For whatever reason I’ve been thinking a bit about my writing and publishing goals for next year, including my goals for this site. That, of course, leads me into thinking about what I want to do with this site in general.

I’m not going to write my full book marketing goals post for 2020 yet, because it’s 11pm on a Monday, and it’s not quite 2020. However, I’d like to set the stage a bit for how I may approach the coming year, and get some thoughts onto virtual paper.

My goals for 2019 really focused on audience-building: increased followers on WordPress, reads on my Wattpad story, and selling books at conventions. I came up short in two of those areas for reasons I can get into in my 2019 review post that will probably go up in a couple weeks.

But this year has led me to conclude that I need to have a more concentrated campaign around finding readers and getting my name out there. So here are some things I’m thinking about doing to boost my author profile, in no particular order.

Promoting WoEM in tandem with my short story

Obviously, this implies that I write, revise, rewrite, and publish my short story in 2020. But I really think that’s feasible, even if it comes later in the year. Once I have a new publication, I can run discounts and promotional campaigns for both stories.

Taking said short story to conventions and actually having two books to sell

As my buddy M.L.S. Weech always says, it’s not worth going to a convention if you only have one book to sell. I’d like to have tables at more than one convention in 2020, even if they’re all in the back half of the year.

Cutting down posts on this site

The simple truth is that writing two posts, plus my weekly haiku, has been more disruptive than not to my writing schedule. I’m definitely not backing out of this blog, but I’m considering posting my weekly haiku, plus one longer-form post each week. That will give me a bit of breathing on both my weekly writing goals and the mental space to actually write the longer form content that used to populate this feed — like music reviews.

Get my newsletter up and running

I’m still on the fence about this one, but if I time the launch of a newsletter around the publication of my short story, then I think I can make it work. Newsletter sign-ups paired with an ebook giveaway are a great way to find readers and build an audience.

2020 Goalposts

I don’t really know how any of this translates into quantifiable goals at the moment, but it never hurts to start mulling these things over.

Anyone else getting a head start on their 2020 planning?

Steve D