Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
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Here we are, at the end of the year. Well, almost. As I write this, there are twenty-two days left in December. Compared to the 365 we began with on January 1st, I’d say this is pretty much the end already. 🙂
I sat down last year and wrote out some goals, and have updated them a couple times over the course of this year. I thought it would be cool to check in on those again. Unless this is very short, I’ll do a separate journal entry for next year’s goals.
In the past, I have always made goals in August, when school starts. You’ll read in the next entry how I changed that up a bit this year, but the goals I’m reviewing now have been in place since last September. So, it’s actually been a little over a year that I have been working on them.
The first goal I had was in regards to advertising. I currently have one ad running, that I started about a month ago. Since Amazon doesn’t really like to spend your money, that single ad has been sustainable, even given the lack-and-plenty money cycle I’ve been on this year. I do have to remember to check the spend every day, which I have forgotten to do for a couple days now. Oops. 
I have continued the practice all year of boosting two Facebook posts with each release. I recently also ran an ad for a couple weeks in an effort to gain newsletter subscribers. That worked very well, I’m happy to say. I gained fourteen or fifteen people from that $30.00 spend.
I have gained a few Patreon patrons over the course of the year and am within $25 of my goal there, so I have felt comfortable using that extra for the ads. Which is, of course, one of my stated goals on my Patreon page. 
I have completed a total of six Kobo promos this year. Sixteen were declined, but as I’ve said before, those are not easy to get into.
Another of my goals was building my website, which I have. I have book pages looking exactly as I wish them to. That’s not saying they can’t use improvement, but they look great! I’ve added a store where readers can buy signed copies of certain of my print books, as well. And, since I have Woocommerce installed to handle those sales, I’m considering adding my ebooks to that plugin/store. I won’t get rid of Gumroad, but for some readers who might want to buy direct but are not terribly tech-savvy, I can have Bookfunnel deliver the books, which makes it easier both for customers and for me.
My Gumroad store. I love it, and I will not get rid of it, and I have met my goal of increasing traffic to it. I have also increased sales from there. I have run promotions at that store, and that has gained me sales, but I still make most of them when I have a new release.
On to the next goal: number of books written. I had wanted to publish every six weeks in 2018, for a total of eight to ten books. That did not happen. I published Darcy’s Bodie Mine in January, and Darcy’s Surprise Betrothal in March. To Save Elizabeth came out in July and Darcy Overhears in October. I’m hoping to get the Christmas novella done and published this month, though it will require some dedicated work. So, I have published half the books I wanted to. 
July and October were bad writing months, July because of my vacation and a festival where I set up to sell books, and October because I became very ill. I do have a plan in place to help me free up more summer hours for writing. Only part of it involves no selling at events. LOL
Some of my goals were met, I think. Certainly, I am running ads again and applying for Kobo promotions, and promoting my Gumroad store. Other goals were not met, like publishing more regularly. Next week, I’ll lay out for you what next year’s goals are.
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
