Do you want your books to be one of those bestsellers? Learn about these 3 60-second habits for a best selling book today.
Jane had absolutely no focus on getting her book self-published. The problem was that she simply wasn't investing the time necessary to get this book onto the market. Which clearly would mean she would never end up getting that bestseller that she had always wanted for her book.
That's the reason why in today's article, I'm going to discuss 3 60-Second Habits For A Best Selling Book. Well the thing is that Jane lives in Texas and she's a writer. The types of books that she writes are about mystery novels.
She's written a number of these manuscripts but has never managed to actually get them onto the market. So her number one goal was “Can I get them onto the market? Then can I market them and get myself a best seller?”
The problem that she faces though is that she completely lacks the focus. In order to prioritize getting these things done as we always discuss here. Self-publishing doesn't have to be difficult.
Because if you break it down into the simple steps and follow through, focusing on one thing at a time, we can in fact do it all ourselves. The next time, we'll be even faster. And that was something that Jane was following along with, trying to make progress in this direction.
She just wasn't investing the time necessary. And when she did invest the time, it would be the time for the wrong things. So she had spent months without making much progress at all.
Sometimes, I would even check in with her via email. As we would go back and forth a little bit just finding out how things are going. As I do with many of you all who are on my email list.
The thing is that each time I checked in, she would say I really haven't done anything since the last time you asked. And she felt sort of bad about that but at the same time she felt good that I was actually following up just to see how things were going.
But at the pace that she was moving, I asked her how long do you think this will actually take? She said it's going to take years or maybe this will never happen.
That was the problem. There's no way to get a bestseller on the market if you're not investing the time to even get it self-published in the first place. She wondered if maybe it was because she just lacked the self-discipline that was necessary to actually do this entire thing.
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She started doubting herself in that sense. So she came up with a couple clever plans. The first one was that she spent an entire weekend just working on her book.
The problem though is that she became exhausted and fatigued after a very short period of time. As she was going through the steps on the self-publishing process.
If you use too much time in a row and compress it into a short period of time, you begin to burn out a little bit on this. And suddenly, it becomes a lot less fun. As opposed to if you're doing it in bite-sized bits or in a quantity that is completely doable.
But the thing was that she started to crash and burn. After the weekend ended, she did no work which defeated the purpose. So the weekend itself was not particularly effective as opposed to doing some of the fun things she would normally do on a weekend.
On the other hand, she didn't make as much progress as she wanted. But she was so tired of this that she decided that she needed a break from it all. And so she took another week or so before she would actually get back to it.
The second thing she came to was the real problem. It was that she just didn't have the time herself, so she could hire people. She went on to Fiverr and Upwork and found some people who would be able to do parts of the work that she would be doing.
But then she found it difficult to follow up with those people. Since she had no real system to manage all of this stuff. Then, the second thing was that when they did come back, the manuscript looked terrible.
The formatting was off and the cover was terrible. So, because she still wasn't investing even the time necessary to follow up with other people doing the work, she still ended up with a very similar result which is something you can't really put on the market.
There's no way you're going to be a best seller if you're doing that. So what did she do next? The thing is that at this point, I told her “Look, let's do a free discovery session. We can sit down and take a closer look at exactly your situation.”
Using A Time Management System
So, the first thing we realized was that she needs to prioritize and schedule her tasks. This is again the 60-second thing, they don't take more than 60 seconds to do each of these. She should use a task management system like Todoist.
That's what I personally use. That’s what I use to keep track of my tasks. To make sure I'm on track with what's going on with the different books that I have.
It is a fantastic tool to make sure that you can see in front of you exactly what's happening. As opposed to keeping everything in your brain which creates open loops. And open loops take away our energy that we're going to need.
When it comes to doing the self-publishing process, we can't afford to have these open loops. Spinning around of things we need to remember to do. Feeling guilty about the stuff we haven't done.
As opposed to let's get it all captured into a task management system like Todoist which I consider to be the best. Then number two, we schedule those items out into the future. So we're not scheduling everything for today but scheduling it based upon a realistic schedule.
Then number three is that we are executing. We're looking at each day and saying what items do I need to do today in order to reach my goals? Our goal is not so much a goal in terms of the book will be done by the end of the week which is a terrible idea.
I see so many authors who make this mistake. But really, your goal then is simply investing a certain amount of time. And that is the second tip here that I gave her.
It's another 60-second tip using a free tool, a time management system like Toggle Track which is the one that I use. You can ask me more in the comments if you have any questions about that one free tool.
