The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 55 – How to Prepare for a New Year of Writing

On the verge of a new year, Autumn and Jesper decided to share some of the best practices authors should be aware of as they prepare for a another year of writing.

Goal setting - especially the need to set realistic goals - is also discussed in this episode 55 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast.

As mentioned, please provide some feedback on what you like and what you don't like so much about the podcast (if anything).

You can reach Autumn on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Weifarer

And Jesper: https://twitter.com/SchmidtJesper

Or send an email via the contact form on this page: https://www.amwritingfantasy.com/about/ 

We would love the feedback.

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Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to the amwritingfantasy podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need a literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing join to best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them. Now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (30s): Hello, I am Jesper and I'm autumn. This is episode 55 of the amwritingfantasy podcast and after we kicked off 2020 last Monday with a view on the awesome writing software scribbler, we are now going to continue setting you up for success with a conversation about, should we call it best practices for 2020 and some goals setting like that.

Autumn (55s): Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment or good to definitely look at some big picture stuff because Hey, it's the new year and now as a time to traditionally set back and set some goals and look ahead and make some changes. So I think that's a perfect way to begin even. You're a writing year in 2020. Yeah. We should probably have made that episode 54 and then talk about Scrivener today. But that go, there you go. I think it works out. We everyone needs to recover I think a little bit after new years.

Yeah, that's true. Maybe just, uh, having this weekend between might be a good thing. Yeah. That's speaking of ease into it. Yes. And now that we're past our week, um, even though we're technically time traveling, how has your week been going?

Jesper (1m 41s): That's been good. Uh, actually this morning I was doing some of the monthly checks on the stats for this podcast and actually I was thinking that maybe I could just share a bit about what I learnt there. That'd be exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Because since we started the podcast, uh, we've, we've seen consistent increase in the number of downloads per month, so, so that's of course very good. Uh, for some weird reason has still not, can wake up why September was just way better than all the other months.

Uh, but, uh, but even here in the November stats that I just did, so again, we try and traveling a bit here. So we're still in December technically, but in the end of November stats, uh, we also saw a positive trend in the number of downloads per month. So, so that's good. And uh, you know, basically we are releasing these episodes every Monday because we want to be helpful. And of course we are also trying to make it a, a slightly entertaining rather than a boring rundown of, of the topics that we pick.

So, so that's why basically that we're checking, I'm checking the download numbers every month because uh, you know, unless we see that people are actually finding the podcast useful and are listening, then it would be a waste of our time because at the end of the day, all the podcasting is time away from writing. So I think it's good that is trending in a positive direction. Right. Autumn

Autumn (3m 9s): plus it's like, again, I partially, we do this too cause we like to help other authors and it is nice. It's kind of one way of knowing unless people like go flood us with comments, which would be fine. Um, but I mean, how do we know we have to gauge that we're actually reaching people and hopefully helping them somehow. And that would be through comments or downloads and things like that. So it's kind of good to see a positive progression that way. Yeah.

Jesper (3m 34s): But I ha I have a small request that I would actually like to make to our listeners if you could with that. Yeah. All right. I want to hear it. This is, yeah, because we have a, we have a few reviews on the iTunes store at the moment that there was only four of them, so we need to be really careful about jumping to any conclusion based on those reviews. But, uh, since the volume of those reviewers are rather low, I want to be a bit careful here, but the review average is a 3.5. Uh, and I would like it to be meaningful enough.

For. So I think if you agree with me here autumn I would like to ask our listeners if they could please provide a bit of feedback because we've now been doing this, uh, in, in new wish format, you know, no, no longer YouTube videos converted to podcast, but actual podcast episodes we're doing, we've been doing that for what, like half a year or something.

Autumn (4m 29s): I think Maddie, I think you're right though. I was something like that. Yeah.

Jesper (4m 34s): Yeah. And so we, we've been doing sort of the same format here for six months. And of course when we started out, we, you know, as I've talked about before, I listened to a ton of podcasts myself, so I know at least what I like in podcast. And that was sort of how we decided to set up this podcast in, in the, you know, with the different sections that we go through on each episode, what we talk about, uh, and, and all of that. So, so there was a thinking behind why we set it up the way we did.

