Author Ken Follett Uses Spreadsheets
Many people have written books about spreadsheets, but how many use spreadsheets to write books? Best-selling author, Ken Follett, does, and mentioned it on Twitter!
Author Ken Follett
Our bookshelves are filled with Ken Follett’s novels, starting with his first best-seller, Eye of the Needle, shown in my photo below.
We’ve bought many more of his books, over the years, and enjoyed reading them. These days, we buy digital versions – they’re easier on our eyes!
Here are three of the Ken Follett books that I found, in a quick check of our bookshelves:
- Eye of the Needle (1978)
- The Key to Rebecca (1980)
- Night Over Water (1991)
Are any of these on your bookshelves (or digital devices) too?
Ken Follett Book Sales
As I mentioned at the top of the page, Ken Follett uses spreadsheets. But what does he use them for?
First, as a successful author, he probably uses spreadsheets to keep track of his book sales, royalties, expenses, and other financial transactions.
There’s lots to keep track of, according to the sales numbers on his website:
Over 181 million copies of the 36 books he has written have been sold in over 80 countries and in 40 languages.
Ken Follett Spreadsheet Calculations
But there’s another reason he uses spreadsheets – character tracking.
Ken Follett writes books with:
- large casts of characters
- plot timelines that can span many years
To keep track of those characters, throughout a long storyline, he uses a spreadsheet. In it, he enters the following information:
- details about each character, including their age, at the beginning of the story
- (main characters) photo or painting of someone similar to what he’s imagined
Then, as he works through the novel, the spreadsheet helps him out:
- he can enter a date that something is happening in the story
- worksheet formulas calculate the age for each character, at that action date
- pictures remind him of each character’s description, at a quick glance
That spreadsheet saves him valuable time, and helps him avoid plot errors!
Ken Follett on Twitter – Make a Spreadsheet
Here is the embedded tweet, when Ken Follet (Twitter profile) replied to novelist, Sara Dahmen, who also uses spreadsheets.
She had tagged Ken Follet in a tweet, and wondered if he did something similar.
And yes, he does!
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Good guess, Sarah. That’s exactly what I do: make a spreadsheet of all the characters and their descriptions. Then the spreadsheet calculates their ages in each chapter. https://t.co/23Pnlj0kPy
— Ken Follett (@KMFollett) January 28, 2019
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Visit the Ken Follett Website
You can find more information on his Ken Follett website.
There are sections with his books, adaptations and events, and his About page.
Currently, the Home page promotes Follett’s latest book, Never, with a quote from another best-selling author, Stephen King.
Ken Follett can’t write a bad book, and NEVER is his best.
That’s high praise indeed!
Social Media Accounts
In addition to following Ken Follett on Twitter, check out his other social media accounts:
–2) Ken Follett’s Facebook Page
Video: Ken Follett Writing Tips
In this June 2022 interview with Dan Simpson, on Writer’s Routine Podcast, Ken Follett explains his writing process, and mentions that he uses an Excel spreadsheet to help keep track of characters.
Note: I’ve set the video to start as the 13:00 mark, when he first mentions the spreadsheet.
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Author Ken Follett Uses Spreadsheets
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