YOUR FINANCIAL GOALS
You can set your financial goals for your books by writing down the publisher and down payment you want, and how many copies you want your books to sell per year. Asking authors and publishing professionals about goal setting will give you an idea of what’s possible.
Set annual goals for all of your publishing-related activities. After determining how many copies you want to sell, find out how to use marketing to reach that goal. Make sure your networks agree that your advertising goals will allow you to reach your financial goals.
If your goal is to write bestsellers, make a list of bestsellers. Then print the information about your book (title, author, publisher, and price) and paste it in position number 1. Add the date. This helped inspire Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen when they rescued Chicken Soup for the Soul from oblivion. The more clearly you see your goals, the further along you are on the path to achieving them.
Compare what you write with your literary and financial goals by including what you’ve written about your goals with your proposal or manuscript when you submit it for feedback. Ask your readers if they agree with your assessment and, if not, what numbers and literary objectives justify your work.
Including authors and publishers among your readers will give you more informed responses. Putting your goals through this challenge will allow you to make sure you’re heading in the right direction. Post your financial goals on the wall next to your writing goals as a reminder and source of inspiration.
One of the premises of this book is that your goal is to have your books published by a large or medium-sized publisher in New York. Discovering new writers who write well and whose books sell well is the best part of a publisher’s (and agent’s) job.
Writers who know what they want and how to get it, and who will be professional but tireless in pursuit of their goals, make it easy for publishers to buy a book. Armed with the proper ammunition, it’s a snap for an editor:
Prepare the profit and loss (P&L) statement they need to justify the acquisition
Generate internal enthusiasm for your book
Give the editorial board salute by presenting an irrefutable case to buy it
· Introduce the book to the toughest audience of all: reps at sales conferences, who’ve heard it all before and need to convey the enthusiasm of the house to booksellers.
Get the subsidiary rights department excited about the book’s potential as a book club selection and other
sales of subrights
Demonstrate to advertisers that the book will attract media attention.
The path your books will take from your mind to the minds of your readers begins and ends with a commitment to your goals that must sustain you through the troubles, disappointments, and challenges you will face. So choose your goals wisely, because the purpose of this book is to make sure that if you have the idea, the talent, and the persistence, you will achieve them.
English playwright George Bernard Shaw once observed, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting your heart’s desire. The other is getting it.” Don’t look at goals as a final destination, but as a plateau in an endless journey, as life’s way of telling you that you are ready to graduate, to move on to greater things.
That satisfying moment when you know you’ve accomplished what you set out to do is the perfect time to take stock of what you’ve learned and set bigger goals for your next book. We hope you have to do this with every book you write.