A piece in MAKING has words and no picture. That is the stage that stops a queue, and it is the stage nobody counts.
If you only ever read one page of this book, read page 21. It is the only page that cannot flatter you.
Page 21, Planned versus published. Two counts side by side for every month, and the gap between them. Everything else in this book is a way of moving a number on that page.
| # | The piece | Shelf | Writing | Making | Scheduled | Ran | Lands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09 | The workshop table, cleared photograph · instagram | 01 Feb | |||||
| 10 | A note about the jars note · the letter | 04 Feb | |||||
| 11 | Fastening a lid, properly how-to · shorts | 08 Feb | |||||
| 12 | The winter shelf, after the rush photograph · instagram | 11 Feb | |||||
| 08 | The preserves club, explained explainer · the journal | 18 Feb | |||||
| 06 | The seeded loaf, in five steps how-to · shorts | 22 Feb | |||||
| 07 | Six things to do with a Seville list · the journal | 20 Feb | |||||
| 04 | The label printer photograph · instagram | 27 Feb | |||||
| 05 | Why our marmalade is bitter essay · the letter | 25 Feb | |||||
| 01 | A glossary of set reference · the journal | 08 Mar | |||||
| 02 | The box we send wholesale photograph · instagram | 05 Mar | |||||
| 03 | What a bad set looks like essay · the journal | 03 Mar | |||||
| 13 | The summer we ran out of jars essay · the journal | 10 Mar | |||||
| 14 | One pan, four batches how-to · shorts | 12 Mar |
The read: fourteen pieces, ten in flight, and five of them have not been started. The queue is not short of ideas and it is not short of dates. It is short of pictures - page 11 counts them.
Ideas arrive at 3.25 a week and leave at 2.75. The shelf has grown from eight to twelve and it will keep growing. A full shelf is not a full queue.
Four of these twelve have been on the shelf more than ten weeks. An idea nobody has started in ten weeks is not waiting for time, it is waiting for a decision: make it, change it, or let it go.
It cannot tell you when the picture was taken, whether the hook survives the first line, or who is going to cut the video. Those are the nine assets on page 10, and they live in MAKING.
somebody asked it out loud, which means forty people are wondering it
the step nobody outside sees - and it is the whole craft
something you said last year that is no longer true
"is it worth it?", "how long does it keep?", "why so much?" - answered once, properly
who makes it, what they carry, what they would never do
what is about to run out, and what to do with the last of it
| The idea, in the words you said it in | The hook - the first line, written now | Channel | Keep? |
|---|---|---|---|
An idea that cannot produce a first line in ten minutes is not ready to leave the shelf. That is not a judgement on the idea; it is what keeps the shelf honest.
A cadence that has no rest day is not a cadence, it is a streak, and a streak is a thing you break once and then abandon. Sunday is shut and Friday is the make day - both are in the promise, which is why a Friday with no post is not a miss.
35 of 40 held.
Not “published a lot”. Held: the slot you said you would fill, filled, on the day you said. " + d.slotMissed + " missed, and every one of them is on the next page with its cause.
| Week | Slot | What actually happened | What brought it back |
|---|---|---|---|
| W02 | Wed · Instagram | Stock take ran to seven; there was no photograph to post. | The picture went up on the Friday and did fine. |
| W03 | Thu · Shorts | No footage. The make day moved to the Friday and nobody moved the slot. | Cut on the Saturday from the Friday's footage. |
| W04 | Wed · Instagram | Two staff off and the shop shut. Nothing to photograph. | Posted the closed door. It was the most replied-to post of the month. |
| W06 | Thu · Shorts | The same cause a second time: the make day was still Friday. | Fixed by moving the make day back to Wednesday - and that is the whole fix. |
| W07 | Thu · Shorts | No cut ready. The footage existed and nobody had cut it. | Not recovered. It is the one that got away. |
The make day moved and the slot did not. Three of the 5. A cadence is a set of dependencies, and the fastest way to break it is to move one without moving the other.
The shop day took the slot. Two of the 5, both a Wednesday: a stock take that ran to seven, and a week with two staff off and the door shut. The middle of the week is where this queue is thinnest.
Not remorse. A miss with a cause is a design fault with a fix in it; a miss with no cause is weather, and weather does not change. All 5 of these had a cause.