It doesn't cost you anything and then you're able to track all of your schedule. You're able to track exactly how much time you're using on your project here. So you start it whenever you start and you stop it whenever you stop doing these particular tasks.
Check out this related article: Why You Should Format Your Book Yourself
Make sure that we can dedicate a specific amount of time each day to our self-publishing process. If we've made that progress that we've decided, then we're ready to stop for the day. If we haven't, then we start again.
I personally use this tool and not only that, I keep track on a weekly basis. So that means that if I fell behind by a few minutes one day, I can make up for it on the next day. But each Monday we start a brand new week.
The goal is to get to that weekly target. We have a certain amount of hours we want per day. The sum of those is our weekly target, so if we go short one day, we can go over the next day.
But we are not burning ourselves out. Because we're finding out what the exact perfect balance between too much work and not enough work is. In order to actually keep moving forward through like we discussed with the self-publishing checklist.
You're going through those steps. We need to make sure that we're dedicating enough time. That we're going to eventually get through it based upon the speed at which we're going.
Some of you may only have 10 minutes a day, perfect. Or 5 minutes, not a problem. But if you do have an hour or two hours a day, then you're going to find that your progress level is going to be much faster.
You're going to be able to move through everything at a much quicker pace. That is going to really make the difference when it comes to getting your book self-published and selling or even becoming a bestseller.
Again, this is only another 60-second habit that you need to get in place which is time tracking. So we already did the prioritization with Todoist. We're doing the time tracking with Toggle Track.
Getting That Bestseller Flag
We're moving on to our third one which is to find an accountability person. Somebody to hold you accountable. Somebody who you're telling them here's what I did today and here's how far I am off from my time targets.
Do not use somebody who is a family member or a friend. Because they will be too nice to you or it will destroy your friendship. We need somebody who is not in either of those two categories.
It has to be either somebody you respect or somebody you don't even know who’s able to hold you accountable. That's one of the things we use within the Self-Publisher 1-On-1 Program when I’m working one-on-one with people.
We're going back and forth daily, Monday through Friday. Just keeping track of how far we've come. What we're doing and how we are dealing with the time.
The dedicated amount of progress we decided we were going to make. For some of you, it may be writing a thousand words a day. For others of you, it may be putting in 20 minutes a day.
If you can get an hour a day, you can make an insane amount of progress on your books. Because as I told you a thousand times, self-publishing doesn't have to be hard. It can be very easy, it's easy if you invest the time, the right tools, and strategies.
Then, we can move straight through the entire process as you're moving across. That's one of the reasons why many of my clients will actually request for help specifically with “How do I organize these tasks? How do I keep track of the folders and all of the projects that I'm working on?”
And these tasks like “I've got my covers over here and I'm working on formatting over there.” Maybe you have several books that you're doing. How do we keep track of that?
That's one of the reasons why I do discovery sessions. We’re able to map that whole process out, just like she had gone through with me in our discovery session.
So, the final obstacle that she was facing. She was feeling more motivated after the session that we had. But not sure if she could handle herself, hold herself to this one hour a day.
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It seemed like it might be a lot. But the thing was that since she had joined the 1-On-1 Program, we were able to go back and forth daily using the Volley app which is free. We were able to then hold accountability and keep track of how this hour was going.
She started implementing things into this Todoist program. To make sure that she was following through with how that's supposed to go through. She started making major progress across the board with regards to the entire process here.
So she started seeing herself coming and eventually she actually got to the point where she was using more than an hour a day. Because once you start making progress, sometimes you don't want to stop in the middle of a task.
Suddenly, she was getting closer to one and a half hours to two hours a day which wasn't even her goal. But she found that when you make progress, you only need these 60-second tips in order to get a bestseller. And for her books on the market to start to sell.
She has not reached the best seller point at this point. She hasn't gotten the best seller flag. I remember my first time getting that and when it was on the book there for 4 weeks. A bestseller for the first time and I was like “Wow, this is really an amazing feeling.”
When you're on Amazon, you've got that little bestseller flag and I sort of stumbled into it. Later I discovered the secret strategies to get that bestseller flag. But one of the biggest ones and mostly underrated is this idea of holding the focus.
Using these 3 specific power habits, these 3 60-second for a best selling book, to make sure that you're on track. To make sure that you're moving forward. And that was exactly what she was doing.
So her next task is going to be moving into running ads. Then we're going to be moving into content marketing as I walk her through it step by step, in the 1-On-1 Program. So these are just a couple of the things that I found very helpful.
My question for you though is, what is your best habit that you have found to help you with getting your books both self-published and to become a bestseller? I want to know, tell me about your experience.