As I get closer to sending my first novel, “Killing the Immortals,” sailing out into the world, I’m starting to think seriously about what I want to accomplish with it, what sorts of goals to set for myself. The Nobel Prize for Literature would be all right, I guess. There may be a step or two to get through before that, though. Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about the committee that decides those sorts of things, but my assumption is that they’ve got a high-ish bar.
So, we all may want to have incremental goals shy of a Nobel Prize that will give us something to shoot for in the meantime, until fame and fortune come to whisk us away. I think goals are important, but I also think they’re challenging to figure out when you’ve never published a novel before. You can look at all the “The average self-published book sells 250 (or whatever) copies” blog posts you want, but how does that relate to what you’re doing? So many factors are going to impact how many people buy your book and how wide a reception it gets, from its genres to its cover to the blurb you write to the following you’ve built up to how much work you put into marketing the book to whether or not your story/writing sucks. What does “average” even really mean when so many books are haphazardly thrown together with visions of hefty royalty checks, mahogany-decked libraries, and new elbow-patched jackets without considering the insane amount of work and luck it takes to become the next millionaire author? [Read more…] about Setting Sales Goals for Your First Novel