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If I had one complaint about this past year, it would concern my writing. Last year at this time, I made a bunch of lofty goals and was super-excited to get started on them. But then life hit me and I ended up working a job for most of the year that made it really hard to make much progress on my writing. It was all I could do to keep up with my reading and blogging. I got very little done on the writing front.
Luckily, I'm in a better position to do more with my writing this year *fingers crossed* and I hope to accomplish more.
Last year I wanted to:
- Read 50+ books
- Get 4 Books published.
- Do a monthly newsletter.
- Get my followers to 1) 1000 on FB 2) 15000 on Twitter 3) 500 for email newsletter 4) Increase blog pageviews to 10000/month
- Combine my 2 blogs
Yeah, most of that didn't happen.
- I read 44 books (almost met goal)
- I only got 1 book published (Citadels of Fire) and that was mostly because it had a publisher that did most of the work for me.
- Only did 1 monthly newsletter, I think. Totally dropped the ball there. But because I was doing s little, I had little to write about in a newsletter.
- I now have 1200 likes on FB, but that's over all my pages, not per page. :/
- I have 5500 followers on Twitter, which is up about 1000 from last year, but not nearly the #s I wanted.
- My email list is about the same as last year (i.e. pitful).
- And my pageviews are at about 4-5000/month, up from 3000 last year.
So, as you can see I've improved (which is great), just not by as much as I had hoped.
So, now for this year.
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I'm going for publishing 4 books this year again. Only this time I hope to do it for real. :D
- 1) Desolate Mantle, Street Games #2 (Cover reveal soon to come). Yeah, it's STILL not out, but I'm close. Description HERE.
- 2) Bastions of Blood, Kremlins #2 (Cover reveal soon to come). Jolly Fish Press has this one slated for release in March. I don't have the cover yet, but will soon.
- 3) The Botanist. JFP is doing this one too, though it won't be out until Fall. I have the cover for this one and will be doing the reveal soon. This is a stand-alone crime fiction. Description HERE.
- 4) Dark Matter, Interchron #3. I'm still writing this one, but steadily working on it, so it won't be out until near the end of the year.
- 5) A small possibility that I might get book 1 of Dragon Magic (title pending) out this year. I still have massive editing to do on it, but it's my next focused project after I get Desolate Mantle finished. The thing is, I might pedal it to a larger publisher, and if I can get anyone to pick it up, chances are it won't be out until 2016. But, if I don't have any luck, I'll put it out myself, and then I might have it out this year. Who knows?
Reading:
On goodreads, my official goal for this year is 55 books. If I can manage it, I'll do more, of course. It just depends on how my year is with work. (A sub goal is to finish several series I've been meaning to finish, as well as several dozen books that have been hanging out on my kindle for like two years. Wish me luck!)
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Yeah, I'm gonna try this one again. Once more, hopefully I have enough time to pull it off this year, and in so doing, also increase my email list. Which is perfect segue into...
Social Media followers:
I think I'll go with mostly the same goals from last year, since I didn't hit many of them. Maybe a few increases.
- Facebook: I'd like each of my book and author pages to reach 2,000 followers. I have a strategy for this, which I'll go into down below.
- Twitter: 15,000 followers, which is just under triple what I have now.
- Email List: I'd actually like to get this to 1,000+.
- Blog: I really am going to combine my two writing blogs, but I want to get my official author site up and running first. I'm hoping to have both these things done by February. Rather than focus on page views, I've installed analytics and would like to get 5,000+ unique hits/month. (Right now I think I'm in the 1,000-1,500 range).
How am I going to pull this off, you ask? Mostly by selling more books...
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Most authors know that our books simply don't sell themselves. While I do promote on my blogs and social media, I haven't done much this past year to actually sell books. I've got a whole business plan worked out, but what it boils down to is paying for small promotions on ebook websites. I plan to do as many as I can manage each month, rotating books, and just try to get more readership that way. That in turn (I'm hoping) will increase my following on different venues.
Personal:
On a more personal note, I'm also planning to run a half marathon with my sister. I had a goal last year to lose some weight. And again, things happened and I couldn't focus on it as much as I'd have liked. But I did lose some. About 35 pounds over the course of the year, so at least I'm lighter than I was at this time last year, right?
So I told my sister I'd train for and do a half marathon with her. Not sure I'm ready for a full marathon yet, but I'm working up to it (psychologically more than physically). We probably won't start training until March, though. We're in Utah, which means pretty heavy snow for the next couple of months. And, quite frankly, jogging in sub-freezing temperatures is a great way to get bronchitis. :D Yeah, let's try to avoid that!
So, those are this year's goals. Everyone wish me luck!
What are your goals/New Year's Resolutions?
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