Goal Setting for Authors: 5 Metrics to Track for Your Book

I get it. Selling a lot of books is a whole lot of fun, but focusing only on book sales to determine if your book is a success could be a mistake. Sales numbers are pretty important. They give you data that helps you understand what is working and what isn't as far as promotions and other tactics you're using to sell books. But there are other things to monitor to get where you want to go as an author, especially if you're using your book as a tool to help grow your brand and your business. So if you're a nonfiction author, or you're going to be, and you want to focus on creating massive success with your book, not just book sales, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers. I have the absolute delight of speaking to authors every single day, hearing their stories, and with the help of my incredible team, bringing their books to life. Here are a few of the great books we've been a part of recently. Blue Star A Mother's Journey of Triumph and Raising a Defiant Child into an Exceptional Leader by Ginny Luthor. Right up here, Developing, Coaching the Fundamentals and Techniques that Make Leaders Extraordinary by Scott Clancy. And this one over here, Mellow youw How to Surf the Market and Build Wealth Without Stressing Yourself out by Mick Hyman. Give these authors a round of applause. Now, book sales is certainly one thing to measure, but for many authors, the end goal is to get some speaking engagements, grow your brand, build your business. So instead of measuring books sold to determine whether you're successful, if those are your goals, track what matters the most to your main overall goal by looking at, for example, media appearances. Track coverage, audience size, connected opportunities, and track it for a year or two. And you might be stunned at how much those media appearances have done for your business and brand. I've done book promotion efforts that put me on podcasts where the audience probably didn't buy a book, but the podcaster became a client of Book Launchers. One of Rachel Brown's goals was to be on Forks Over Knives, and her book got her that feature. Tracking your media appearances with contact information is smart too, because you can go back and follow up for additional features in the future. Another thing to track is your platform growth. Measure the number of people entering your ecosystem, which is newsletter subscribers, social media followers, people in your online or in person groups that you manage. Use each opportunity to increase exposure to your platform. Look at what is working and what isn't, and do more of what is working. One of the things you really should be doing is inviting people to download a reader magnet every time you have the chance. Using a book to build a platform is really smart because it allows you to offer much higher value to your audience in the future. New Connections Make a list of new connections with influencers and other industry names who will help you grow your audience and credibility even more. This is something I wish I would have tracked with my past books because then I could say with certainty what I am quite suspicious of. Is that the right thing? I can say with certainty what I suspect the books each led to new high value relationships with people who help connect me with new clients, new team members, new partners, affiliates and if increasing your brand awareness is important, this would be a great metric to start tracking after your book launches. I guarantee you'll be impressed with the results after a year or two and beyond. Another metric is reviews or or other mentions. This is a powerful way to measure your impact, so put it in a spreadsheet so you can see it all in one place and you might also uncover something that said in those reviews or posts that could be the subject of a TED Talk or something else. If everyone's mentioning the same thing, it tells you there's more there. So lean into that. Start tracking and measuring reviews and do things that will help grow your reviews from free and paid sources as well as from readers. Look at what's getting reviews and do more of that. We'll cover reviews soon, but this video covers what garnered reviews for self publish and succeed alright. Also track interesting opportunities or doors that open as a result of your book. I'll never forget Martha Tettenborn talking about how she was featured in a documentary and received a lot of other cool opportunities a year or two after her book Hacking Chemo came out. AJ Coleman got a PBS show interview right after his book Keep those Feet Moving came out. Sean Hayes wrote the Great Choice to Become a Speaker and in a recent Deep dive he shared that in a few months the book was paying back a hundred times. But with speaking engagements, tracking your results could give you really eye opening information a year or two or five later. It's also worth noting that all of these things are likely to lead to things that are far more lucrative than selling thousands of books. That's not to discount the value of selling books, but only to highlight the fact that there are plenty of higher value benefits to becoming an author. In fact, giving books away to the right people might be worth more to your big picture goals than the same amount of books sold. If you're focused on books sold and not all these milestones hit with other measurements, you might not give them enough attention. So make sure you figured out what is most important for your goals and started tracking and recording them. You also might not spot the things that are working and be able to do more of them. If you're only watching book sales, a lot of people look for quick wins, but the reality is that they're successful because of the time they've spent in pursuit of their goals, not because they did just one thing right. Check out this video I just released on on using a book to Become a Thought Leader. It's gonna help you know what to do and put you in the right frame of mind to do that. Oh, by the way, this video was an excerpt from my latest book, Self Promote and succeed, coming out October 2023. Stay tuned for that launch. Fun. It's gonna be great. And regardless of whether you're trying to hit a list, reach your audience, or grow a business with your book, the next piece you need to have dialed in is your metadata. So hit up this video right here to learn more about metadata. And of course, go to this one to learn more about influencers and becoming a thought leader.