3 60-Second Habits for a Bestselling Book

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To get a bestselling book you first have to finish and publish it, and three small habits make that happen. Put your tasks in a task manager, track the time you spend against a daily target, and report to someone who will hold you to it. Each takes about 60 seconds to set up. The rest of this post is the story of how one author used them.

Why do so many authors never finish their book?

Jane lives in Texas and writes mystery novels. She had written a number of manuscripts but never got them onto the market. Her goal was to get them out, market them and have a bestseller. The problem was focus. She was not investing the time, and when she did, it went on the wrong things. Months went by with little progress.

I checked in by email now and then, as I do with many of you on my email list. Each time she said she hadn’t done anything since I last asked. She felt bad about it but also glad I was following up. When I asked how long it would take at that pace, she said years, or maybe never. You can’t get a bestseller if you never get the book published. She wondered if she just lacked self-discipline.

She tried two plans. First, she spent a whole weekend on the book. She burned out quickly, did no work after the weekend, and took another week off. Compress too much time into one block and it stops being fun. Bite-sized bits you can actually do are better.

Second, she hired people on Upwork to do parts of the work. She had no system to follow up, and what came back had bad formatting and a terrible cover. She still ended up with something she could not put on the market. So I suggested a free discovery call to look at her situation.

Habit 1: How do you prioritise and schedule your tasks?

Capture every task in a task manager. I use Todoist to keep track of what is going on with each of my books. When everything is in your head you have open loops, and open loops drain the energy you need for self-publishing. You spin on what you have to remember and feel guilty about what you haven’t done.

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Todoist has a free plan with 5 personal projects and 3 filter views, and Pro is $5 a month billed yearly (Todoist pricing). I wrote up how I set it up in try Todoist to get productive fast.

Then schedule items out into the future on a realistic schedule, not everything for today. Then execute: each day, look at what you need to do to reach your goals. And don’t set the goal as “the book will be done by the end of the week.” I see many authors make that mistake. Your goal is simply to invest a certain amount of time.

Habit 2: How do you track the time you spend on your book?

Use a time tracker. I use Toggl Track, which has a free plan for up to 3 users with timers and personal reports (Toggl Track pricing). Start the timer when you start and stop it when you stop. You see exactly how much time you give the project.

I track weekly. Each day has a time target, and the sum is my weekly target. If I fall short by a few minutes one day I make it up the next, and each Monday starts a fresh week. The balance between too much work and not enough keeps you from burning out while you move through the steps of publishing.

Some of you only have 10 minutes a day. Perfect. Or 5 minutes, not a problem. If you have an hour or two a day, you will move through everything much faster. That pace is what gets a book published, and maybe a bestseller. If finding even 10 minutes is hard, I share what works for me in struggling with time management.

Habit 3: Who should hold you accountable?

Find an accountability person. You tell them what you did today and how far you are from your time target. Don’t use a family member or friend, because they will be too nice to you or it will damage the friendship. Use someone you respect, or someone you don’t even know.

This is part of my 1-on-1 coaching. You message me in private Slack or by email, I answer every question, usually the same day or the next, and we have one, two or three 55-minute Zoom calls a month, depending on the plan. We keep track of the progress each person decided on. For some it is a thousand words a day. For others, 20 minutes. Many clients ask me how to organise folders and projects when they have covers here and formatting there, or several books at once. I map that out on a free 25-minute discovery call, like I did with Jane.

After the discovery call, Jane felt more motivated but wasn’t sure she could hold to an hour a day. She joined the 1-on-1 coaching, and we messaged each weekday. She started using Todoist and followed through, and made major progress. She reached an hour and a half to two hours a day, which wasn’t even her goal. Once you make progress you don’t want to stop in the middle of a task.

Is Jane a bestseller yet?

No, not yet. She hasn’t got the bestseller flag. I remember my first time. The flag was on my book for four weeks, and it felt amazing. I stumbled into it, and later learned the strategies. The most underrated one is holding your focus. Her next task is running ads, then content marketing, which I walk her through step by step.

What is the best habit you have found for getting your books published and selling? Tell me in the comments. If you want habits for beginners as well, here are three daily self-publishing habits.

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