But at the same time, of course, we don't know if, if you're you dear listener, like that setup or not. Uh, so what I would really love is if we could, if I, for example, added the link in the show notes to both Autumns and my own Twitter profiles, but also a link to the contact form on the amwritingfantasy website so that you can send us an email then I would really love it if each of our listeners could just spend one minute to just give us a bit of feedback and just tell us what you like about the podcast in its current format and maybe what you would like to see different, if anything with the current format.

And then, yeah, because I, I really would like to get some feedback from listeners here. Uh, and of course, again, we need a bit of volume, so please don't think that, yeah, I'll let everybody else sent autumn and Jesper uh, feedback because then everybody will be thinking that and then we'll get only a few responses. And to be honest, I'm not willing to make changes on the basis of just a few responses. So we need a bit of volume. So please, uh, just spend that one minute if you don't mind. And then just tell us what you like and what you would like differently as well.

Then we will definitely consider if we see some reoccurring themes popping up in dose responses, then we'll definitely consider if we need to do any changes or modifications to the layout of how we run each episode.

Autumn (6m 33s): That sounds good. Always a good practice to hear from people and see what's going and take a survey. Yeah. So what has been going on in your life? Autumn well, I, I actually finished a book. Yeah, it's a, well I finished it in December, so hopefully by the time reading, well no, you're making me depressed, but it's a writing. I wa there's a book I want to read. I hope maybe by the time this airs I'll have that red.

But yeah. So hopefully by the time this is out am I'll have a do book out is oneness. Co-written with my husband about our adventures driving across the United States for the last four years with over a hundred thousand miles a day or our tires and sort of a how to do it and if you're going to do it, how to be safe kind of book. So, Oh, it's PRI. We've been working on it off and on for like a year. And so usually it's my husband who's dragging his feet and he got his part done so fast, so I got to give kudos to him for really pulling it together and then frauding me saying, what do I gotta do your part?

What are you going to edit it? What are you gonna so it's done and I'm so excited to get that out to the world because I know I have a couple folks we've talked to that I have promised it to for probably the last eight months. So yay. I've got a book out my 17th whew. It sounds good.

Jesper (8m 1s): You know, a very, like this book, is there other books like this on on the market already? Or is this like a, the first time

Autumn (8m 9s): one on Amazon? Believe it or not, it's not the first one there. Am overlanding adventure driving, uh, kind of nomadic travels is becoming very, very popular at least in the United States. But I mean for some countries like Australia and New Zealand, it is a walkabouts it's what you do. However, doing it on it as a vehicle, vehicle based travel. Um, yeah, it's something that people are getting more into and there's a certain very big niche on what kind of vehicle you need and the equipment to take and how to stay safe if you're going to some of the remote roads that we've traveled the last few years.

That's why Adam got a medical certificate and everything so he can take care of me and hopefully if I take, I had to take care of him. He wouldn't be unconscious cause I needed to know have him tell me what to do. We'd be free to think that one.

Jesper (8m 58s): Yeah. But you know, my marketing mindset is already speculating that you could probably get some cheap MSR ads, keywords for stuff like that. I, I guess there's not too much competition in that field. On on the keywords, maybe fingers crossed. Oh, we go on the internet with the amwritingfantasy podcast. So in the amwritingfantasy Facebook group, Dwayne said that he has several stories set in the same world and he wants to give one of them, eh, new our field to it.

And uh, he was concerned for how to achieve this without it seeming to take place on an alternate universe. So I just wanted to say that because I love how the group offers each other lot of help and advice. You know, Lawrence response was very helpful and insightful because she said, quote, I would make a list of some of the things we take for granted about life in our world and change those in your world based on what's been present since the past.

And then she said, I think a great example of this is the last Airbender the cartoon in the earth kingdom, they have trains, but they are powered by earth benders. They developed the technology to build trains but not the engines to power them. Similarly in the fire nation, they have tanks, but the ammunition is just fire benders, shooting fire.

Autumn (10m 23s): Oh, that's interesting.

Jesper (10m 26s): Yeah. But I, I thought, you know, the idea about, okay, so he had some concerns here and she says, you know, make a list and of the things that are coming in and change it to something else. Right. I think very useful and simple, but it's very useful.

