In my last blog post, we looked at why and how you would set author objectives, including the ways it benefits both you and your self-published book. We also looked at what sort of objectives you might have and how to build yourself a plan to follow. In this blog post, we will be considering the next stage of this journey, following up on your objectives.
We will consider how to review your progress and decide what goals have been met. At this point, you will also want to think about the objectives you set and how well they fit with your current situation. You may decide to change these objectives if necessary. However, we will start by quickly reviewing why you would want to set yourself author objectives.
Why Set Author Objectives?
Author objectives describe exactly what you hope to get out of self-publishing in a series of steps. Start by considering what your main goal is and then work out what you will need to do to achieve this. You can then use this to break the process down into more manageable chunks.
These should also be clear statements where it is obvious when you have met the objective, for example, having 500 followers on your author social media. This makes it easier to know when you have reached your goals than just writing that you want to improve your social media following.
Having objectives also makes it easier to organise the writing and publishing process. By knowing what you want out of it, you can change how you are doing things. This can affect the length of your book, as well as things like cover art and whether you will have a physical version as well as an ebook. It will also affect your launch plan, so establish your objectives before you make this.
Finally, having a checklist of your author objectives makes it easy to see what you have achieved at a glance. This means that you know where to focus your attention and can also help to motivate and encourage you, as well as making it easy to follow up on your progress.
Following Up
Once you have set your goals, it is time to try reaching them. Keep your goals in mind when you are creating your long-term and short-term plans for the future. If your goal is to sell a certain number of copies of your book, for example, your plan will need to focus a lot on marketing your work so that potential buyers can find it. On the other hand, your goal might be to create an audiobook. In this case, you will need to create a plan that focuses around learning how to do this and hire a narrator, if you will not be doing the audio yourself.
As you can see, plans vary according to what you hope to get out of the self-publishing process. This means that your publishing plan should be tailored to you and your style. It also means that the procedure for following up will vary slightly, as we will consider soon.
Check Your Goals
As you are working your way through the publishing process, keep regularly checking your goals. Don’t just leave it until you think you have accomplished one. Regularly reviewing your goals helps to keep you focused on your reasons for self-publishing and what you hope to get out of it. It also helps to motivate you to keep reaching for the next goal and encourages you by clearly showing the next thing to aim for.
Evaluate
When it is time to review your progress, you will need to evaluate what you have done so far. As we said above, how you review your goals will depend on what they are – some things can be measured a lot more easily than others. For example, if your goal was to create an audiobook, you would break this down into smaller tasks, such as recording the audio, editing it, and uploading the files to the selling platform. With these steps, it will be quite clear when you have achieved each one and can tick it off.
On the other hand, if your goal is to raise awareness of the subject you are writing about, it is harder to judge when this is completed. If you have a fundraiser that you are sending your readers to, you may be able to set a goal for donations here. However, sometimes you may have to judge in more subjective ways when a goal is met. As long as you do this consistently each time you review your goals, it doesn’t really matter.
Changing Goals
When it is time to evaluate your progress, you may find that your objectives no longer make sense. Maybe you are selling more copies in bookshops than you thought you would, but fewer online. When this happens, be prepared to change your goals accordingly. Allowing yourself some flexibility is necessary to keep to your main plan.
Wrapping Up
I hope that you have found this blog post useful! In my next post, we will be considering some tips to help you get the most out of Microsoft Word.
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