The last Thursday: the footage existed, nobody cut it. The fix is not a new habit, it is a standing hour on Friday called “cut the short”.
12 ideas, 5 unstarted, 2 in making, and 50 assets missing across the queue.
Nothing on this page asks you to have more ideas. Three refills, in the order they work.
Take a piece from the re-run shelf (page 15) and run it again with a new first line. Cost: twenty minutes. It has run before, so it is known to work, and the picture already exists.
Not a repeat - a re-run carries a new hook and a new date, or it is filler.
One paragraph about something that happened in the shop this week: what ran out, what arrived, what broke. The Letter has carried a shop note every week of the year and it is the most replied-to thing in the book.
Cost: ten minutes and no photograph.
Photograph the thing in front of you and write eight words beside it. This is the lowest-asset piece that exists, and it is why the Instagram slot is the one that survives a bad week.
Cost: four minutes. Nine assets, one of them required.
| Minute | What you do | What it produces | Assets |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00-10 | Pick the piece from the re-run shelf. Write the new first line. | the hook | 1 of 9 |
| 10-20 | Open the folder with the pictures already in it. | the picture | 2 of 9 |
| 20-30 | Cut one crop for the channel it is going to. | the crop | 3 of 9 |
| 30-38 | Write the body at the length that channel wants. | the body | 4 of 9 |
| 38-40 | Write the alt text and set the slot. | alt and slot | 6 of 9 |
Six of nine is enough to publish. The reply plan and the measure are set after it goes out, and a piece that waits for all nine never goes out at all.
| # | Asset | What it actually is | Have |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hook | one sentence, the first line, written before the rest | done |
| 2 | Picture | taken, not planned - a shot list is not an asset | open |
| 3 | Body | the words at the length this channel wants | done |
| 4 | Alt text | the sentence a screen reader reads instead | open |
| 5 | Crops | one per channel shape, cut for that frame | open |
| 6 | Link | the one thing it points at, decided before it runs | done |
| 7 | Slot | the day and the hour, in the cadence | open |
| 8 | Reply plan | the hour you give back inside 24 h | open |
| 9 | Measure | the one number that says it worked | open |
3 of nine done. It cannot run until the picture exists - everything else on this list can be made in the twenty minutes before the slot.
Because a piece that is missing the alt text still ships, and a piece missing the picture does not. The nine are ordered by what stops it, not by what is easiest.
The measure. It is last on the list, it takes ten seconds, and it is the only asset that tells you next month whether any of this worked.
| The piece | Hook | Picture | Body | Alt text | Crops | Link | Slot | Reply plan | Measure | Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The preserves club, explainedJournal · 18 Feb | SCHEDULED | |||||||||
| The seeded loaf, in five stepsShorts · 22 Feb | MAKING | |||||||||
| Six things to do with a SevilleJournal · 20 Feb | MAKING | |||||||||
| The label printerInsta · 27 Feb | WRITING | |||||||||
| Why our marmalade is bitterLetter · 25 Feb | WRITING | |||||||||
| A glossary of setJournal · 08 Mar | SHELF | |||||||||
| The box we send wholesaleInsta · 05 Mar | SHELF | |||||||||
| What a bad set looks likeJournal · 03 Mar | SHELF | |||||||||
| The summer we ran out of jarsJournal · 10 Mar | SHELF | |||||||||
| One pan, four batchesShorts · 12 Mar | SHELF |
The gaps are not spread evenly. They are almost all in picture and crop - which means the queue is not waiting on writing, on ideas or on dates. It is waiting on somebody standing in the kitchen with a camera, and nobody has that in their week.
One hour a week called the make hour, on the day the light is good, with three pieces’ shot lists already written. Not a system - an hour.
The loaf we sell out of is not the one on the card.
No picture required. One link, at the foot. It is the only channel where a paragraph is welcome, and the only one that carries the club.
Five steps, and the fourth is the one people skip.
Six photographs, named in the text. It is the version that gets found by somebody who was not looking for you.
Step four. That is the whole post.
One 4:5 crop, one carousel of six, the first line carrying the rest. The caption is the piece; the pictures are the argument.
on-screen: STEP FOUR IS THE ONE YOU SKIP
Four shots, no voice, text on every cut, the last frame holding for two seconds with the club at the foot.