Autumn (10m 39s): Yes. I see a lot of the comments on the group there. Everyone's so helpful. I mean we have, I can't think of any big problems we've had. They're just, it's a fantastic place to get feedback and ideas though. It's funny cause I mean, one of the things we don't really talk about here very often is that we actually have newsletter that we send out. I think it's like every three weeks and it has a writing tips and world-building tips and stuff too. So besides this podcast, we actually have a newsletter as well. Actually, we've got that going for a while and we had a good comment, um, that someone emailed back to us just the other day, or at least the other day from what we're recording.

And they were, had a question about when is it okay to use a word like our name that someone else has used. And they were like, give an example. I use the word Kith for one of my fantasy races and he wasn't sure if I knew it has been used for um, a very similar group, oddly enough, uh, in a different role playing game that I had never heard of. So no, that's not where I got it from, but it was a great discussion on, you know, when is it okay to, to use a word that someone else has, you know, also use and to me, it really comes down to it.

None of us are really making up 100%. I bet. No matter what words you make up right now in your mind, it is a real world word somewhere in a language in this world. So it's one of those things that, you know, if it's not, if you Google it and there's not 20 pages on someone else using it for a specific thing, it's as also as not trademarked or copyrighted. It's okay to use because everything's been used before. But I did give them the advice that, you know, if you do Google something and you wanna like name something Hogwarts or the Shire, you don't even want to go there, even if they're not trademark, because you're going to be at page 12,598 on the Google search and no one's ever gonna find your version.

But for something like a, the of my fantasy race or other strange words that you come up with and you look around and there's not that much else out there like it, that's okay to use even if someone else has used it somewhere because unless they're trademarking at our copyrighting it, it is legally free to be used. Yeah. Well, this has been the whole, well about

Jesper (13m 10s): to say scandal, but all this stupid stuff to be honest, in the indie author community over the last, uh, well not, not, not recently, but probably like four or five months back where, uh, or maybe it was less, but where some authors were trying to trademark certain titles and also words like there was somebody who wanted to treat my trademark, a cozy mystery so that the, I mean, all that stuff drove me insane to be honest.

But, but I, but I agree. I mean titles and names for raises and all that, it's, it's, it's a free fall. You know, you, you can have the same titles and you can have the same names of somebody else. But I do also support what autumn said that when we, uh, talk, uh, when we're talking about fantasy names, which actually we have a bit of information in, in the book on plotting that we're going to release in 2020 about how to create those names. But one of the advices that we give in there is actually also to try to search a bit on the internet to see if there's some well known stuff that is am already called whatever you want to use as a name because there's just no reason to, just because you didn't know that they w it was something that am somebody else has already used in a, in a setting or a book or in a game or whatever it may be.

There's just no reason to have readers starting to get those associations when they read it. Right. So it's just best to avoid if you can. And certainly if you go by the really, really, uh, famous examples like the Shire, like on set, you know, then you're probably gonna slap be in the, in the review. So if you do that, so just complete the stay clear of stuff like that. But in principle, there is nothing like called stealing in, in this particular situation. To be honest.

Autumn (15m 4s): No, not really. I think it's, um, it's, there's gonna be some overlap. It's bound to happen. There are so many people are writing and there are so many books and even if you go back through history of what you might not have read in, might not even know is out there, probably there's going to be some duplication. It's just a fact that's going to happen. So just try to keep it to a minimal and, and don't, don't do it because you did read something and you thought it was a cool world, a new swipe. It try to make it honestly having come up with it on your own.

Jesper (15m 41s): All right, so in terms of a best practices for 2020, that I think that that was what we ended up calling it, but it's basically like a list of some things that are good to do here at the beginning of the year to think about, to get yourself set up best for, for the year to come. Uh, and also some goal setting. And maybe that's a good place to start. I don't know. Autumn

Autumn (16m 3s): I think so. I think, um, it's a good, yeah, goals are a perfect way to start because 20, 20, I mean, like we said with new year's resolutions and everything else, it is a new year and historically this is a great time to look ahead and figure out what you want to do and accomplish in this new year. Because otherwise, unless you do that, the year can just run away with you and you'll maybe, yeah, it might never really achieve anything much less a big project or whatever you want to go.

