Happy 2016! It’s the New Year, and a fresh start! Here at Bublish, though, we’re not fans of the annual New Year’s resolution tradition. Why? Resolutions are too general.
“I’m going to write more.”
“I’m going to sell more books.”
If you think about it, resolutions like this don’t set you up for a real sense of accomplishment in the coming year. They’re too vague and difficult to measure.
Better to bag the resolutions, and start your year with a few quantifiable goals. Here’s what a quantifiable goal looks like:
“I will write 2,000 words a day, five days a week, for the first six months of 2016.”
“I will sell 10,000 copies of my latest book by June 30.“
See the difference? There is specificity, and a timeline.
As you strive to achieve quantifiable goals, you can track progress and make adjustments. The numbers will motivate you and hold you accountable. The numbers will also tell you if your goal is achievable and force you to generate a specific plan for success.
How? You can drill down into numbers and examine the effort necessary to achieve a quantifiable goal. This leads you to ask the right questions.
To demonstrate, let’s look at what it would take to sell 10,000 copies of a book by June 30. That’s 6 months or 26 weeks or 182 days from January 1.
That’s about 1,667 books a month or 385 books a week or 55 books a day. In today’s crowded book marketplace, it’s an ambitious goal and would compel you to ask yourself some serious questions:
- Do you have an audience of 10,000 readers willing to buy your book in the next six months?
- If so, do you have their emails so you can alert them to the release of your book?
- If not, how can you acquire 10,000 target readers and their emails quickly?
- Have you ever sold 10,000 copies of any of your other books in six months?
- If so, how can you improve the process to sell even more copies this time? (Is you goal too low?)
- If not, how many have you sold in a six-month period, and how are you going to improve the process to increase sales for this book?
- Do you have the tools, resources and expertise to support your efforts to attract this many target readers each day?
- If not, what is your budget to acquire these tools, resources and expertise?
- How much are you willing to pay to acquire a new reader who will purchase your book?
- What is your marketing and sales strategy to sell 55 books a day?
- What sales channels will you use?
- In what formats will you make the book available?
- And so on…
As you can see, it’s the specificity of a quantifiable goal that compels you to ask the right questions…the tough questions. The numbers and timeline force you to analyze your process and figure out your tactics to meet your targets day by day, week by week, month by month.
In the end, the exercise of quantifying your goals might lead to refinement or amendment of your original goals. That’s okay. You want your goals to be ambitious, but attainable. This exercise will also force you to develop a very specific strategy, which will greatly increase your chances for success.
So this year, forget the resolutions. Instead, resolve to set a few quantifiable goals and watch 2016 become your most successful year yet!
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