2018 goal results (including December 2018)

written by Betsy Flak on 2019-01-10

Yesterday, I covered the major accomplishments of 2018. Today, it's time to delve into the details.

I'll start with how I did with December's goals, then back off into the ninety-day goals for October through December of 2018, and then finally into how I did with 2018's overall goals.

Update on December 2018 goals:

1. Book Three of The Clan-Vampire Clash (title TBA): Finish addressing all comments from copyediting. Deliver to beta readers.
   • Result: Success! I worked my butt off to get it there, but I delivered Book Three to its beta readers a few days before Christmas. Bonus: All that hard work wasn't for nothing. Already, multiple beta readers have said that Book Three is the best one yet in The Clan-Vampire Clash young adult paranormal fantasy series. :D
2. Season two of Sam's story (Troupe-only side story): Complete all developmental editing comments. Complete line editing, copyediting, and proofreading of Chapter 4, so it's ready to go. Stretch goal: Start in on the line editing of Chapter 5.
   • Result: Massive fail. I ended up prioritizing getting Book Three to its beta readers before the holidays and this was the cost. However, I should have time early this month to get Sam's story: season two back on track.
3. Analyze the results of A Brush with Betrayal's launch as well as the previous fall flash sales of A Brush with Vampires and The Impossible Creation. Adapt both launch and promotion strategies accordingly..
   • Result: A bit of a failure here. I finished up analyzing the fall flash sales of A Brush with Vampires and The Impossible Creation. I also spent quite a bit of time on analyzing the launch of A Brush with Betrayal, but I doubt I'm more than halfway done with it (and could easily be less).
4. Monitor Amazon ads, making new ads as needed.
   • Result: Success!
5. Schedule cross promotions and giveaways through January and into February.
   • Result: Success! In fact, not only is January completely booked, but February's nearly there too.

Update on October - December 2018 goals:

1. A Brush with Betrayal (The Clan-Vampire Clash: Book Two): Launch on Sunday, October 21st, 2018! Complete all the items in the launch spreadsheet! Do so without stressing myself out!
   • Result: Mixed bag! I mean, yes, I did launch on Sunday, October 21st, 2018, and yes, I did complete all the items in the launch spreadsheet (minus a few of the wrap-up items that I'm still working on). But did I do so without stressing myself out? Probably not. Was I less stressed than during the launch of A Brush with Vampires (which was less stressful than the launch of The Impossible Creation)? Yes. At least I'm trending in the right direction.
2. Book Three of The Clan-Vampire Clash (title TBA): Address all comments from copyediting by November 30th. Deliver to beta readers by December 4th (which happens to be one of my beta reader's birthdays).
   • Result: Well, I did all this. Just not by the timelines I thought I would. But I did deliver Book Three to its beta readers before the holidays, which was my drop-dead date. As I mentioned earlier, I worked my butt off to get it there.
3. Book Four: Complete the outline by the end of the year. Stretch goal: write the full rough draft by the end of the year? Is that even possible? Whatever, I hate having things linger over the holidays, so we'll see.
   • Result: Fail. With the Book Three edits taking longer than anticipated, this got pushed to 2019.
4. Sam's story (Troupe-only side story): Based on reader survey, outline what happens next. Write the rough draft for the next season. Deliver fully edited episodes in newsletters starting in mid-November.
   • Result: Fail. The vast majority of the edits for the rough draft of Sam's story: season two also got pushed to 2019 due to Book Three taking longer to edit than anticipated. C'est la vie, I guess.
5. Continue scheduling cross promotions, giveaways, etc.
   • Result: Rousing success! I've consistently scheduled cross promotions and giveaways to the fullest extent my current restrictions (mostly internal, a few external) allow me to. I even started in on Amazon ads, something that wasn't slated to begin until 2019.

