Let’s wrap this year up and tie a pretty bow around it before we unwrap the next year!
My 2025 word(s) of the year: Creative Confidence: Play
This year was about stepping out with my work in the ways that fit me instead of squeezing myself into ill-fitting entrepreneurial and artistic trends of the moment—not apologizing (to myself more than anything) for my own approach.
With this focus, I sold over 300 books this year. When you bought a copy, shared my work, and encouraged me along the way, YOU were a huge part of that. Thank you! My wins aren’t possible without people like you supporting me.
I had 3 overarching goals: More Products, More Presence, More Profit. Each had SMART subgoals detailing what to achieve within them. How did I do?
More Products:
- Base goal: Publish Picked Up Pieces (print and ebook)
- Complete! (You can order it here.)
- Stretch goal: Finish the first draft of a new book.
- Began, but not complete. I’m sure you’ll hear more about it in the new year 😉
More Presence:
- Base goal: Participate in at least 6 in-person events, learning which types of events have my audience/readership and which types of events don’t.
- Complete and then some! I participated in 15 in-person events this year. My most successful types of events are book fairs, ren faires, and odd markets.
- Bonus: I participated in very hot, very windy, and very rainy outdoor events. With that variety, I’m better prepared for what mother nature may bring in the future.
- Stretch goal: Experiment with various online promotions, increasing what works and dropping what doesn’t.
- Began, but not complete. This is one area that dropped for shifting priorities.
- I’ve done book promos, Amazon ads, and BookBub ads, but I need to grow those more and tackle some other to-do’s on my online promo list.
More Profit:
- Base goal: “Earn Out” the cost of publishing Unfixed.
- Note: “earn out” is technically a trad publishing term that doesn’t translate to indie publishing…I repurposed that term for a shorthand description of what I was measuring. For my purposes, I’m defining “earn out” as making back the money I put into publishing and launch.
- Complete!
- Stretch goal: “Earn out” the cost of publishing Picked Up Pieces.
- Halfway there!
In addition to that list, as opportunities arose throughout the year, I evaluated them based on the above criteria. Was it “Play” to me? Would the version of me walking in my Creative Confidence tackle this? And does it bring More Products, More Presence, and/or More Profit? The more it aligned and without hindering the base goals, the more likely I’d be to go for it. Here’s some items I tackled from that:
- Attended more than the 6 in-person events listed in the base goal (hitting 15 in-person events total this year)
- Launched lead magnet short story
- Made print books available for purchase in another partner store
- Made ebooks available for direct purchase (instead of just through distributors like Amazon, B&N, etc.)
What’s next?
I have begun planning for the new year, but am in the early stages. I look forward to sharing more specifics in January. What do you hope to see in the new year?
“Earn out” is a good phrase. I have informally tracked my ‘earn out’ for my books, but always planned to pin it down “someday”. I’ll do it this week!
How do you allot your marketing expenses like book events? They apply to all your books. Do you divide them up?
My first book (IKYLAM) it was easy to measure since everything I did was for it lol, now not so much. That is the hard part, and I’m not sure I picked the “best” way, I just picked _a_ way so that I knew what I was measuring.
For the launch period itself, I included all marketing expenses and even sales of IKYLAM, since I hadn’t been doing its own marketing and any sales in that period were credited to what I was doing for the Unfixed launch from my perspective. (I likely wouldn’t do that for future launch measurements.) After the launch period, events became a “normal” operational expense that I didn’t count toward the launch expenses, but ongoing promos or marketing specific to the Unfixed duology was tracked as an expense for the duology to need to “earn out.”
Down the road, I think sales of other books during launch period and attending in-person events would not be counted as a launch expense since that’s more ongoing business operations now. (It of course all would still be tracked together to understand if my business is profitable as a whole.) Let me know how you decide to measure though, it may give me some ideas to improve next go-round!
I have a category of “marketing” in which I put all such expenses, launch and afterwards. Launch expenses have never been significant, since I’ve never had a launch in which I sold a lot of books. (a lot= greater than 10).
I can easily split out my expenses for my first book, but afterward, they all blend together. I’m at 10 published books, 1 unpublished, and one being written. Perhaps I’ll split them by source of sales: Amazon, in person, audiobook, and through my newsletter.