What I’ve Learned in 2016

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by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

2016 felt like a very busy year for me, although my production slowed down slightly. I wrote and published two books and am sitting on a finished third until after the holidays.  Usually I’d be halfway through a 4th book by now.

I think the reason it felt so busy was because of all the promo-related and distribution-related things that I learned and all the various platforms I tweaked.  I sat down and tried to compile all the different things that I’d read about, studied, and implemented and came up with a list to show myself that I’d been even busier than I’d thought.

Here’s a roundup of some of the things I learned in 2016:

I  learned how to find more newsletter subscribers. I participated in more group-related promo for my genre and was part of several massive giveaways with fellow cozy mystery authors. Readers entered by signing up for newsletter lists. My newsletter list grew very quickly in 2016 because of this (from a free to a paid list) and my open rate remained nearly the same.

I found that I can keep my income relatively stable, even though individual book sales are down, by producing more books, in more formats, available at more retailers.Continue reading

Scheduling Our Upcoming Year

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’m not so much of a fan of New Year resolutions. They seem too ephemeral for me…like a bucket list or something. There’s no meat to them. It’s a wish list. Instead I take what I want to accomplish, create a production plan, and put dates and ‘to dos’ on my calendar.

Although this makes me sound like a wonderful planner, I’m only a halfway decent planner. The truth is that I need to get on the calendars for my production team—in particular my cover designer.

Next year’s releases: At this point, I’ve also announced upcoming titles to my readers in both the backs of 2015 releases and on my website. This holds me accountable to my schedule and keeps me on track as well as ensures that readers are looking out for more launches in the series they’re reading.Continue reading

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