Hello Lunatics,
I remember 2020 like it was only yesterday. I was ready to post about the lofty goals I have set for the upcoming year. Multiple launches, one million words written, making enough money to eat at McDonalds. Standard fare for aspiring authors. Instead, I saw a question on Facebook that put a different spin on goal setting. A request to reveal the goals attained in 2020.
What a great way to frame the year. Here's my list of goals attained in 2020.
I wrote over 190K words in 2020, most in the Lycan Legacy series. I published two new books in the series, Lycan Legacy – Princess in July and Lycan Legacy – Progeny in September. Due to the train wreck that was the last six months of 2020, I had to push planned releases to 2021. I'm looking on the bright side, as stockpiled words will allow me to have two releases in the first quarter of 2021.
Non-book goals. During Christmas vacation in 2019, I decided I needed to build up my mailing list. I wrote a series of autoresponder emails to introduce subscribers to the Lunaverse. Then I pushed to email subscribers once a week. I didn't hit 52 emails, but came very close with 40.
I started 2020 with three subscribers. My current mailing list is still tiny, with less than one thousand subscribers, but I am grateful for each and every one of them. My subscribers have given me great feedback and positive reviews on Amazon. That's because I ask for a review in each email, as well as run contests to my subscribers.
The most engagement I had was when I ran the “Name the Twins” contest for the Lycan Legacy – Progeny book. It was a lot of fun and resulted in perfect names for my Luna's babies. My goal this year is to update my auto-responder series and add a few more emails to the sequence.
I also managed to give away nearly ten thousand copies of the first book in the Lycan Legacy series using a combination of permafree on Amazon and Prolific Works and Bookfunnel giveaways.
Giving away books resulted in reaching another goal. I finally reached twenty reviews on Amazon for Lycan Legacy – Prey. Real organic reviews from readers who had enjoyed the book enough to write a review. This was a huge goal for me.
Why was getting twenty reviews a huge goal? The best advertising avenues are closed to books with too few reviews. By reaching twenty 4-star+ reviews, I was able to place a Deal of the Day ad from FreeBooksy in 2020. That ad resulted in my best sales month to date.
I made it a goal to have a Facebook fan page up by the end of the year and I made it, just barely. Take a look at the page here: Veronica Singer Facebook Page Even the faceless Facebook bots couldn't stop creating a page. They blocked my advertising account, but they couldn't find a way to block me. Feel free to like, share, and subscribe to show the bots whose the boss.
Could I have done better? Yes. Could I have done worse? Oh, yes.
PS—This is the part where I humbly beseech you to leave a review for my book on Amazon. Social proof is incredibly important to a new author. Please take a few minutes to leave a review. Here’s the direct link to Amazon to leave a review.