Update on overall 2018 goals:

Writing goals:

Writing goals:

1. Book One: Finish my final edits(!) by January 31st, 2018.
   • Result: Success! Delivered the advance review copy (ARC) of Book One (A Brush with Vampires) on January 28th, 2018 to my advance readers team.
2. Book Two: Take from copyediting through my final edits by August 31st, 2018. Stretch goal: Do this by May 30th, 2018.
   • Result: Fail (but about as close to a success as possible). Ended up delivering the ARC of Book Two (A Brush with Betrayal) to my advance readers team on September 5th, 2018, a mere 5 days late. Not bad, all things considered.
3. Book Three: Take from line editing through final edits by December 31st, 2018. Stretch goal: Do this by September 30th, 2018.
   • Result: Fail. Still have about two rounds of editing ahead of me (addressing comments from beta readers, who have Book Three now, and then doing a final pass before delivering it to my advance readers team). Multiple months behind this target.
4. Books Four, Five, and Six: Write rough drafts by December 31st, 2018. Stretch goals: Book Four rough draft-April 30th, 2018; Book Five rough draft-August 31st, 2018.
   • Result: Fail. I haven't even started the rough drafts of Books Four through Six, although I do have a rough outline for each book.

Business goals:

Business goals:

1. Publish Book One of The Clan-Vampire Clash book series by March 31st, 2018.
   • Result: Success! Launched A Brush with Vampires (The Clan-Vampire Clash: Book One) on March 20th, 2018.
2. Publish Book Two of The Clan-Vampire Clash book series by October 31st, 2018. Stretch goal: Do this by July 31st, 2018.
   • Result: Success! Launched A Brush with Betrayal (The Clan-Vampire Clash: Book Two) on October 21st, 2018.
3. Continue mix of cross promotions, Instafreebie, giveaways, and other promotions to find readers. Should result in at least doubling my readers group in terms of active members (defined as those readers who have opened an email in the last 90 days) and in terms of my record number of readers who opened a particular email. Numbers-wise, that's getting to 4000 active members and 2000 record-high number of opens.
   • Result: Welp, that was a nice thought. I mean, I did continue my mix of cross promotions, Instafreebie (now Prolific Works), giveaways, and other promotions to find readers. But it didn't result in doubling my readers group.
     I believe this is due to three things: (1) GDPR went through in the EU and the number and quality of giveaways I could join to find new readers within my budget all but disappeared; (2) Mailerlite (the company I use to email my readers group) had some deliverability issues in August and I lost roughly 20% of my active members at the same time (don't know if this is cause and effect but the timing is suspicious); and (3) it might not have been realistic to double my readers group in the first place.
     All that said, I did increase my readers group to 2300 active members and my record-high number of opens to 1500 (which was above my record pre-August), so it's not like I'm seeing no growth (or negative growth). It's just not as fast as I would like.
4. Continue refining launch strategy such that more books are sold with each launch (so Book One sells better than The Impossible Creation did during its launch and Book Two does better than Book One).
   • Result: Success! A Brush with Vampires sold roughly twice as many books as The Impossible Creation did during its launch, and A Brush with Betrayal made about twice as much money as A Brush with Vampires during its launch.
5. Get to the point where there is a steady monthly income to build off of. The actual number doesn't matter.
   • Result: Success! I made money every single month in 2018. The amount varied a lot, especially around launches, but it happened.
6. Stretch goal: Publish Book Three of The Clan-Vampire Clash book series by December 31st, 2018. Super-stretch goal: Do this by November 30th, 2018.
   • Result: Fail. As I mentioned earlier, editing Book Three took (and is taking) longer than I thought it would. Hopefully, this means that the remaining two stages of editing (addressing beta readers' comments and my final pass) will go fast.
7. Super-stretch goal: Publish a boxed set of all three books together by December 31st, 2018.
   • Result: Fail. Since I didn't finish Book Three, I couldn't publish a boxed set of all three books together.

Okay, I'm going to stop there. I'll discuss why I fell short on so many writing goals (or at least why I think I fell short) when I'm setting the goals for 2019.

One final item: I did do better with setting 2018's goals than I did for 2017. I didn't have to reset them less than halfway through the year this time, and they still were mostly accurate one entire year later. Here's to consistent improvement!

via GIPHY

Lastly, here's the link to the 2017 version of this post.