the pen name table.

This means if I ever update Aurora Quinn’s bio in the pen names table, that change ripples everywhere. Every series, every book, every place that references her—all automatically current. No hunting. No copying. No forgetting to update that one obscure spreadsheet you made three years ago.

And the queries? Oh, the queries.

I can ask my Airtable: “Show me all the incomplete chapters in the Port Tempest series that haven’t been sent to my editor yet.” Boom. An answer in seconds. Or: “Which characters appear in more than three books?” Done. “What events in my timeline happen before the protagonist is born?” Easy.

Try doing that with a spreadsheet. Actually, don’t. Life’s too short.

What I Actually Store (And What I Don’t)

What I Actually Store (And What I Don’t)

Here’s my personal Airtable setup for StorytellerOS, and honestly, it’s become the command center for everything in my author business. And I do mean everything.

The Creative Side:

• Pen names: Full profiles including brand voice, genre, target audience, social media handles, brand colors, and every detail I might need when switching hats

• Series information: Series-level data that connects to pen names, including genre, trope bundles, series arc summaries, and reading order

• Title information: Every book with its metadata, publication dates, ISBNs, links, cover art, blurbs—all connected to the relevant series

• Chapter information: Scene-by-scene breakdowns with word counts, status, beat sheet alignment, and draft tracking

• Characters: Full character profiles with physical descriptions, backstory, personality traits, relationships to other characters, and (crucially) which books they appear in

• Lore and worldbuilding: Everything from magic systems to family trees to historical timelines to made-up swear words (Port Tempest has a lot of those)

• Events and timeline: Chronological events that can span multiple books, with automatic sorting and filtering

The Business Side:

• Social media content: Every post across eleven channels (yes, eleven) with scheduling dates, content type, which book or series it promotes, and—here’s the good part—performance metrics. Engagement, reach, clicks, all tracked so I can actually see what’s working instead of guessing.

• Book sales: Data synced from KDP, Draft2Digital, and Direct2Readers.com. Sales by title, by platform, by time period. When everything lives in one place, you can finally answer questions like “which series performs best on which platform” without exporting seventeen CSVs and crying into your coffee.

• Email marketing: A full backup of my subscriber list from FluentCRM, plus every campaign I’ve sent with open rates and click rates. I can see which emails drove sales, which subject lines bombed, and how my list health changes over time.

• Task management: Because of course I have a task manager in here. Tasks linked to specific books, series, or business functions. Due dates, priorities, status tracking—all connected to the projects they serve.

• Finance tracking: Income and expenses tied to specific books, series, pen names, or business activities. Royalty tracking, advertising spend, production costs. The data I need for tax season without the annual panic.

One database. Everything connected. Nothing lost in a forgotten spreadsheet tab.

What doesn’t live in Airtable:

The actual manuscript. I don’t write my books in Airtable (though technically you could—there’s a long text field that handles quite a bit). For the actual prose, I use Scrivener, but keep it all in Github. Airtable is the brain, but the writing happens elsewhere.

This division makes sense to me. Airtable excels at structured data—the about of your book. Character heights, eye colors, publication dates, chapter statuses. It’s less ideal for flowing prose and the creative chaos of drafting. Know your tools, use them for what they’re built for.

The Magic of Linked Records

Let me nerd out for a second about linked records, because this is where Airtable goes from “nice spreadsheet alternative” to “how did I function without this.”

In my Characters table, I have a field called “Appears In” that links to my Books table. When I’m creating a new character profile, I can select which books feature this character. But here’s where it gets good: Airtable automatically creates a reciprocal field in my Books table showing which characters appear in that book.

I didn’t have to set that up twice. I linked in one direction, and Airtable said, “Oh, you probably want to see this from the other side too, right?” Yes. Yes, I do.

This means I can be working in my Books table and instantly see every character in that book without switching views. Or I can be in my Characters table and see their full appearance history across the series. The information flows both ways because the relationship exists both ways.

Now multiply this by every relationship in your author business.

Pen names ↔ Series ↔ Books ↔ Chapters ↔ Characters ↔ Locations ↔ Events

Every piece of information is one click away from every other piece of information it relates to. That scene where your protagonist meets their love interest for the first time? You can see the chapter details, the character profiles for both characters, the location description, where it falls in the series timeline, and which book it belongs to—all without leaving the record.

When I’m chatting with AI about my stories (more on this in a minute), this interconnected structure means I can pull any detail instantly. No more scrolling through documents hoping I described the tavern consistently. It’s all right there, linked and findable.

