Marketing for Childrens Authors with Laurie Wright

Achieve Your Author Dreams In An Hour A Day!

October 07, 2020 Laurie Wright: Children's Author & Marketing Coach Season 3 Episode 9
Marketing for Childrens Authors with Laurie Wright
Achieve Your Author Dreams In An Hour A Day!
Show Notes Transcript

Join Laurie as she talks about time, how little we all have and how to make it as an author EVEN IF we only have an hour a day!

Grab the Author Tasks and Time Management List mentioned in the episode - free to make an account but you do need to sign up!

>>> Click here to access it

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Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s Laws? 

I first heard of his second law actually, because apparently there are ten, in the book 

‘Profit First’ written by Mike Mckalowicz, and it’s "Expenditures or "money paid" out rises to meet income." 

Mike - who is a fabulous writer, very engaging - explains it like your dinner plate. If you fill it up, you’ll eat it all.  So a common diet strategy is to just use a smaller plate. Mike says if all your money is in one account, you’re gonna spend it. 

 I highly HIGHLY recommend the book, I think all new authors should read it because it helped me manage my royalties so much better than I would have otherwise. I cringe when I hear people talk about putting all their earnings back into their businesses - BUT that’s another episode that maybe no one really wants… Laurie’s money issue episodes. 

Parkinson’s first law is about time - “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

The english translation for that is you’ll get done whatever you need to in any amount of time you allow for it. 

So whether you have a half hour or if you have 2 hours, either way you’ll get the job done. 

An interesting concept right? Do we believe it…? 

At the end of the last  solo show i decided to call this one “Achieve your author dreams in an hour a day so that you still have time for your family, and maybe even your spouse if they’re lucky” because it was so much sexier than  just ‘time management for children’s authors’? So without further ado, let’s get started with the sexy time management!

 Laurie’s First Law - You DO have time for marketing, and it’s really the most important thing for you to spend your time on when you sit down to work on your book biz. 

If you listened  to the last solo episode, you heard me talk about hitting a wall when covid hit the world. I had been working on my book biz full time while the kids were in school, I had all the time I needed to stare at the wall if I needed to - which you really DO when you’re a writer!

But when the kids - and there’s 3 of them - were suddenly at home all the time - for the love of Netflix- not to mention the worry and stress I was feeling, I suddenly had a lot less time for my work. 

I had almost NO time to sit and stare at the wall, but at the same time, I really struggled with what to focus on when I did get to work. 

The need for priorities and a system became important AGAIN just like they used to be when I first started out, when I had three much littler children and the youngest was only one! 

I guess something happened when I started working on my book biz full time that I didn’t even realize. I went from having three hours a day at most to 6-8 hours a day, but because I had that extra time, I didn’t have to stick to my systems anymore. In hindsight that was really dumb.

I probably would have been working half as many hours if I'd stuck with my system. OR I’d be producing more books and courses maybe!

Live and learn though, right? I’ve scaled back from doing ALL THE THINGS that had been filling my time and I’m focusing on what works and what actually pays off when it comes to marketing. 

The first step in that process of course is understanding what needs to be done, daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly. I’ve been at this for a while and I want to share with you these tasks that need to be done. 

On marketingforchildrensauthors.com, which is the platform where I house all my courses and resources, I’ve just added a new resource to the resource bank that outlines all the author tasks as I see them. (if you think I missed anything shoot me an email) 

You do have to make an account when you first go there but then you get instant access to the free stuff and the new resource is called Author Task List & Time Management

Today I’ll share just a few tricks I use, in case maybe you haven’t heard of these yet or tried them.

Please hear me really loudly when I tell you I’m nowhere near perfect and I’m sure my systems will need tweaking for months and years to come! But I truly believe the most important part of anything is just starting it, and that perfect is the enemy of DONE.  

Standard things 

The first thing I do is write everything that I need to do down - to be completely honest some stuff ends up in a notebook, some ends up in my google calendar, some ends up on sticky notes - you get the idea. I try to bring all those together at the end of the day, so that I don’t miss anything. Buuttttt…. I still miss the occasional thing OR triple book myself…. I’m trying though!

I think if your organizational tools bring you joy, you’ll use them more, so if you love highlighters and Erin Condron planners that’s what you should use! But if you love time blocking on your google calendar then that’s your path.

I've discovered Trello - as you can tell from most of the resources in the resource bank and my courses - it’s fast to set up, it’s hyper visual which works well for me, and it’s kinda fun to play with! 

Google calendar is also easy and it’s easy to share your calendars with other people - spouses, assistants, editors, illustrators etc. I’m thinking about asking my bestie if I can get in on hers so i know what shifts she’s on and can schedule myself in her week! 

I always keep a notebook with me in my purse, and when I’m waiting at soccer pickup or outside at the orthodontist - cause you're not allowed in anymore - I do braindumps. Sometimes before bed too. When my brain just feels too FULL, I write everything down and instantly feel lighter. Then I go back and look at it all the next time I’m working, Ii go through the brain dump and slot it all in, action what needs to be done and dump whatever doesn’t. 

I enjoy the pomodoro method, which is setting a timer for a set amount of time and FOCUSING on just one task. Works really well. I’ve heard of people working for 45 minutes and then taking 15 minutes off to walk around or get a snack or tickle the dog's belly. The usual break type activities.

Ninja Things 

I make a lot of resources - workbooks, lesson plans etc. While I do enjoy making graphics, I also enjoy working from templates to reduce the time I spend on them.

I use Canva Pro - the free version is lovely and likely more than enough for your purposes, but I liked that the pro plan was only $100, and with it I can upload fonts, and it will remember my colors, fonts etc.  

Canva comes with a lot of templates and they are JUST FINE, because you customize them with your brand influences. 

I‘ve fallen in love with some gorgeous minimalistic templates though, that I came across randomly and I’m an affiliate for because I really love them. >>>Click here to access #affiliate

I also use templates for social media posts, group covers, ads things like that. 

This is a good one - I actively block out distractions because I cannot rely on will power - mostly because I really have none. I use the News feed eradictor chrome extension -  I think the stat for time people spend endlessly scrolling their newsfeed on Facebook is like 75%? Meaning 75%  of the time you end up never leaving the newsfeed, you get stuck looking at videos of cute pets, wishing happy birthday, reading mask debates, that kindof thing. So installing that plugin saves me buckets of time.  

My last ninja hack for you today is that I listen to everything I can sped up, one and a half speed is too fast, usually 1.25 is perfect. And I get super annoyed when I don’t have that option! Funny, right? I know I don’t need to tell YOU this, but audio is so much easier than video - I can listen - sped up - as I do other things, like walk, clean, or make dinner. 

THERE You go - Laurie’s 2nd Law - Audio is the new VIDEO!  Ha. I can't be the first person to ever say that.   

I think that’s long enough for this show, next time I want to share a magical email sorting trick that I learned that allows me to get to INBOX ZERO - which is the ultimate goal of course- every day. I’ll share how I save time on social media as well, and I really want to share with you some other ways to get a handle on your book marketing.

Remember to grab that sexy time management resource - it's linked in the show notes!  The TO Dos are laid out in daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly to dos. Just make sure to copy it for yourself! 

Talk at you next week everyone!