Make the journal version first. Every other version is a subtraction from it, and a subtraction is far faster than a fresh start. The reverse - writing the caption first and growing it - produces four pieces that all sound like captions.
The same paragraph with a different crop is not four pieces, it is one piece published four times, and the audience can tell. A variant changes the first line, the length and the job - in that order.
| Channel | What it wants | Length | What it punishes | The measure | Slot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Letter the club | One idea, said plainly, from a person | 180-260 words | Sounding like a shop. The letter is the only place you are allowed to have a voice, and it is the first thing to go when the week is short. | Clicks to the offer, per 1,000 sent | Monday |
| The Journal the wholesale enquiry | Something worth finding later | 600-900 words | Writing a post and calling it an article. If it would not be useful in two years, it belongs on Instagram. | Search entries and time on page | Tuesday |
| Instagram the workshop booking | One picture that stops a thumb | 60-100 words | The caption explaining the picture. If the picture needs explaining, the picture is wrong. | Saves per 1,000 reached | Wednesday and Saturday |
| Shorts the reach that feeds everything else | The one step nobody sees | 35-50 seconds | A voiceover. The format is watched with the sound off, and a piece that needs sound has failed at the first frame. | Completion, then shares | Thursday |
Shorts carried 26,000 of the year’s 39,540. They carried 214 of its 955 clicks. The channel that reaches is rarely the channel that sells, and treating them as one thing is why the month looks busy and the till looks quiet.
When a week is short, drop in this order: Saturday Instagram, Thursday Shorts, Wednesday Instagram. The Letter and the Journal do not get dropped, because they are the only two that carry the offer.
A piece is made for one channel and adapted for the others. When it is made for none of them - “we’ll put it everywhere” - it is too long for one, too short for another and wrong for the third.
| Channel | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Letter | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Journal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Shorts |
| Channel | Planned | Shipped | Short |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Letter | 4 | 4 | – |
| The Journal | 5 | 5 | – |
| 7 | 5 | 2 | |
| Shorts | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| January | 20 | 17 | 3 |
Every shortfall in January is on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Monday and Tuesday were perfect for five weeks. The problem is not the month, the discipline or the ideas - it is the middle of the week, where the making happens and the making has no room.
| The piece | Ran | Reached | Works until | Why it survives | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cutting peel in eight seconds Shorts | 09 Jan | 8,410 | still works | the technique has not changed and the knife is the same | 20 min |
| Why our marmalade is bitter Letter | 27 Jan | 1,060 | August, when the fruit comes back | the question is asked every January and nobody remembers the answer | 30 min |
| Three jars of January Journal | 04 Jan | 1,240 | a year, with a new photograph | it is found by search, and the search does not care when it was written | 45 min |
| Fastening a lid, properly Shorts | 08 Feb | 6,320 | still works | the most saved thing of the year and the least seasonal | 15 min |
| Six things to do with a Seville Journal | 30 Jan | 1,530 | next Seville season | a list is the easiest thing to re-run with two new entries | 40 min |
| The workshop table, cleared Insta | 01 Feb | 1,870 | the table changes | one photograph and ninety words; it is a re-run whether you call it one or not | 10 min |
A re-run keeps the body and replaces the hook. If you cannot write a new first line for it, the piece is not re-runnable - it is finished, and re-running it is how a queue turns into a repeat.
Six pieces, about two and a half hours of work in total, against roughly fourteen hours to make six new ones. That difference is the whole reason this page exists: a queue that can re-run does not run dry.
