Sneak Peek Tip #14: Excel is Your Friend

Organization is an important facet of marketing. You have to be able to keep track of what works and what doesn’t. With that in mind, I like to create an Excel worksheet each year that keeps track of my monthly sales. That way I can compare it to the marketing efforts I did for that month. For 2012, I decided to add a section to the Excel worksheet that keeps track of my budget as well.

Check out my form and get ideas to make your own. If you'd like mine so you can adjust it, just send me an email.

Countdown to the New Year

Back in August when I had amazing sales, I set a goal to have 10 sales by the end of 2011. Well, since then my sales have slowed considerably. Now I will be ecstatic if I can get 8500 by Dec. 31. Only 236 sales to go!

I recently read a post on a forum by an author who reached 20k sales in just four months. Yes, four months. Amazingly, I wasn't super jealous. I think that is an important step in this business. You can't be jealous of other author's success. There are enough readers for all of us. This is a big step for me. When I first started this publishing game, I used to despise Stefanie Meyer for creating this whole vampire craze and making it so incredibly difficult for any non-vampire stories to see the light of day. Now, I realize that her success has nothing to do with mine.

Anyway, after I congratulated that author, she made a good point. She writes erotica, I write Middle Grade. Two very different animals. My sales number is pretty good for Middle Grade. It is ridiculously difficult to sell Middle Grade books online because you first have to appeal to the parents. I also have the problem of having MG and YA books and under two different names. That means I have twice the marketing work.

So for 2012, I'm really going to have to differentiate my marketing. I have to have clear goals for my Leslie DuBois name and my Sybil Nelson name. We'll see how it goes.

Who am I and why do you care?

I’m Sybil Nelson, an author probably just like you. I spent six years trying to go the traditional route with my books. Four of those years were with an agent. I was still not able to get published even after my agent sold the movie option to my Priscilla the Great series. So I set out to publish on my own, after signing two of my books to small publishers, I decided I could do a better job myself and started Indie Publishing my books. A year later, I have ten books published and I am closing in on 10,000 overall sales.

There are many Indie authors out there that have more impressive numbers than I do. Some with only one book. But here is the difference: I’m also married with two small children and I’m working on my PhD. To say I have very little time (and money) is an understatement.

For 2012, my goal is to be more focused and organized in my marketing efforts. I want to take my writing career to the next level. I’ve decided to document my journey and turn it into a book that will help other authors who have tight schedules and wallets. Why waste time and money on marketing efforts that don’t work? Learn from my mistakes and hopefully your journey will be quicker and easier than mine.

Test Post

This is a test post to see if this design is going to work.

In honor of my dedication to marketing, I decided a new blog was in order. I found my other blog a little clunky and hard to find. So I thought a new start would give me a shot of energy to keep at this never ending marketing thing. Maybe I'll commit to a blog a day for 365 days...or maybe not.