Over the last few days (hell, the last month), I’ve begun
thinking about not only the 2017 business plan, but also my resolutions for the
new year.
I have to be honest: I didn’t do well with my 2016
resolutions—I will blog more in 2016? Blogs were down from 41 to 29, not
including this post. Significantly reduce my time on social media? You’re
having a laugh—and I wondered if I would even do a list of resolutions because of
this. Besides, I already did a post in early August about my goals for the next
12 months. I didn’t really need to do one.
But the great thing about setting goals and resolutions is
that you have the ability to re-evaluate them at certain intervals, adjust
things, and move on. And that’s what I’m doing today. Away we go:
I will write 250,000 words in 2017
I wrote approximately 219,000 words in 2016 over the course
of two-plus books (the last 17,000 or so in The Peg-Legged Privateer, plus
101,437 in Ticket Agent, and the first 100,000 in Persuaded By The Reflections).
I expect I’ll get another 25,000 words in Persuaded written before I wrap it
up, but at 70,000 words I thought I would need only 50,000 more to finish; we
can re-evaluate that when we get closer. It’s quite possible that Persuaded
will surpass Redeemed in published words (132,000+), and maybe even Redeemed’s
first draft total (140,177); I think it might. I don’t really know where the
count will end up, and I’m hoping the first draft will be done by the end of
February. That’s not a drop dead deadline for the book, but that’s my hopeful
ending point. The end of February will mean a late summer edit, i.e. July or
August, and a late December release. For March through June, I’m planning on
writing the ninth Jaclyn Johnson novel, and I’m still up in the air about what
I want to do in the second half of the year. Quite possibly the new series I
mentioned this past August.
I want to publish two books, along with freshening up some
of the back list, in 2017
Ticket Agent is currently with Kim—it’s her birthday, by the
way, so happy birthday to Kim!—and I’ve given her until the end of January to
get back notes and corrections to me so we can have a February release, much
like we have had for Chemical (mid-February 2016) and Ticket (late January
2015) in recent years. Persuaded won’t be ready until late 2017, but I’m not going to publish
it until it’s absolutely perfect. I’m also not going to go up against the
holiday season. My hope is that the book will be published before the year is
out, though. It could need some work after I do the editing, or it could be one
of the greatest things I’ve ever written (after taking seven months to write
the first draft, it might be). But not only that, I want to take some time to
freshen up some of my older work; I may give Royal Switch a pass-through,
mainly to see if I can fix the opening to the story and move that sluggish info
dump somewhere else. I want to go back through two of my old John Fitch V
titles and see if they can be fixed up and brought into my current writing
level; I also want to freshen up the cover for A Galaxy At War, and possibly
re-title it. And I want to get Furball & Feathers re-issued by the summer,
too. I’ve done a sketch of potential cover art for it, but is it good enough to
be published? I’m not too sure.
I want to learn how to do wrap-around covers for paperbacks
in 2017
You’ll recall in August I declared that all of my work needs
to be in paperback following my successful appearance at the Plastic City Comic
Con on July 31. The second one is coming on July 30, 2017, in my hometown of
Fitchburg. So far, 12 of my titles, including the entirety of the AGENT series,
are in paperback, and I wanted to have the entire catalogue out in paperback by
Thanksgiving in order to sell for the Christmas holiday. That didn’t happen,
and that’s my fault. Honestly, I should know how to do a wrap-around; I can do
a flat cover easily, and do it on the cheap, but not making it look cheap. So
what I need to do is look for a tutorial in my spare time—what’s that?—and learn
this important book creating tool.
I want to have The Obloeron Saga out in single copies for
ebook and paperback in 2017
Pretty easy to do. I need covers for those, and I need the
money to buy the artwork. That will happen when I can afford it.
I want to do better convention prep in time for PCCC in 2017
This will be some of the things I do in the first half of
the year: get the Square credit card reader, get book stands, and, little by
little, buy product for the event, i.e. ordering 10-15 copies of Zombie
Showdown by the end of January and having them on-hand and ready, buying X of
Ticket Agent and all the others, etc. In order to have an even more successful
con, I need to have all of these things ready to go.
I want to get the rest of the AGENT series out in audiobook
in 2017
Not exactly something in my control: this is akin to wanting
10,000 or more book sales in a year, because that’s something I can’t control.
Laura Jennings has done a marvelous job on the first five audiobooks in the
series, and I’m hoping she’ll continue in 2017.
I want to advertise more in 2017
I’m still here. I’m not going away any time soon. But still—my
sales numbers do not reflect the numbers a full-time author should make, but
again, that’s something that’s partially out of my control; I can’t rip people’s
arms out of their sockets and make them buy my books. While I can turn a phrase
with the best of them, my marketing skills are dreadful. I’ve relied mainly on
word of mouth, Facebook links, Twitter, and—before 2012 and meeting my wife—ebook
advertisers in eReader News Today and Kindle Nation Daily to varying degrees of
success. I heard recently that one author got a BookBub ad without the
pre-requisite review numbers, and I’m hoping I can do the same this coming
year. Also some Facebook ads to encourage mailing list signups, Amazon ads,
Twitter ads, and ENT/KND/BookGoodies/etc. I desperately need to re-claim my
audience!
We’ll re-evaluate as the year goes on.
