Backing up a manuscript, properly
Everything else that can go wrong with a book can be repaired. A bad cover gets redesigned. A typo in print gets corrected and re-uploaded. A file the printer rejects gets fixed and resubmitted.
A lost manuscript is the exception. Nobody has a copy, no service can reconstruct it, and the only remedy is writing it again from memory — which is not the same book and takes about as long as it did the first time. This is the unglamorous page, and it belongs here for that reason.
Three copies, two kinds of storage, one somewhere else
The rule is worth knowing by name, because it is the one professionals use and it is short enough to check yourself against in ten seconds.
Three copies of the file. The one you work on counts as one.
Two different kinds of storage. Not two folders on the same drive, and not two drives in the same computer. Different media that fail for different reasons — an internal drive and an external one, or a drive and a cloud service.
One of them somewhere else. A copy that is not in the building. This is the one that covers theft, fire, flood and a spilled drink that takes out the laptop and the external drive sitting beside it.
For one author with a laptop, that is: the working file on the laptop, a copy on an external drive you plug in, and a copy in a cloud service. Three copies, two kinds, one off-site. You are done, and it took an afternoon of setup once.
A sync folder alone is not a backup
This is the part that catches careful people, because the folder genuinely feels like a backup. It is not, and the reason matters.
A sync service exists to make every device agree. That is its entire job, and it does it well and fast. So when you delete a chapter, it deletes the chapter everywhere. When a crash writes a corrupted file over your good one, the corrupted file reaches every device you own, usually within seconds. When a sync conflict resolves the wrong way, the wrong version is now the version.
Sync protects you from losing a machine. It does not protect you from losing a file, because a lost file is faithfully replicated as lost.
Three things turn it into real protection:
- Version history. Most sync services keep previous versions of a file for some window of time, and this is what actually saves you. Find out how to reach yours now, while nothing is wrong. Restoring a version is easy when you have done it once and frightening when you are learning the interface with a broken manuscript in front of you. Note the retention window too; it is not forever.
- A periodic copy that is not synced. Drag the manuscript folder to an external drive on a schedule you will keep. Because it is not synced, nothing that happens in the sync folder can reach it. This is the copy that survives the failure mode sync creates.
- A dated export at every milestone. When a draft is finished, when the edit comes back, when you send it to beta readers, when you approve the proof — export a copy, date it, and never touch it again. Milestones are the versions you would actually want back.
In the tools. Your book stays in My Books, and you can duplicate it there — design and settings copied to a new book id — before you try something you might want to undo. That is a convenient safety net, not your backup: a copy you hold yourself, on your own storage, is the point of the exercise. Start a book → · about the tools
What to keep besides the manuscript
Imagine reprinting this book in five years. The tool you built it in may not exist, and the designer may have moved on. What would you need in a folder to do it anyway?
- The final print PDF and the EPUB, exactly as uploaded. Not a re-export. The files the printer and the store actually accepted.
- The cover artwork at full resolution, and its source. The layered file, not only the flattened export. A flattened cover cannot have its title changed for a second edition.
- Fonts you licensed, with the license document. A font you cannot find in five years is a book you cannot re-set the same way.
- The ISBN and the full metadata record. Title, subtitle, author name as registered, imprint, categories, description, keywords. See Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book.
- Receipts and license files for any stock art. The license is your evidence of the right to use the image; the receipt is your evidence of the license. Keep both together. Stock images: what the license actually lets you do explains why that folder matters.
- The style sheet, so a later book still agrees with this one.
One folder per book, everything in it, backed up the same way the manuscript is.
Name files so they sort themselves
final_v3_FINAL_use_this_one.docx is a naming scheme that fails in exactly the way it was designed to prevent.
Put the date first, in year-month-day order: 2026-09-11-thornfield-draft3.docx. Alphabetical order becomes chronological order automatically, in every file manager, on every operating system, forever. 09-11-2026 does not do this and 11-Sep-2026 does not either.
Add what the version is rather than how final it is — copyedit-returned, proof-approved, uploaded-kdp. Finality is a judgment that changes; a date and a stage are facts.
The honest schedule
The routine that works is the one you will actually do. Weekly and done beats daily and abandoned in March. Set a recurring reminder, plug in the drive, drag the folder.
Then, twice a year, restore one file from each copy and open it. An untested backup is a belief, not a backup, and the moment you discover a drive has been failing silently for eight months should not be the moment you need it.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: AI in the writing process, and what stores ask you to declare · Also: Fixing a book that is already published · The style sheet: how a series stays consistent · Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book