It’s April already, and somehow we are a quarter of the way through the new year. I thought I’d do a little review of how the first few months have gone. Clearly this isn’t everything, a lot more (good and bad) happened than I’m sharing here. But I hope you enjoy reading the highlights.
Client work
I worked with some really brilliant authors this quarter, as well as two publishing clients, a group of authors together, and my first bookshop! Most of the authors I started working with in March are ongoing clients, which is really exciting for me, as that’s the work I’m trying to do more of.
I made a huge decision this quarter, which is to no longer do in-house placements for publishers. So, I love getting involved in one-off projects like presentations or campaign planning, but when it comes to the day-to-day campaign management, that’s not for me anymore.
I’ve known that I needed to take this step for a LONG time. But when those publishing clients formed such a big percentage of my income each month, it felt terrifying to say no to them. But I realised that even if I was in-house for 2 days a week, those 2 days were spread across the week, and my mental energy was with those books every day. I couldn’t focus on getting more of the clients I really want to work with until I gave it up.
As soon as I handed in my ‘notice’, it felt like there was a real shift around me – I got 2 emails that day from my ideal author client (who I went on to work with). So I’m really glad I did it, even though it felt really hard.
For the next quarter, I am going to be doing a lot of thinking about what I offer and how I price it. I stopped offering one-off calls on my website because I so believe that that accountability is important to help authors put the plans we discuss into some kind of action. Financially, the one-off calls also aren’t super sustainable for me. They take up a full day, between the prep and the call and the notes, but they don’t cover a full day’s pay.
But they were really popular, and think they are also helpful for peoplewho just want to brainstorm ideas or get their thoughts together. So, more to think through on that. I might restart them, but letting people rewatch a recording of the call, without typing up notes. That would make a huge difference for me in terms of time. Drop me a note if you think that’s something you would be interested in.
The Empowered Author
Since anouncing that I was joining Sam Missingham on her Empowered Author project, I feel like it’s been going absolutely brilliantly.
The Facebook group, which I run, is now up to over 1000 members (from around 200 when we started), and is a really active and supportive space.
We’ve been doing regular live sessions, every 6 weeks or so, on author marketing topics like creating your timeline and setting up your author newsletter. These stick around for a week in the group, and then move into the paid membership area.
This is something we haven’t made the most of yet. Sam has been beavering away behind the scenes to get the membership area up and running, and it’s pretty much there, so this month, we’ll be sharing more about it in the group.
We also have some plans for some digital products, which I’ll be planning out in the next week or two.
Digital products
In March I launched my online course, Growing a Sustainable Author Platform. I set a low target, medium target, and high target, and ended up somewhere between the medium and high sales levels.
I was happy with the outcome, and happy with some of the learnings from the launch (I used affiliates for the first time, which was really fun, and an interesting experiment I’ll repeat next time).
AND I can’t help wondering if I could have smashed that top sales number if I’d done things a bit differently.
I had some destabilising news early on in the launch, and it meant that I didn’t fully show up for it. I had ideas that never saw the light of day, as I just didn’t have the energy to put into them.
Next time I launch something like this, my intention is to create at least 50% of the marketing content up front. That way if I run out of steam, it won’t matter quite as much.
One thing that has been my mind for some time, which I haven’t got my act together on yet, is an email series, which sends you 3 emails a week on a specific topic. I have been putting it off because it feels like a big thing to create, but it feels like the time to work on it is getting nearer. Hopefully when I write my Q2 review, it will have launched (or be nearly there, at least!).
Consistency
I recently wrote a newsletter about consistency, and I think it’s fair to say that I wrote it for myself as much as anyone else. I have not been writing this blog as consistently as I would like. I hoped to write at least one monthly, in-depth author marketing article. Instead I managed one (and a half if you count this one). I also aimed to do monthly ‘review’ posts, but the last one I wrote was in October!
There has been so much going on, my schedule has been knocked completely off-kilter and.. it’s been absolutely fine. I have stuck pretty closely to my ideal newsletter schedule, and have been sharing content nearly daily in the Facebook group. For me, for now, that is good enough.
In fact, I think that’s as good a summary of the first quarter as I can get. It hasn’t been mind blowing in any area, for for me, for now, it’s good enough.
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