Well, I'm off to a good start of 2024! I forgot today was the first Monday of the month. My day to post until I woke up and my calendar said I was up on RTG blog.
I have always been a proponent of goals over resolutions. Goals are more concrete and fell like I've accomplished something when I complete it. A resolution is something you say you think you want to do.
I have my goals set for 2024:
Professional
Publish The Pinch (book 5 in Spotted Pony Casino Mystery)
write and publish Book #6
Write and publish Gabriel Hawke books #12 & #13
Write short story for Windtree Press anthology
Get the last Shandra Higheagle book, Vanishing Dreams, in
audiobook
Get Hawke books into audiobook box sets.
Take audiobooks for Kobo off Findaway and put up direct to
Kobo. Add more books to my bookfunnel account to do more cross-promotions with
other audiobook authors.
Put up YouTube videos of me reading short stories and audio of my books with photo galleries.
Personal
Continue walking 5 days a week
Watch my carb and fat intake
Traveling
Keep up my personal blog
Do more horseback riding
Of the professional goals that I plan to accomplish the one I don't look forward to is getting my audiobooks (30 or them) uploaded direct to certain audiobook vendors where I can then do more special sales and hopefully get the audiobooks seen and people purchasing more of them.
The reason I balk at this goal and task is I have to upload anywhere from 25-33 chapters per book to the sties. It takes time. Time I could be writing the next book. But after visiting with various authors who have been successful selling audiobooks, I feel this is something I need to do. Once I get the book I'm writing now, finished, I plan to take a month and get these audiobooks up where they need to be to start paying for themselves.
The other goal I find daunting is getting said audiobooks promoted on youtube. It will again be time-consuming not only putting together slides but also reading and editing video to upload there. I don't like to be in front of a camera and hope to just use photos and my voice or clips from my narrated books, but that is even more learning how to edit. So we shall see how successful I am in the last professional goal.
I am excited for the Personal goals. Especially the traveling. My husband and I have a couple of short trips planned and then next fall my oldest daughter and a granddaughter are going to accompany me on a trip I've been dreaming of for a long time. We will be gone for a month.
I am looking forward to 2024! Are you? Do you have any fun goals or goals you know you won't like but need to do?
Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 55 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it. This is what Books a Plenty Book Reviews has to say about the Gabriel Hawke series: "The blend of nature tracking, clues, and the animals makes for a fascinating mystery that is hard to put down."
6 comments:
Your audiobooks goal sounds like lot of work, but it may pay off for you.
I also have a couple trips planned--hope this is a year for fun adventures!
Lynn, If I don't break the audiobook goals into smaller bites, I get overwhelmed. As one author told me, just think of it as one book at a time, not all of them. That's the philosophy I've been using. Yay on traveling! May you have wonderful trips too!
Paty, I agree the audio book transferred are daunting and yet doable. That small steps/small bites does work when I do it. However...
Just writing this I'm wondering if I take the month of February to work on updating the meta-data (it is decades old) will work for me. Why? Because I have a week at the beach with friends scheduled for the last week of the month. What a fantastic way for me to celebrate!
Enjoy your trips!
Judith,
I like your week of celebrating.
Paty,
I enjoyed your post. You are a successful author. Audio books and the uploading sounds very daunting to me.
Judith, that sounds like a good way to get something done and celebrate later.
Diana, Thank you. I'm taking it one book at a time so it doesn't feel so daunting.
Paty - reading all you do each year, exhausts me :-) I am always in awe at your productivity. I do like the way you break down goals vs resolutions. I find goals work for me. Resolutions never had. Usually because they are pie-in-the-sky wishes, versus concrete tasks that can be checked off a list. Happy traveling...and best of luck (or organizational skills) for all the other book-related items you hope to accomplish! You can do it!
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