So I know when I do some goal setting, I mean I tried to think about things from everything from like books I want to, how many books I want to write and publish or courses we want to put out. There's a whole bunch of stuff that we look at when we say it's almost always too ambitious. We are and life does get the better of us. But you know what? I'd rather be struggling to reach the mountain top then, you know, be standing on top of the tiny little Hill boy. I did it. I did it in like June. I'm going to work.

Jesper (17m 10s): Yeah. Uh, I tend to divide my goal setting in the West or at least think about, I mean it's a bit different now to be honest because we had to worry about it. So we usually talk about what we want to do and we we have all very long to do list and then we tried to figure out where are we going to start, what's on the top and then we'll work down the list. Right. And we never get to the bottom by the end of the year anyway. So it's a slightly different now. But if I'm thinking back to before we were doing everything together, then I would divide my goals into three different buckets.

Um, and uh, maybe I could just run over what those,

Autumn (17m 47s): yeah. I'm curious. I'm, I'm guessing writing

Jesper (17m 50s): marketing as something else. What are they pretty close? Yeah, I mean the bucket bucket number one would be what I want to achieve in D author business. So that could be a, for example, how many books I wouldn't want to put out or that I want to have X amount of revenue or whatever. Something like that. Right? But it's like if I'm thinking about my authorship as a business and then I'm basically setting up business goals for myself on what I want to achieve and I make them very concrete, like sub goals on how to get there.

So, so that I can track throughout the year and it's not like it's a yearly goal and then I don't know until 12 months later if I'm on track or not. Right. So I try to make it some, some concrete sub goals, uh, to, to get there. So if it is revenue, then I'll probably have some goals about how much I want to increase the revenue per quarter. If it's a writing books, then of course then I want to say something like, uh, in the first half I want to publish let's say two books and second half, two books, for example, something like that. So that's bucket number one.

Excellent. And then I also used to have a pocket number two, which was about how I was going to improve my writing craft. Oh, I like this one. Yeah. So that could be stuff like, uh, I need to read at least let's say 10 nonfiction books on writing craft fuck sample or it could be, I also really like, like the, um, uh, Brandon Sanderson has on YouTube, you can find, I think if you type in write about dragons on YouTube, you can find a full university level costs.

Brandon Sanderson has their for, he's done it for several years and I think all the years worth of classes are there for, you could just watch them for free. So I also used to watch all of those, a couple of, well many years back now, but I watched all of those as well. So if you want to check that out, just type in, write about pregnancy and YouTube and you will find them. So, so that's another way you can improve your craft. And it could also be of course, that you just want to ride, let's say 10 short stories and you have some mentor or something that you're working with and you want to get feedback on.

I don't know, but, but basically writing craft, but what's my pocket number two? And then bucket number three was about, uh, yeah, you basically cast it before them. So it's about promotion. How, how am I going to promote myself? So that could be, for example, if back then I was running a YouTube channel, so I would have some goals for my videos and both, both in terms of how many views I wanted or, uh, how many comments I wanted and stuff like that. Uh, or well, in the beginning of this episode as well as she had some podcast stats, right?

So it could also be that you are running a podcast and you're tracking how you're performing there. Um, or if you are not creating videos or podcast or blog posts, something like that. Perhaps you just want to learn how to be the master of Amazon ads or Facebook ads or something like that. So you knew you were going to invest either time or money or both in understanding and learning how to do that. Um, so we it could be anything, but the key is that you pick something that you want to improve and then you work at it until you master it.

So, so that that's, that's how I did it. Oh, I like that. I mean it definitely makes sense and I agree it's, you can't set goals and then put them in a, you know, save the file and stick it in a drawer and never, you know, get back to it. It's really important that it's somewhere visible. Like I like to put my goals on a sticky note. Um, well digital sticky note that's right on my laptop desktops so that whenever I'm, you know, closing up programs are going in between things. I see the sticky note that says, you know, this is a goal this is something you want it to work on.

Yeah. And it isn't, I think it really does help you reach further if you really say, Hey, I want to do this many books or I want to accomplish this. It really does keep it tight center that this is my goal and I've got to keep working towards it. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. As long as you keep working towards it. Exactly. Because I think a lot of the time what happens is that people who set themselves some goals and they'll get distracted about something, they'll start doing something else and they've sort of, yeah, I know do I have those goals into draw, but I'm not really working against them or to achieve them.