| The piece | Channel | Ran | Reached | Saved | Replied | Clicked | Saves / 1k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three jars of January | Journal | 04 Jan | 1,240 | 38 | 6 | 92 | 3.1 |
| The marmalade window | Letter | 06 Jan | 980 | 21 | 14 | 148 | 2.1 |
| Cutting peel in eight seconds | Shorts | 09 Jan | 8,410 | 112 | 9 | 63 | 1.3 |
| What we do with the last quince | Journal | 13 Jan | 760 | 19 | 3 | 41 | 2.5 |
| A shelf for the seeded loaves | Insta | 20 Jan | 2,190 | 64 | 5 | 22 | 2.9 |
| The seeded loaf, in five steps | Shorts | 23 Jan | 12,880 | 231 | 18 | 104 | 1.8 |
| Why our marmalade is bitter | Letter | 27 Jan | 1,060 | 27 | 11 | 176 | 2.5 |
| Six things to do with a Seville | Journal | 30 Jan | 1,530 | 58 | 4 | 88 | 3.8 |
| The workshop table, cleared | Insta | 01 Feb | 1,870 | 41 | 7 | 35 | 2.2 |
| A note about the jars | Letter | 04 Feb | 890 | 12 | 9 | 121 | 1.3 |
| Fastening a lid, properly | Shorts | 08 Feb | 6,320 | 88 | 6 | 47 | 1.4 |
| The winter shelf, after the rush | Insta | 11 Feb | 1,410 | 33 | 4 | 18 | 2.3 |
| Twelve pieces | all | 39,540 | 744 | 96 | 955 | 1.9 |
Saves per thousand reached is the column that survives a good week and a bad one, because it is the only one that says what the piece was worth rather than how far it went.
| Channel | Pieces | Reached | Saved | Clicked | Saves / 1k | Clicks / 1k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Letter | 3 | 2,930 | 60 | 445 | 2 | 15.2 |
| The Journal | 3 | 3,530 | 115 | 221 | 3.3 | 6.3 |
| 3 | 5,470 | 138 | 75 | 2.5 | 1.4 | |
| Shorts | 3 | 27,610 | 431 | 214 | 1.6 | 0.8 |
Shorts reached 27,610 and sent 214 people to an offer. The Letter reached 2,930 and sent 445. Every thousand people who read the Letter are worth forty times every thousand who watch a short.
All three ask for one thing and name it in the first line.
Do not do more shorts because they reached further. Do more of what the letter did: one idea, said plainly, pointing at one thing. The reach will be smaller and the month will be better.
| Channel | Promised | Shipped | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Letter | 5 | 5 | the backbone - every one pointed at the club |
| The Journal | 5 | 4 | the fifth became the club explainer, and it moved to February |
| 4 | 3 | one missed in week 50, shop shut | |
| Shorts | 4 | 3 | one missed, one cut late |
| The window | 18 | 15 |
Nine of the fifteen pointed at the club. Thirty-eight members on 06 January, forty-seven on 14 February.
Nine pieces pointed at the club and six pointed at nothing. The nine produced forty-one of the fifty-one joins; the six produced the reach that made the nine worth reading. Both halves were necessary, and only one of them was planned.
Fifteen of eighteen is a good campaign and it is not eighteen. The three that did not ship are on the miss log, and the fix is the same one on page 8: the make day.
| Offer | What the content has to carry | A month | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Preserves Club | two pieces a month, one of them a letter | £1,128 | 50.9% |
| Saturday workshops | one photograph of the table and the date | £585 | 26.4% |
| Wholesale crates | the spec sheet and one case study a quarter | £504 | 22.7% |
| A month | £2,217 | 100% |
Every figure on this page is invented, like the rest of the demo. What is not invented is the shape: 50.9% of the month comes from one recurring offer, and that offer is carried by one channel. Losing the letter would cost more than losing every short.
The workshops sell out and the wholesale is steady, and neither of them would survive a bad quarter. The club is the only line that arrives without being re-sold every month, which is why it gets the letter.
The club: two pieces a month, one of them a letter. The workshops: one photograph and a date. The wholesale: one long piece a quarter. Nine pieces a month in total, which is what page 21 says the year actually shipped.
Cutting peel in eight seconds, A shelf for the seeded loaves, Three jars of January. They are not mistakes - reach has to come from somewhere - but they are the pieces that were made because they were easy rather than because they were going somewhere.
A useful test before a piece is started: what does it point at? If the answer is “nothing, it is just nice”, that is allowed once a fortnight and never twice in a row.
One offer takes nine of the fifteen joins; the other two take six between them. That is not a problem to fix, it is the shape of the business: the club is the offer the content is actually about.