Automations: The Robots Living Inside Your Database

Here’s where Airtable starts to feel a little bit like magic.

Airtable has a built-in automation engine. You can set up triggers and actions that happen automatically based on conditions you define. And unlike external automation tools (which I love, don’t get me wrong), these automations live inside your database with direct access to all your data.

A few examples from my setup:

When a chapter status changes to “Complete”: Airtable automatically updates the word count roll-up for that book and sends me a little congratulatory notification. (Listen, writing is hard. I need the dopamine hits.)

When a new book record is created: Airtable auto-populates certain fields based on the linked series—genre, pen name, brand voice guidelines—so I don’t have to manually enter information that already exists elsewhere.

When a publication date is 30 days out: Airtable creates a reminder in my marketing checklist and sends an email to my assistant.

These aren’t complicated automations. Airtable’s automation builder is genuinely user-friendly, with a visual interface that shows you exactly what’s going to happen at each step. You pick a trigger, you pick actions, you tell it which fields to use, and you’re done.

I’ll go deeper into Airtable automations next week because there’s so much more to explore here. For now, just know that this capability exists, it’s powerful, and it doesn’t require you to learn code or connect external tools.

The New AI Features (They’re Actually Useful)

Airtable recently rolled out what they’re calling Omni AI, and I’ll admit I was skeptical. AI features bolted onto existing products often feel like afterthoughts—impressive-sounding but practically useless.

This is different.

The AI in Airtable can help you build tables from plain English descriptions. I can say “I need a table to track my characters with fields for name, physical description, personality traits, backstory, and which books they appear in” and Airtable will generate a reasonable starting structure. Does it nail everything perfectly? Not always. But it gets me 80% of the way there in seconds, and I can adjust from there.

Chatting Via Claude or ChatGPT

More importantly (for my daily use), I can have conversations with my data. Because I’ve setup MCP server access in Claude and ChatGPT, I can query across my entire base—every table, every linked record—and pull information I need. “Which characters in the Jamison Pack series have a connection to the Scottish family?” The AI can trace those relationships and give me an answer.

This changes everything for series continuity. Instead of manually hunting through character sheets, I can ask questions in plain English and get answers drawn from the structured data I’ve already built. The more complete your Airtable setup, the smarter these conversations become.

Starting Your Own Author Command Center

If you’re sold on Airtable (and honestly, how could you not be after this love letter I’ve just written?), here’s how I’d suggest approaching it.

Start with one table. Seriously. Don’t try to build the whole universe on day one. Pick your biggest pain point—maybe it’s keeping track of characters, maybe it’s series metadata—and build just that table first. Get comfortable with how records and fields work.

Add links when they feel natural. Once your first table is humming along, you’ll start noticing connections. “I keep typing this series name over and over” is a sign you need a Series table that links to your Books table. Let the structure emerge from your actual workflow.

Use views liberally. Airtable views are just different ways of looking at the same data. You can have a “By Series” view and a “By Publication Date” view and a “Needs Editing” filtered view—all pointing at the same underlying information. Create views that match how you actually think about your work.

Don’t over-complicate. You don’t need every field on day one. You don’t need every automation. Start simple, use it for a while, and add complexity when you feel the need. The best system is the one you’ll actually use.

Ready to stop wrestling with disconnected spreadsheets? Paid subscribers can download my Author Command Center starter template—a ready-to-use Airtable base with tables for pen names, series, titles, chapters, characters, worldbuilding, events, and lore, all pre-linked and waiting for your data. Copy it to your own workspace and start building your author brain today.

The Backbone That Holds It All Together

I chose Airtable as the backbone for StorytellerOS because an author’s career isn’t a flat list—it’s a web of interconnected pieces. Pen names connect to series. Series connect to books. Books connect to characters and chapters and covers and keywords and publication dates and marketing campaigns. Everything touches everything else.

A flat spreadsheet can’t hold that complexity without becoming a maintenance nightmare. Airtable can.

The relational structure means your data stays consistent. The automation engine means your workflows can run themselves. The AI features mean you can actually have conversations with the universe you’ve built, pulling details when you need them without drowning in tabs and documents.

Is there a learning curve? A small one. But if you can use a spreadsheet, you can use Airtable. And once you experience the difference between disconnected cells and truly linked data, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.

Next week, I’m diving deep into Airtable automations—the specific recipes that can save you hours every week and keep your author business running even when you’re buried in drafting. Get ready to make your database work as hard as you do.

Until then, if you’re already using Airtable for your author business, hit reply and tell me what you’re tracking. I’m always looking for clever setups I haven’t thought of yet.