So it's sort of just fizzles outright that that's, I think that's one of the things from the other thing is also that a lot of the times people struggle to just make their goals concrete enough. So it's this sort of fluffy stuff that you know you need to be able to track whether you're on track on it. Because if you cannot track it, you have no idea where you're going. I mean, of course if you say, I'm going to release four books this year, published four books, that's pretty easy to track with an odd, you're doing that. But if you're, if you have other types of goals, like am for example, I want to, let's say master Facebook ads like we talked about just a second ago, right?

How do you attract that? Well then that's where you need to, you need to break it down in one way or another to say, okay, how do I know when I've mastered it? Right? So maybe it's something like I need to have 10 different Facebook ad campaigns, uh, that turns a profit, uh, or something, you know, I, I don't know, I'm just making something up here. Right. But, but do you need to make it concrete enough that you can actually track with them or not? You are achieving what you want to achieve. And then let's say by the end of the year you only got seven Facebook campaigns that is turning a profit.

Well, I think that's pretty damn good anyways. So you should be happy about that, right? Yeah. Say there's times where you might not even know. You might be such a novice to Facebook ads that you don't even know what is a, is achievable goal. So if you might start off by just by saying, by you know, creating one that, a campaign that's really getting a positive return on investment is like something to

Autumn (23m 46s): be proud of. It's, and then you might have to revise it and rash, you know, tweak it a little bit more as you suddenly realize, Oh this is what it's about as you start taking the training. But yeah, that's a fair point. Yeah. I think a lot of the time what I see people struggle with as they, maybe they can say like I want to write this many books but they don't, they have a hard time with breaking it down into the milestones. You know, the sub-goals that make it achievable, breaking down to steps that are bite size. It may be or a monthly or weekly to make it happen. Cause I know like one of my big goals a couple of years ago now was like I wrote down, I wanted to finally be a featured author and BookBub.

I just, I wanted to hit that target. I don't know why, but it was in my head and that's what I wanted to do. And so yeah, so I could write that down. But how do you do that? So I broke it down like I wanted to read you my covers. I didn't think there is a strong, I want to read you my descriptions. I needed more reviews. You know, you start doing all of these processes. I needed more followers on BookBub and by breaking it down and say doing the new covers, I hit my number of reviews I wanted, I redid my formats, made sure that the book itself looked spectacular and then I submit it off to BookBub because that's part of your goal is like once you think you have everything in place you you got to make sure you're actually putting it in.

And lo and behold, I actually did it. So it's totally achievable if you break down the steps that on the outside, that's just like you can't do, I want to be a New York times bestselling author. Well how do you do that? Look at the steps, see what other people are doing, break it down into actionable items and then actually do each one and check it off. And yeah, maybe you won't hit that big, big one, but at least you will be there. And I bet you will have learned so much along the way that you know, you might still hit it yet.

Jesper (25m 39s): Yeah, I agree. And I would also say, because we'd, what you said before, it sort of made me think a bit, because I would also say if you have some goals about how many books you on the right, I mean if you're working on your face first book, just make your goal that to finish that book, because honestly bef before you finished the first one, you have no idea how long it's gonna take. And it's, it's that first book is also going to take much, much, much longer than you think it will. So don't start out by saying, if you had never written a book before, I don't, don't start out by saying I'm going to write four books this year.

I mean forget it. Just say I'm going to finish one book and that's it. Yeah.

Autumn (26m 15s): And that first book will also take much, much longer than probably every other book you will. Right. I think everyone's first book is a huge learning curve.

Jesper (26m 24s): Yeah. My first one took one and a half year and uh, and I think nowadays we can properly, if we focus, not if we don't do all the cost building and all the other stuff we have going autumn but I think we can turn out a book in three, four months. That's what I was going to say. It's probably three, four months. Even even when I'm writing, I've written four and a half books in one year

Autumn (26m 44s): before while still having a full time job and it is totally, I was so focused and they good characters, they basically wrote themselves, I could barely keep up. And when you get into that kind of flow it's fantastic but you're not always going to be there. And you know four books in a year with a job and kids and family and life. That's a little tough. So don't be tough on yourself. You'd be do stuff that you know is going to make you stretch but not necessarily overwhelm you and make you have a breakdown I either.

