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Our July Theme Is...Making the Most of the Slowest Month of the Year for Bookselling and Book Publishing
It may be the slowest month of the publishing calendar, but as we've covered so far, that makes July a great month of writing, research, and vacation...and a great month for relationship-building...and, as we'll look at today, the perfect time of year to do some mid-year assessments and engage in strategic planning for the rest of 2024.
Mid-Year Evaluations and Strategic Planning
Hang on. I saved the best for last.
Combining mid-year evaluations with strategic planning for the second half of the year is a great opportunity and powerful combination for authors to reflect on your progress, check in with any business goals you made for 2024, and adjust your strategies as needed for the second half of the year. Here are some key area to look at:
1. Marketing and Promotion
- Book Launches and Author Events: How did any virtual or in-person book events/tours, launch parties, and promotional campaigns go? Set goals in these areas for QIII and QIV that fit strategically with your larger goals and marketing efforts.
- Social Media Strategy: Make time to reassess your social media presence. You might consider developing a content calendar, new ways to engage with your audience, and explore new (or dropping outworn) platforms or tools.
- Email Marketing: Evaluate how you did or didn’t grow your email list in the first half of the year and make plans to grow your list by x% by the end of December.
- Advertising: Consider any investments in digital ads and whether you want to pursue more targeted advertising, such as Amazon ads, Facebook ads, BookBub promotions, and other digital marketing services.
2. Sales and Distribution
- Sales Channels: Evaluate your current sales channels. Brainstorm new distribution, partnership, and volume sales options, as well as regional stores or specialty online retailers you can approach.
- Book Formats: Consider diversifying your book formats, such as audiobooks, e-books, boxed sets, workbooks, etc.
3. Content Creation
- Upcoming Projects: Strategize on upcoming writing projects and set clear goals and deadlines for their completion.
- Content Calendar: Develop a content calendar for blog posts, articles, or other content related to your author brand. Plan topics that will grab your readers and reinforce your areas of expertise.
4. Author Platform and Branding
- Website: Make sure your website is up-to-date with current releases, reviews, media appearances, events, news, and relevant content. Learn a couple new tricks to optimize it for search engines (SEO) to attract more visitors.
- Branding: Does your author brand need some refinement—visually, conceptually, or both? If thinking of a good brand as a promise and a great brand as a promise delivered, what can your readers expect from you and how do you convey that in your messaging?
5. Professional Development
- Skill Enhancement: Identify areas you want to grow next as an author and businessperson and how you will work on that development.
- Relationships: We covered this last issue...How will you expand your network next? Who do you want to meet? What kind of help are you looking for and what can you offer others?
6. Collaborations and Partnerships
- Cross-Promotions: Partner with other authors or influencers for cross-promotional opportunities. This can help reach new audiences and create synergistic marketing efforts.
- Sponsorships: Brainstorm on ways sponsoring business or organizations can buy large numbers of your books and/or promote them in a big way.
- Publishing Partners: Explore partnerships with publishers, agents, or literary organizations for potential collaboration and support.
7. Financial Management
- Budgeting: Review your budget for the second half of the year. Allocate funds for marketing, production, and other business expenses, as well as profit, taxes, and a paycheck! (I can’t stress enough the power of the “Profit First” method.)
- Revenue Streams: Explore additional revenue streams, such as speaking engagements, workshops, or merchandise. Review my series on Medium or Substack on the 15 Types of Author Income.
9. Operations and Planning:
- Process Improvement: Can you streamline your writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and sales processes to improve efficiency and productivity?
- Technology Utilization: How can you next leverage technology for project management, writing assistance, scheduling, or marketing automation?
- Productivity and Time Management: Identify any distractions or obstacles that have impacted your productivity and goal attainment this year and consider ways to address them or workaround them.
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Goals and Milestones:
- Short-Term Goals - Check if you’re meeting short-term goals such as daily habits, marketing and outreach efforts, monthly sales goals.
- Long-Term Goals - Revisit your long-term goals. Are they still relevant? Do you need to adjust them based on your current progress?
10. Well-being and Balance
- Work-Life Balance: Are you maintaining a healthy balance in your business (writing, publishing, marketing, sales, operations, relationships, planning, publishing) and between your business and other aspects of your life? What do you need to do to avoid burnout and manage stress, including taking breaks, taking good care of yourself, and rewarding yourself as needed?
- Motivation and Inspiration: Check in with your motivation and inspiration levels. Are you feeling creatively fulfilled and invigoratingly challenged, or do you need new sources of inspiration and ambition?
11. Strategic Planning:
- Performance Review: Conduct a performance review of the first half of the year. Assess what worked well and what didn’t, and adjust your strategies accordingly.
- Goal Setting: Set clear, actionable goals for the rest of the year. Develop a plan with milestones and track your progress regularly.
Take action today, but...
There’s no need to examine all of these areas and do the accompanying planning all at once. Try one a day for the next 11 business days or other steady but reasonable pace.
High-Flying Advice on Library Sales from Aviation History Author Michael Haupt
"For authors of non-fiction books, when I arrange a speaking engagement at a library I make a polite request that they add a copy of my book to their collection. It’s not a requirement or part of fee negotiation up front. I make the request later when making final arrangements.
Making it as easy for them as possible, I tell whoever arranges the speaking schedule simply to submit the request to their accessions department and go through regular channels. That way they don’t have to deal with an outside vendor. They just add another book onto their Ingram order costing $10-15, so it shouldn’t be a cause for concern.
It’s happened a couple of times so far and others are still pending. While it doesn’t generate a lot of sales revenue for me, it does spread the word. It also adds to my credibility that Worldcat has a list of libraries holding my title."
Michael Haupt, Aviation Chicago Press
www.aviation-chicago.com
- Do you have book marketing, book selling, or author business advice you'd like to share in the pages of this newsletter? Something that worked or didn't work? A hack, a tip, a useful mindset? Send it my way, and I'll share with the list, along with your author website.
Laugh and Learn with Bull Garlington
Humorist and author Bull Garlington is one of Conspire Creative's publishing pros with whom you can book a One Hour Call. Enjoy this recent video he made...
Thanks for reading. Come back for August's issues when we focus on sales and sales strategies.
Sharon
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Sharon Woodhouse, Conspire Creative
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