The two smaller offers are worth keeping because they are the first thing somebody buys. The map says they are the door, not the room.
the whole year · click a month on the screen edition
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planned | 20 | 18 | 22 | 20 | 18 | 22 | 16 | 20 | 24 | 22 | 20 | 18 | 240 |
| Published | 17 | 16 | 19 | 20 | 14 | 21 | 12 | 18 | 22 | 19 | 20 | 15 | 213 |
| Gap | 3 | 2 | 3 | – | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | – | 3 | 27 |
The read, in one sentence: the year promised 240 pieces and shipped 213. The gap is not spread evenly - it is 4 in each of May and Jul, nothing in April and nothing in November, and the months that held are the months with nothing new on the offer shelf.
Held means it went out on the day, with all six assets that matter. A piece that goes out on Friday instead is a miss, and it is written in the log as one.
The Monday letter, and the alt text. One is the business; the other is the people who cannot see the picture.
which pieces exist and which stage each is in
where the pictures live, and which are missing
which day, which channel, what time
one good example per channel, marked as the standard
| The piece | Stage | Lands | Who is making it | What is missing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A glossary of set Journal | Shelf | 08 Mar | you | hook, body, link, slot, measure |
| The box we send wholesale Insta | Shelf | 05 Mar | you | hook, picture, link, slot, measure |
| What a bad set looks like Journal | Shelf | 03 Mar | you | hook, body, link, slot, measure |
| The label printer Insta | Writing | 27 Feb | you | picture, body, alt text, crops, slot, reply plan, measure |
| Why our marmalade is bitter Letter | Writing | 25 Feb | you | picture, alt text, crops, slot, reply plan, measure |
| The seeded loaf, in five steps Shorts | Making | 22 Feb | Ellen, on the make day | picture, alt text, crops, slot, reply plan, measure |
It is not a briefing. A briefing is a conversation and it evaporates. This is a page somebody can hold on a Wednesday when you are not answering your phone.
The voice sheet: one piece per channel that is the standard, and one sentence saying why. Everything else on this page can be worked out by a careful person. That cannot.
| # | The question | This month | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Did the cadence hold? | 35 of 40 slots | Six missed, and every one has a cause on page 8. |
| 2 | Did the queue move or just fill? | 10 in flight, 5 unstarted | The shelf grew by four and the making column did not move. |
| 3 | What did the month actually ship? | 16 of 18 in February | Two short, both on a Thursday. |
| 4 | Which pieces sent somebody to an offer? | 7 of 10 | Six pieces carried nine of the fifteen joins. |
| 5 | What is the one change for next month? | — | Move the make day to Wednesday. It is the cause of three misses. |
Planned and published, for the month just gone. Everything else on this page is commentary on those two numbers.
Follower counts, and any month-on-month comparison of reach. Reach moves with one piece going unexpectedly far and it will teach you the wrong lesson twice a year.
Usually a moved dependency, not a new habit. This month it is the make day. Last month it was the slot times. A review that produces three changes produces none.
A content queue planner for a small business that publishes its own way. Twenty-five pages in print, twenty-six on the iPad, four editions, and one page that earns the rest of them: planned versus published.
Clear the demo and every structure on every page is still standing. Nothing here is filled in for you, and nothing here is a calendar with extra tabs.
DM Serif Display for the display type, DM Sans for everything you read. Both are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the licence text for each is shipped beside the book in licences/. The font files are embedded in every edition, so nothing is fetched and nothing is missing when you open it.
Pallister & Vine is invented. Every number, name, price and date in it is made up, and it is internally consistent on purpose: the January grid on page 14 adds up to the January row on page 21, the miss log matches the cadence grid, and the money on page 19 is the offer shelf multiplied out.
Open page 2. It takes three minutes and it asks you for five days, not five ideas. Then put every piece you are carrying on page 4, in the stage it is honestly in, and count the making column.
Caught at the counter: somebody asked how long the jars keep.
The hook: “The answer is six weeks and it has nothing to do with the sugar.” 180 words drafted.
One photograph of three jars, three dates on tape. Then 14 days pass and nothing happens.
Crop 4:5 for Instagram. Slot set: Saturday, 9am. Alt text written in the same minute.
Posted. 1,410 people saw it, 33 saved it, and four asked where to buy the jars.
Three days of it were waiting for a photograph. Nothing else in the chain took more than an hour, and the piece could have run on the Tuesday if the picture had existed.
Every slow piece in this book is slow for this reason. It is never the writing.
A row that has not moved is not a row that is being worked on. The stage it sits in tells you which asset is missing, and the days-in-stage tells you whether it is moving at all.