Jesper (27m 20s): No, exactly. I think that's important. And I mean, once, you know what you're doing, four books a year is probably not unrealistic but, but you need to know what you're doing and you need to have the practice, uh, from publishing before you can set yourself goals like that. So that was just like a very quick, uh, like wanting the end up stressing yourself out because goal setting is good. But if you put really unrealistic goals and you work yourself into the ground because of it, then that's not worth it.

Autumn (27m 48s): No, not at all. You you should make this still fun and they should be, you know, some flexibility and stuff in there as well that, you know, you're, you have an achievement you want to get to, but you know, you still need to take family vacation and go to your sister's wedding and all those things too. I wouldn't honestly say as you're doing your goal setting that, you know, life goals should be up there and having fun. Um, that should also be one of your buckets. Your, you're filling as you're looking at your goals for the year, not just writing and marketing.

Uh, you got to make sure your balance, all of that with some family and fun and so going over. So we do goals but I think this is another time a year that is good to do some like once a year cleaning a house. That's what I like to do in January.

Jesper (28m 36s): Yeah, exactly that. And that was just about to say, because you told me before we started recording that you have a small list of things and and sober. Why. So I thinking maybe we could just jump back and forth through you pick one of your lists and I pick one of mine and so forth.

Autumn (28m 47s): Okay. Well I'll go ahead and start. So one of the things I like to do this time of year is going over my manuscripts and for me I like to look for missing links. Like did I publish a book and I forgot to add it to a previous book or did my website change at all? Or even just going through the manuscript and checking all those links are actually working. Cause you know sometimes you publish stuff and there's a kink and you didn't realize it. So I like to go over my manuscripts at least once a year. And even if any readers during the year sent me any updates saying Hey that wordsmith spelled and I didn't go fix it right away, now's the time to make sure I get all of those fixed and polished and cleaned.

Jesper (29m 27s): Yeah. That was also on my list to be honest. And I, because also I had the ones about, you know, you publish the book one and maybe in the back of that book you wrote like book two coming in 2019 like yeah, great. And now which went in 20 so yeah, need to up the dose.

Autumn (29m 43s): Definitely. That's a good point. It's, I even have seen, cause I like to do a sample chapters for something in the back of my books and sometimes those don't get updated to the actual polished versions or maybe I want to link to a different book and all those little things. It's a good time to think about, you know, even marketing. Like am I, I started putting the back of my books. I'm a little social media page, like sorta like hashtags and the ways of sharing and stuff. I need to go back and add that to all my other books now.

So I guess I'll be doing that this January.

Jesper (30m 17s): Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So should I pick one from that list? Go for it. Yeah. So I also put in email list here. And what I mean by that is that am so there's a few different things I want to go over here. I'm checking your, you know, total open rates, your click through rates and how many subscribers you're getting and from where they are signing up is pretty good to do here at the beginning of the year. Uh, and of course your email service provider, whether you're using convert kit like as or MailChimp or whatever, we'll tell you all these steps.

So when you log in, that as part will tell you. Um, but it's good to do because if one of the things that you're offering in exchange for email addresses is outperforming another thing that you're doing or offering, then maybe you should talk, uh, down on the one that actually performed really well in and do that more, promote that more here in 2020. Um, and also when it comes to the emails themselves, maybe you need to clean up your list.

Uh, and what I mean by that is that if you finding that you have very low open rates and very low click through rates, it's could easily be because you have a lot of death. Wait on and uh, what I mean by that is that when people are signing up to get something for free, probably as something you're offering, uh, it could be like a free chapter. Maybe. Maybe it's a full free novel or it could be like a character sheet that you're giving away, something you're giving away. Maybe in the back end of those books that we just talked about, that could be a link to say, Hey, you want to, you want to check out this character?

Or what he, what he's been up to after the novel ended or whatever it may be. Maybe you have a short story or something, uh, and then people sign up to get those free things. But some of those people who sign up and it's probably more people than you think, actually just sign up, get that freebie thing that they were looking for and then they will never open an email again. And if you have too many of those people on your list, it will hurt your open rates and if it helped or hurt your open rates, it will actually also hurt your deliverability of the emails.

