Hello Lovelies,

For those who recall, at the beginning of 2018 I set some very public author goals for the year using the 90 day plan. And revised and tracked them in Q2. And again in Q3  And now it is time for the Q4 author goals check-in and annual wrap up. I know, many of you are probably thinking, but the year isn’t over yet! True, but to be honest, I started planning for next year back during Black Friday. Can’t plan without looking at last quarter stuff. Sure, there’s a bit of overlap but we know about where we were with things, don’t we?

Here’s a refresher of my goals: I’ve put my progress in italics at the end of each section a bit to show where I am with these goals.

1. Publish 4 books in 2018—The Survivalist Bible Serial launched (I have the first part of the serial in an anthology with M.L.S. Weech, and the second segment released in November, but with chaos ensuing I did not do the December release. Prepping to do better in 2019 though.), Clear Angel Chronicles 3, Hell School 2, and Hell School 3. (Hell School 2 and Clear Angel Chronicles are getting moved to next year. It’s been very emotionally difficult writing the Hell School series and I really need to remember that before setting goals for it. ). So with this goal, I only achieved half of it.
2. Increase my social reach by 50%. This one is a bit messy for you to see in action. I created a lovely graph in Excel (that I am not going to share, because it’s really not that lovely) with my starting point for each of my social media platforms’ current reach. I will track each stat weekly. This is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. I’m actually not going to mess with this one because it’s a good goal.  

(I didn’t increase all of them by 50%, but I did with my Facebook groups that I manage, my Facebook page got close at 48%, my Youtube page hit 35%, Twitter and goodreads were not great this year which is weird as they used to be my fastest growing platforms. Instagram exceeded my goals.)

1. Re-release my specific previous 5 titles that fit the OWS brand under OWS as part of my partner contract. We’ve only missed The Hunted as part of this goal. So I’m gonna count this solidly as a win.
2. Expand my OWS-U course offerings by one course each semester. Well, I released 3 courses, but they weren’t in the order of semesters like I’d hoped. OWS U is a big focus for me for next year as well and I’m planning on releasing at least another three courses so I call this one a win as well.
3. Increase my book sales by 25%. I hate setting monetary goals. Truly, I do. Yeah, nowhere close. However I’ve got solid plans for next year now that everything is re-released on Ingram Spark and we’ve got merchandising on our OWS Shop. I’ve got some crazy goals monetarily for OWS as a whole, and me personally.  

I am definitely on track with Q3 to achieve most of my author goals for 2018.

90 Day Plan Q3 goals and Check-In

My goals for quarter 3.

1. Plan and execute tours for the books I have re-released through OWS- I will plan a week long tour for Hell School to re-fresh it’s SEO as soon as we get it on Ingram Spark, and a tour for Clear Angel Chronicles as soon as Angel’s Dance is back up. I will also look at doing local book store promotion in August as I should be all healed up from surgery by then. This didn’t happen. I was so focused on getting the new shop site up for Black Friday and the releases we had scheduled that no tour stuff for me happened.
2. Keep Building that Social Media Platform- I will keep using the social media tracker, though pairing back to once a month because I am re-launching my website on WordPress and that will have me quite busy this month. Did this, despite my own website not getting transferred to WP like I’d hoped.
3. Write 2K words a day on my WIP- Man, being a publisher has you running so many different directions and I am really bad about getthing my word count in on MY projects. I am going to start making writing my first activity of the day before things get hairy, going back to the way I was doing it when I had a full time job, because being a publisher is MORE than a full-time job and my authoring dreams are kind of getting pushed to the back burner. This didn’t happen either.

And guess what? It is that time of year again, to start planning your New Year’s Resolutions and planning your year. I will be updating all of last year’s posts to reflect goals and plans for this year, but if you would like some extra personal support, come join us on Patreon for $5 a month. Not only will you get great exclusive content from the board guiding the magic at OWS (Amanda Lynn Hester, Rebekah Jonesy, Isa McLaren, JK Allen and Your’s Truly), but I am also starting a 90 Day Year Support group where we will share and support one another’s goals. Join us today!

The reality is that in a lot of ways, 2018 really sucked. If I just looked at what I missed out on (about half my goals, if we’re being honest.) it was a crappy year. But reflecting on OWS’s goals and mine, I realize I achieved a hell of a lot, even with a back injury that left me working at half steam for more than half the year. Even with surgery, family crisis, financial struggles, and the drama of the national stage. If I didn’t have my goals to reflect on, I might really feel like a failure (might, yeah, right. I totally was feeling like a failure 2 days before Black Friday as I was mad dashing and still trying to get the site set up.)

And that is a huge part of what these goals are all about. Because we all dream of making millions as writers. We all dream of being famous. We all dream of making a difference. But if we’re so busy focusing on the top of the mountain and that dream, we might not see how far up the mountain we have actually made it and get discouraged and slide back down. I know, I’ve done it. I would’ve done it again this year if I didn’t have this to reflect on. So stay tuned for the first week of January where I will have an update on the 90 Day year. And if you don’t want to wait, go check it out on our Patreon.

Until next time,

Keep Writing

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