Well, it’s not quite the end of 2020, but I’m ready to put a pin in my marketing goals for this year. The main reason: marketing did not go well for me. I can likely point to a number of reasons that this is the case, but the primary one is that I was likely too ambitious to start the year, and even a little too ambitious with my adjusted goals at the mid-year point.

One key thing I’ve learned this year is to aim high in my goals while still being more pragmatic about which ones are really attainable. Let’s dig in.

Book Marketing Goals for 2020

Remember, I adjusted my original book marketing goals for 2020 in July in the hopes that I could finish out the year strong.

1. Publish “Uprooted: The Herb Witch Tales #1”. As it stands, there is no reason for me not to publish this story this year.
2. Begin a new story on Wattpad. This one is worded slightly differently. Given I still don’t know what I want to publish on Wattpad, I don’t want to commit to finishing another story this year. I would be satisfied to start a new story, and continue it into 2021. I just need to decide which story I’m writing.
3. Sell (or give away) 30 stories this year. I really don’t know if this is a reasonable goal, because I’ve never run a giveaway before. However, with “Uprooted” and WoEM, I’ll presumably have two stories to promote/sell, likely as a package deal. That should boost potential sales. I’ll definitely reevaluate this goal once I have a marketing strategy laid out.

Publish “Uprooted: The Herb Witch Tales #1”?

Whoops. I was mighty confident about this one 5 months ago. At the time, I really did feel good about the strength of my story in its second draft. It took me longer than I wanted to finish the damn thing, and then I received some incredibly insightful feedback from a couple readers that made me realize I needed to spend more time with this story.

The last thing I want to do is rush a story to publication before it’s ready, so I decided to give this another revision. New publication date? I don’t know at the moment, but definitely not 2020.

I’m about a quarter of the way through the first draft of story #2, and I’d like to have that at least mostly complete before publishing #1, so I have some work to do yet. My goals in 2021 will be based heavily around timelines to get these stories out.

Begin a new story on Wattpad?

Yes, actually. On a random Friday night while texting a couple buddies, we brainstormed a flash fiction story that I drafted in Wattpad and have yet to publish. I didn’t publish right away for fear of it being absurd and dumb. However, I went back and read it recently, and… I really like it!

I think I want to add some more color to it and ask my artist friend to draw a simple illustration for it, but I’d like to publish it on Wattpad in the near future. I will definitely add a link once I do.

Sell/give away 30 stories?

Not yet. It’s high-time I run a holiday promotion for The Warden of Everfeld: Memento, which I will certainly announce on this blog. Stay tuned for that.

It may sound strange to run a promotion for a two-year-old book when I have no new material, but, if you’ve kept up with my marketing series this year, you know there are several ways to run a book giveaway. I need to do some investigation, but I think this is just the spirit-lifter I need to end a ridiculous year.

Book Marketing Goals for 2021??

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Like I said, I’ve taken some key lessons from my lofty 2020 goals that will go a long way to informing more attainable goals in 2021. That post will likely arrive in a month or so.

Steve D