Hey there! Welcome to this blog about finding your why and setting goals.
In this blog, I will be talking about some things to consider as you think of goals for you and your book. Before I begin talking about marketing and promotion tips for your book, I think it is important to take a little bit of time to figure out your goals and reasons.
I Know! I Know! I talked about that briefly at the end of the last blog, but I want to focus on that a little more throughout this blog. I have created an assignment that goes along with this blog that includes all of the questions from this slide. The first thing to consider is why you want to publish your book. If you have already published your book, then consider why you decided to publish that book. Since you are reading this blog, I’m going to guess that you want to be able to give your book to more than just family and friends. But what is your reason for publishing your book? What must happen in order for you to consider it a success? Each person may define success differently. So, how would you define it? Will you only be successful if you sell X number of books or if you give away X number of books or if you make X number of dollars? And do you want to start a career of publishing books, or do you just want to publish one book?
This might help as you move forward with your marketing and promotion. For example, if you know that you are going to be creating a series of books, then you may want to market a little bit differently than if it’s just a single book. Maybe you have a business, and you want to use your book itself to market the products for your existing business. These are just some things to consider. And here are even more questions to consider. These are also found within the assignment that is included with this blog.
Do you already have an established platform? This is like what I was mentioning in the previously – maybe you have a business or something that you can promote through your book. Or maybe you have a business such as a blog that can be used to promote your book. The second question is how much time can you spend on promoting and marketing your book. Like I had said in the previous blog, there are lots of books that are published each year so books will not just automatically sell themselves. As you move forward with this course and find some ideas for marketing and promotion, it may be wise to consider how much time you can actually spend doing the marketing and promotion before choosing which options to try.
Next question is what is your budget for promoting and marketing your book? I will provide quite a few options within this course that are free or relatively inexpensive ways to promote and market books. But, obviously there are other ways to promote and market that do cost money. Also, can you offer presentations, courses, seminars, school visits, or some other kind of service to go along with your book to make even more of a profit?
So, this is when you really think about it. Decide what your goals are and why you want to publish a book. Or if you have already published your book, why you published the book in the first place. Again, I’m just reiterating the fact of being realistic with how much time and effort you are able to put into your books. Considering whether or not publishing books is a hobby or a business is another thing to look at. If that is not what you are interested in then, that’s okay. It is just helpful to know whether or not you are planning on having this as a hobby or as a business. And, just like I’ve said before, really consider what your definition of success is. Finally, how can you put your ideas, plans, and goals into action? Filling out the questions on the worksheet that goes along with this blog may be able to help you focus on what makes the most sense for you and your book as you move forward in this process.
Well, that’s it for this blog. In the next blog, I will be talking about an overview of marketing and promotion