So it's, it's no good basically. So you need to do a cleanup. Uh, I like to actually purchase the email list, uh, both my personal one, but also autumn on my list every quarter. Um, so what I will do is that I will use the convert kit, basically has a way that it keeps track of those who haven't opened an email. For I think it's 90 days. Uh, and then we sought those out and I'll send them a, an email just to those people.

And say that we can see that they haven't opened an email. And, uh, then I will tell them that, uh, if you want to stay on the list, this list, you need to click this link. And if you do not click this link, we will delete you within a week. Like cutthroat. There you go. Yeah. But at the end of the day, you know, as authors, we also have to treat this as a business and we're paying for the people on the list. And if they have no interest in reading the emails, why should we be paying for having them on the list? Right? So that's why we purchased them, because we only want people on a list, which actually interesting in reading, uh, the stuff that we emailed them.

So the ones that, because the way that it, eh, convert kit in this case, and I think most other email providers work the same way, the way that they track whether or not people opened the email is that they have a transparent one pixel size image in the email that they put in. And then they track if that image gets loaded. Uh, but in some email programs, uh, they will have a disabled image loading by default. So that means that it, those people might actually open and read the emails.

But the PIM, because the pixel did not get loaded, convert kit will think that these people are open the emails even though they are actually opening. So that's why I'm sending that email instead of just a leading people because then the ones who are actually interested in our emails can, they will click the link and say, Hey, you know, don't do not delete me. And then of course we won't. Uh, but this is a very good way I think to keep healthy email list. And then healthy email list is extremely important. I'll not go into all the details on deliverability, uh, why now, but actually in 2020 autumn and I also planning to release a completely free course for authors called self-publishing success.

And in that, uh, I'll have a full module on email lists and I'm going to explain why this is so important so you can stay tuned for that. But, uh, but that was a bit on email list. I hope that was not too boring. No. And while he's going to even add to it. You know, if you have automations, which a lot of us, uh, as authors do weed, not sending out every single email or just doing campaigns. So if you have any like onboarding automations normally see which ones are performing well. But again, check your links. I'm going to be like, this is just the hold up a sign. Check your links, go and go look at them really quick.

Make sure they're as evergreen as you think they are. Make sure that the, you know, double check your spelling. It's just a good time to look at it again with fresh eyes and see if there's anything you could improve at Tony. Want a change, new information you want to add. It really is important to keep these up to date.

Autumn (35m 38s): I know I've gotten one before and there was a reference to something that was like five years in the past and I was like, come on. You know, just go through these every once in a while people and make sure that they're still accurate and going to the correct websites and everything like that. That's very important. And actually speaking of websites, so that's going to be my next one because you know, I like to do websites, but this is a good time to run through your website. Especially go into Chrome in incognito mode.

Go in as a random browser and go and see what it looks like. Check your legs, you know, look at the information on mobile. Yeah, I check it on mobile. I'll go and look at your stuff as a new reader, not just with your lens of being the author and what you think it looks like from the back end, but what it really looks like for, you know, go to your spouses or your kids' computer and go see what it looks like as someone who is not logged into the site and make sure everything looks good. Am get those links shaped up.

And again, if you did book Sue published anything, if you're not running a blog or even if you're running a blog, go update it just now is the time of year to add that to your to do list. Even if it's a modest amount, go get it going again and make sure everything's clean. Your images are good that you, even if you're in your backend, you've updated your plugins and your WordPress theme or your wicks, whatever you're using because the older those things get the closer it is to crashing or being vulnerable to hackers. So make sure you get all your software up to date before someone swipes all your files.

Yeah.

Jesper (37m 15s): Next one of mine actually goes hand in hand with what you just said because other than website I would also say check your social media profiles and that includes your bio on Amazon or good reads or anywhere else where you might have written a bio, so just check if anything is outdated or maybe you just need to do a general update. Maybe you can write a better bio am or how about the banners that you're using on Facebook or on your Twitter profiles and so on. Do you need to change any of them or do you need to update some of it?

Autumn (37m 47s): It's just a good best practice to get done at the beginning of the year. Get a fresh face for the new year. That could be misunderstood, but no, that's a really good point. Those are things that people tend to forget. Just like when I think of like updating your website or updating your manuscripts, you have to also go update the places like book funnel and story origins, places where you have your book files uploaded too. So that's another thing is sometimes it's easy to make sure you uploaded something and updated something on Amazon.

