Fake Brains Software
Notes from the operating side of publishing.
Practical posts on the workflows community publishers run every day: sales, production, billing, classifieds, and the small operational decisions that decide whether the work moves.
Latest posts
Email marketing basics for publishers
Selling to advertisers by email is straightforward once the vocabulary stops getting in the way. Here is what each metric actually measures, and the two things that matter more than any of them.
Is your software holding you back?
The clearest sign software is costing you is a person inventing a workaround for it. We found one at the desk down the hall, and it changed what we built next.
Ten questions to ask before you buy mission-critical publishing software
Features and price are the two things every buyer compares, and the two least likely to predict whether the decision works out. Here is what we would check instead.
WHAT WE WRITE ABOUT
Five things we keep coming back to.
Every post lands in one of these buckets. Use them to jump to the work that looks like yours.
Workflow patterns
How the sale-to-paid workflow stays connected across sales, production, billing, and collections.
Product notes
Why specific AccountScout changes happened and what they mean for publishers.
Operational deep-dives
Behind the scenes on billing, ePayments, proofing, pagination, and classified order entry.
Publisher field notes
Patterns we see across community newspapers, magazines, and multi-property groups.
Choosing software
How to evaluate mission-critical publishing software, and what to ask a vendor before you sign.
From the archive
Older posts kept for the record. Product names and screens have changed since these were written, so read them as history rather than instructions.
AccountScout Mobile: selling from the field
Why we put the full advertiser record — balances, run history, expiring orders, and the actual ad artwork — on a phone. This product is now SalesScout.
Fake Brains software continually develops
Software should increase productivity, not frustration. A note from 2018 on what we shipped that year and why we build every line of it ourselves.
Running Mailchimp campaigns from AccountScout
A campaign is three things: the setup, the audience, and the design. AccountScout owns the audience and the results; Mailchimp owns the design and the send.
What's new in AccountScout 2018.1
Three changes shipped in this release: merging duplicate advertisers, a digital asset manager hook on retail orders, and screen layouts that only save when you say so.
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Helpful product updates, publisher ideas, and practical workflow tips.
See It In Action
Prefer a walkthrough over reading?
We can show how AccountScout connects sales, production, billing, payments, and reporting for your publication in about 15 minutes.