10 Tips for Achieving Your Author Career Goals

Like any project, writing and publishing a book requires dedication, time, and a supportive team for a professional final product. The professional editors and writers at Midnight Publishing know this from working with hundreds of clients in the last ten years. We have a special understanding of this process. We also have a passion for assisting authors in hitting their author goals. In our last blog, we shared our top ten tips for reaching your publication goals. Today, we are sharing our top ten tips for accelerating your author career. Don’t hesitate to contact us anytime for a one-on-one consultation to discuss how we can help you achieve your personal book goals this year.

10 Tips for Achieving Your Author Career Goals

Marketing Goals

1. Put a Basic Platform in Place

There are two elements you must have as an author. The first, a website with a headshot, blog or newsletter for announcements, and links to purchase your books. The second is a social media platform that you post to regularly. Here is what we suggest.

2. Set Up a Schedule for Posts/Blogs/Newsletters

A good basic plan for this goes as follows. For blogging, it is smart to blog either weekly or biweekly along with sending out a newsletter once a month. For the social platform, depending on which one you are using, it is smart to post at least once a day.

3. Don’t Fall into Social Media Rabbit Holes

It is important not to let your social media platform to not derail you from being productive during your writing time. It is also important to post at high activity times. Consider apps like Flipd that “lock” you out of social media for a specific amount of time.

4. Take Social Media and Book Reviews with A Grain of Salt

Pay attention to your personal tolerance levels for media, reviews, and criticisms. You need to protect yourself and limit yourself to how much time you spend reading these reviews. One of our editors, Ashley R. Carlson has three tips on how to best handle your reviews. Find them here.

5. As Your Platform Grows, Enlist Help

Getting your social media platform to the level of being a great marketing tool can become time consuming. If you find it taking up too much writing time, it may be helpful to consider help. There are freelance social media managers and companies that will do that posting for you.

Future Overall Goals

1. Write Your Next book (and the Next, and the Next)

A longer blacklist means more books. More books means more opportunities to reach a wider audience. Also, obvious one, more book means more selling opportunities.

2. Build an “Author Street Team”

Ask your fans and friends to be apart of your organic marketing campaign by telling others about your work. If you have a newsletter, remind them every time you send it out to spread the word. Ask them to share your social posts for their friends to see. Good fans and friends are a great way to keep accelerate your career.

3. Allow for Growth While Staying True to Your Author Brand

We love to encourage our authors to continuously work on their writing and to keep reading. Write as often as you can and always be open to new opportunities. However, stay true to your original brand.

4. Submit Shorter Works Elsewhere for Visibility

Continue to build your resume of work. Look for places to submit short stories, personal essays, and nonfiction pieces. Another great way to do this is to submit short works to magazines. Not convinced on this? Check out this blog post.

5. Remind Yourself it’s a Marathon, Not a Race

This is the most important thing to remember as a career as an author. Writing books and maintaining an author brand requires years of work, or decades, before reaching critical acclaim. Enjoy it. Focus on the rewards found along the way. Above all, keep your passion for writing.

Midnight Publishing is an editing, writing, and publishing consulting company. We have been serving authors and entrepreneurs for nearly a decade. Contact us today to see if we can provide the right professional assistance, collaboration, and insight for you to reach your publication goals in 2020.