You might be self-publishing for quite a while now but are you doing it right? Here are some exercises for improving your self-publishing.
Winning at self-publishing is a lot of work, it's a lot of hard work. That's one of the reasons why we're going to be discussing today; Exercises for Improving Your Self-Publishing.
There are a couple of things that you can do. A couple of exercises that anyone can do that will drastically improve your productivity and progress. As well as how long you're going to be able to keep going when it comes to your books and self-publishing.
The first thing you're going to focus on is dividing your time into three main areas. The first of those areas is writing. You should be using a third of your time writing or creating.
If you're doing products for non-fiction people, it may be creating additional products in this particular value ladder you're working on. So, one-third of your time goes to creating new products. We're creating new books that we're putting onto the market.
Then comes the second one and that is in the area of marketing. A third of your time is dedicated to marketing. Where you're going to be doing different things that are going to be moving the needle.
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You will be doing lots of experiments. I know for many of my coaching clients, as we go back and forth, we try different things with ads. Some things work, and some things don't. We don't fail, rather, we learn. The only way we can fail is not by trying to test things out.
Number two, not learning from our mistakes which is quite common. A lot of people just keep repeating the same thing over and over. Without actually looking to see if what you're doing now is working.
The third is the use of your time in the learning area. Where you're taking one-third of your time and you're devoting it to learning new things. Whether it's taking one of my courses or going through other options.
There are so many tools that we use and there is a lot of training material on each of those tools. It's worth investing time to get better at what we're doing. Our goal is not to be equally as good 10 years from now as we are right now.
Our goal is to be a lot better at everything we're doing but not all at once. We give ourselves a bit of a break. But we learn and then we implement the things we learn. Those are the big three things you can do just on that first point; writing, marketing, and learning.
Having An Accountability Partner
The second thing we can focus on in terms of developing habits is setting aside a specific amount of time dedicated to those three activities. So, decide daily how much time you have available that you're going to be able to push into that exact thing.
Where you're putting your butt in your chair and you're focusing on this writing, marketing, and learning as you're going through it. It’s even better if you have an accountability partner. Somebody who's not a family or friend.
I do that with the Group Coaching clients where we're dropping off your daily progress. We're able to go back and forth and see how things are going. This is a huge way of ramping up and increasing the total amount of productivity that you're getting out.
Because you have somebody else who's also engaged and interested in seeing that you're making progress. I have somebody, my accountability coach is in Turkey. I hired somebody specifically to go through this with me, holding me accountable to the exact goals that I'm trying to achieve.
So, it doesn't necessarily even have to be somebody who can guide and direct you every step of the way. Though that's very helpful it should be someone who can just hold you accountable to what it is you said you wanted to do then daily.
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Like, how is it going? Are we making progress on these things? Or are we putting our self-publishing on a back burner which is the slowest way you can do self-publishing?
It is almost always a recipe to fail at your self-publishing if you're putting it as a lower-priority event or task that you're doing on your schedule. Because the reality is that everything else on your schedule begins to fill up that space.
If you aren't diligently holding the focus on self-publishing as you're moving forward in this game. Which is about getting a lot of books out, running a lot of marketing against that, and using the absolute best strategies that are available.
Now, the third point that we want to discuss today is that we should update every task that comes to mind. There are two key locations where these things are going to be done. The first is a task management system. I use Todoist to monitor all of my tasks.
Because with Todoist, you can schedule them, you can prioritize them, and you can move them out of time. You can check that tool out; Todoist. It's phenomenal, I can't believe it. I originally tried Excel but I had so many tasks that it was so difficult to schedule.
Safekeeping Your Files
Whereas, when I moved over to Todoist, it solved all of those issues. So, when it comes to self-publishing, this is powerful because you can put your Checklist in there. The different things you're going to do with the different books you have.
To keep track of who's supposed to do what. I'm telling you; this is useful in your home life and inside of your self-publishing side. Once you test it out, you won't regret it. You can test it out, it’s completely free which is fantastic.
Then, the second tool that's key to this whole concept in terms of it's going to be Google Drive, it's by far one of the most powerful tools I've used and it's incredibly cheap as well. I do not I'm not an affiliate there, so I don't have an affiliate link on theirs.
But I can say that since I've moved to Google Drive from Dropbox, I have never regretted one day of it. Because it just gives so much storage space and also all of your book files, they should be under these folders that you're going to have on Google Drive.
One folder for each book and then inside of that folder, you'll have a folder for your covers, a folder for your manuscript, and a folder for some of the other aspects of this that you will have with your self-publishing.
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It could be your ads and things like that. That would be associated with this specific book that you've put on the market. Because then, what happens is that you are well-organized there. It's mirrored on your desktop, so you have it on your computer.
If your computer crashes, you do not lose all the files. They're all on Google Drive. Also, if you even make a mistake for one day, you can go back to tomorrow or the day before that. I think it's 30 to 60 days that they keep as a backup.
I can't tell you how many clients and people I do Discovery Sessions with who simply do not have any way in which they're keeping their files safe. But this combination of dividing your time into these three things and dedicating a certain amount of time each day and then using the right tools when we're going about this process, that combination is powerful.
Over some time, you're going to see that what you can accomplish is massive. It's massive and it's even more important during the difficult period we're in right now when we're trying to learn how to do Self-Publishing In A Bear Market.