2017 Goal Setting

2017 Goal Setting for my writing and publishing goals is pretty straight forward: I need to publish more books in 2017 than I have published between 2013 and 2016.

2017 Goal Setting: Publish or Perish

From Wikipedia: “Publish or perish” is a phrase coined to describe the pressure in academia to rapidly and continually publish academic work to sustain or further one’s career.

“Publish or perish” is a phrase I’ve heard over the years that I only associated with a stressed out history professor at some stuffy university writing his or her fingers to the bone trying to keep up with the pressure of needing to publish to advance in their career.
I was thinking about this the other day and it’s interesting how the “publish or perish” mantra is one that fits snugly when it comes to self-publishing fiction.

There are a lot of factors at play when it comes to succeeding, like: writing a compelling story, edited and proofread, in a popular genre, with a great book cover, having a market budget, a good dose of luck, and so on. I should note, I’m defining success here (for myself), as being able to write fiction as your job (on a full-time basis).

There are also industry factors that affect the ebb and flow of that success; particularly with the number one bookseller out there, Amazon. The Kboards Writer’s Cafe (a popular forum where indie writers hang out and discuss the industry) is chock full of threads about the evils and praises of Kindle Unlimited and how something that might have worked in 2012, now doesn’t, and on and on, but there is no denying that new authors are coming onto the scene and seeing a lot of success all the time, even in 2016 as they did in 2011-2012. And I’m not talking about the huge outliers here, just authors making a steady living at writing and publishing their stories.

The Common Thread

The common thread for success that remains unchanged, year after year, is those authors who publish consistently (as in several titles per year) are the ones succeeding. Of course, there will be outliers and all that, but no matter what industry changes are coming, or how many new books are being published, as indie authors, publishing multiple titles per year is key.

That is why upping the ante in my publishing schedule is the cornerstone to my 2017 goal setting.

So that is my main goal setting principle for 2017. I won’t get worried about things out of my control (BookBub won’t take my money, Amazon changes this or that, KU or wide) — all those things don’t really affect if I don’t stick to my publishing goals for 2017.

Writing Plan

This year I actually have a writing plan that I put together to keep my focused. I’ll write another blog post about that in the future, but it’s just a quick and dirty Word document that I split up into quarterly goals for the year.

The big picture overview:

• Daily word count goal: 1,000 (seven days a week).
• First Draft final word count goal: 70,000 (for my genre the sweet spot is 250-300 pages).
• Editing and proofreading allotted time: two weeks (I spent more time in editing/re-writing mode for my first two books than I did writing the damn things).

Those are goal settings that will help me achieve meeting my writing and publishing goals for 2017.

I understand that life can throw a monkey wrench despite the best laid out plans (unfortunately I know how life can trip you up out of the blue), but that is my battle plan for 2017.

I’ll keep you updated throughout the year (category and tag: 2017 Goals), so wish me luck, and stay tuned.