Winning at self-publishing is a lot of work. These are the exercises anyone can do to get more done and keep going for longer with their books.
Nothing here is clever. These are habits, and they work because most people do not keep them.
Split your time into three areas
The first exercise is to divide your working time into thirds.
One third goes to writing or creating. If you write non-fiction, this might be creating more products for your value ladder, but it is at least writing. You are making new books to put on the market.
One third goes to marketing. This is where you try things that move the needle. Many of my coaching clients and I go back and forth trying different things with ads. Some work and some don’t. You only fail if you stop testing, or if you don’t learn from your mistakes. A lot of people keep repeating the same thing without ever checking whether it works.
One third goes to learning. That could be one of my courses or other training. There are many tools in this business, and there is a lot of training material for each of them. The time is worth it, because every tool you learn well saves you hours on every book after it. The aim is not to be as good in ten years as you are today. It is to be better, though not all at once. Give yourself a break, learn something, then use it.
Why thirds? It is easy to lean on the one you like. You can write all day and never market, or spend weeks on training and publish nothing. The split keeps you honest. At the end of a month you can look back and see whether each third got its share, and that tells you which one you have been avoiding.
Set aside a block of time each day
Decide each day how much time you have and then put yourself in the chair and work on those three things.
It is better if you have an accountability partner, and not a family member or friend. In my group coaching, clients post their daily progress and we go back and forth. I find that raises output a lot, because another person is interested in whether you got it done. I have an accountability coach of my own, who lives in Turkey. I hired the person for exactly this. They don’t have to guide every step, though that helps. They just have to ask each day whether you are making progress.
The danger is putting self-publishing on the back burner. It is the slowest way to do it, and nearly always a recipe for failure. Everything else in your schedule will fill the space if you do not hold it for your books. The game is getting a lot of books out and running a lot of marketing against them, using the best strategies you can.
Put every task somewhere
Update every task that comes to mind, in two places.
The first is a task manager. I use Todoist to keep track of everything. You can schedule tasks, prioritize them and move them out in time. I tried Excel first, but I had so many tasks that scheduling them was hard, and Todoist solved that. You can put your checklist for each book in there and track who is supposed to do what. It works for home life too, and you can try it free. I am an affiliate for it.
The second is Google Drive. It is one of the most powerful tools I have used, and it is cheap. I am not an affiliate for Google. Since I moved to Google Drive from Dropbox I have not regretted a day, because it gives me so much storage space.
Keep your book files in folders, one folder per book. Inside each, make a folder for covers, one for the manuscript and one for other things tied to that book, like its ads. The folders mirror onto your desktop. If your computer crashes you lose nothing, and if you make a mistake you can go back to an earlier day. I think Google keeps a backup for 30 to 60 days.
I talk to many people in discovery sessions who have no way of keeping their files safe at all. Their manuscripts and covers sit on one laptop. One failed drive and the book is gone, along with the hours behind it. A folder per book is quick to set up and removes that risk.
Put it together
None of these exercises is hard. The hard part is doing them on the days you do not feel like it, which is why the accountability piece matters.
Divide your time into those three areas, give each day a set amount of time, and use the right tools while you do it. The combination adds up over a period of time. What you can finish this way is a lot more than it seems on any one day.
Pick one of these to start this week, probably the time split, and add the others as it becomes routine. If you want me to look at where your time is going, book a free 25-minute discovery call. You can also start with my free 12-step self-publishing checklist.
Free 25-minute self-publishing call with Chris Baird
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