But some of those places where your readers go like book funnel or you're being a reader is you know, they have access to some of your other stuff. Make sure that those are updated to, Hmm,

Jesper (38m 30s): I have one more thing on my list. Uh, how was your list looking at?

Autumn (38m 33s): No, I think I'm pretty well up actually.

Jesper (38m 37s): Okay. I have one more and it's about saving money. So this is probably pretty important. I want to hear this sounds super important. Yeah, that's on already. Yeah. So I would say review your last year's invoices that you received and paid and just check if you have any ongoing subscriptions for some services that you aren't actually using anymore. That was a good, because you might as well just go ahead and cancel them if you're not using them and save yourself some money.

But it actually happens more often than you think that you have something on automatic payment for some subscription for something and you're not even thinking about it. Maybe it's just like $10 a month so you don't really notice it, but they just subtract $10 a month and uh, it's just a waste of buddy. Right. So just go and check that and uh, yeah, that's good. Good idea.

Autumn (39m 31s): Very good idea. And sometimes it's really important to, uh, check at least a couple full months because I know my husband and I had, were both subscribed to something and we thought it was one subscription, but there was one slight difference of the email. We are getting double charged so places are sneaky. They gave us a refund, thank goodness. But okay. I was just about to ask, did they do that on purpose? No, no. They were very honest about, they were very nice about it. But yeah, you've got to watch some times, you know, you get a family and family accounts, little things like that can happen and creep up and costs you what seems like not much, but boy, $10 even a month adds up really quick by the end of the year.

120.

Jesper (40m 12s): Yeah. I had even worst layer while this was probably like a year ago or something. All of the, uh, I was, I was in my, uh, net banking, just checking my, my account status and and then I was thinking like, this just seems to be missing some money in these accounts. I don't understand why. And what, what is going on? And then I started going through all of it and then, um, I S I started that we were missing like three and a half thousand dollars on the counters. Like what's lies?

And it was less and it was, yeah. And then I clicked into the details of it and I could see there was some sort of, you know, building what, what is, what is it called? Like, you know, these big stores where you can buy building materials and in the U K so was, yeah. So I was like, how, what? So of course I called the bank and I said, well this is a mistake. I mean, first of all, I do not live in the UK and I do not buy building materials in the UK.

Yeah. So they said, yeah, yeah, just a, you know, there was like a function inside the net banking where you can click that this is not a, you know, this is not me spending this money and whatnot. So he said, yeah, just click that and send it in. We'll have a look at it. But I was quite nervous because it was a lot of money. So I asked him, but does it make a difference what I put in, you know, do I need to write something special to make sure you get the money back? But of course he didn't want to say that. He just said, no, no, you just write honestly and then we'll look at it. Cause of course he didn't want to tell me what to write.

So I submitted it and I was a bit nervous. But like two or three days later the bank returned the money. Oh. So, so that was good. But it was, it was a bit scary. It was all quite a lot of money. That is a lot of money and it's easy, easy to have happen to either stuff goes into the wrong account. Those numbers all means staff or someone swipes your card. So yeah, it must have been something like, I have no idea when it's happened. I mean I, I did travel to London on a frequent basis at the time, but I have no idea when, when somebody must have done something.

But, ah, but anyway, that's history now. But yeah, so I think as you can hear people, there's a lot of things you could do at the beginning of the year to set yourself up for success. And hopefully we mentioned some stuff in this episode that maybe you hadn't thought about yourself. At least that was the aim, wasn't it? Yes, it was. And have you haven't, you know, let us know on the in the comments if there's anything else that you hadn't heard of before or anything else you think would be a good tip for folks. All right, so next Monday we're going to give you six different streams of income for authors might serve well as yet more integration on how you can diverse your income.

Narrator (42m 57s): If you like what you just heard, there's a few things you can do to support the amwritingfantasy podcast. Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. You can also join Autumn and Jesper on patreon.com/amwritingfantasy for as little as a dollar a month. You'll get awesome rewards and keep the amwritingfantasy podcast going. Stay safe out there and see you next Monday.