Try something new, she said... (On finding ways to promote my books)

 

An early TikTok video. There's plenty of room for improvement. 😊

For the last couple years, I've been a member of the Book Boss Author Community run by Angela James. It's been a great experience, both for networking with other authors and for expanding my own knowledge base. This fall, I took Angela's Book Boss Strategy Intensive, a 4-month course in business planning for authors. That experience, more than anything else, has helped me shift my mindset. Writing is not my hobby. I'm running a small business and books and their related content are my product.

Those words are at once freeing and loaded with responsibility. I still tend to throw things at the wall and see if they stick, but I'm (hopefully) more intentional about it. 

At the end of the Strategy Intensive, we all created a business plan. Angela gave us individual feedback on our plans, and her advice to me was to try new things. I'd basically built a marketing plan that was based on what worked for Soulmates, the first book in my Soulmates series, even though the 2nd and 3rd books in the series hadn't done as well.

Sometimes it takes an outside perspective to point out what should be easy for me to see. 

So, determined to Try New Things, in early January I joined a Bookfunnel promo and dropped the price of Soulmates to free for a 5-day period. The book has been out for 2 years and it's the first time I've done a free promotion, and OMG did it go well. I had about 2000 downloads over the 5 days, with almost 30 new reviews so far - and those reviews are like gold. I also had sales and KU downloads for the next two books, along with a handful of new reviews for each. 

I can't run a free promo all that often, but I was very pleased with the experience. January's going to be my best month since Redeemed's release in April.

Bolstered by that experience, and in a fit of "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks", I dove into TikTok. Angela made a how-to video for the Author Community that demystified the process, so I made a couple of short videos and la voila, I have a TikTok account. (You can find it here.)

While it's been fun so far, and making the videos exercises a different part of my creative brain than writing does, I'm just now realizing how much I don't know. I did join an Author TikTokers FB page and dug up a video on TikTok from the 20Booksto50K conference I went to in November, so I have resources for learning. I'm also beginning to appreciate the time commitment involved in creating new content every day. The little buggers are short, but it takes time to put them together.

Still, my oldest kid called me yesterday morning and told me that he and his friends love my TikTok account. His friends think it's cool that his 60-year-old mother is living her best life, and you know what? Encouragement like that motivates me to push on. 

Blogging is also an attempt to try something new, and I'm pretty happy with how that's going, too. Thank you all for reading along, and drop a comment if you have questions or want to share promo ideas. We can all learn from each other!

Business Plan: Checking in

Promo banner created using GIMP

Over the first couple weeks of January, I spent some time developing a business plan for my work as a writer. (I blogged about it HERE and HERE.) Since it's been a month since that last post, I thought I'd check in and see how things were progressing. I figure I started out making this plan public, and for the sake of accountability I should keep putting it out there.

My plan has three main themes:

• Increase Productivity
• Increase Visibility
• Improve Skills

There are goals related to each theme, and for this check in, I'm going to focus on the goals and tasks I'd hoped to accomplish in the last month. Here's what I found out...

Increase Productivity

My first goal for increasing productivity was to improve time management by developing a weekly schedule. I tracked all my writing-related activities for one week but then didn't take the next step to put that information into any kind of template. I did identify Facebook/social networking as a huge time-suck (which, DUH), but my day job and family demands have been so variable it hasn't made sense to come up with a schedule that will only likely frustrate me when I can't keep to it. I have tried to limit my focused social networking to a couple hours in the morning and to dedicate time to writing with the internet turned off.

I set a goal of 4500 words per week, and I've done pretty well with that. I'm about 17,000 words into The Lyric Assassin, but have hit a sticking point so have been playing with a different project while my ideas sort themselves out.

My third goal was to work up a portfolio of resources. I gave myself six months to complete that task, and haven't done anything so far. Maybe next month...

Increase Visibility

First goal: Blog regularly. Check. I've done at least three posts a week for this blog, along with my regular posts for the Spellbound Scribes & the Relentless Writers blogs. For my own blog, the most popular post was the one I did on self-publishing with 604 page views, and my average page view per post is 315, although I need a few more months of doing this so I can assess whether the overall page views are increasing.

My second goal for this time frame was to self-publish another short story. That hasn't happened yet, in part because I picked up a theme in the reviews for The Santa Drag. Most of the reviews were positive, but a couple people mentioned it was too short. On the one hand, SHORT STORY, but on the other hand, I don't want to turn off potential readers by having another release with the same problem. While I'm not sure if this is a valid concern, or just something I'm fretting about needlessly, for the time being I made the decision to defer this goal and focus on longer projects.

Increase Skills

My goal was to take part in 3 classes over the year. So far, I had a great time with the GIMP class. I learned a lot about manipulating images, and hope to keep playing with it. Now I just need to find another good class...

So that's where I am this month. If you're still reading along, THANK YOU. I appreciate your patience, and your willingness to hang in there with me. If you have any thoughts, I'm totally open to suggestion. Am I needlessly worrying about the short story thing? Do you know any good classes I could sign up for?

Thanks again, and I hope your Monday is a happy one!
Liv