More on Increasing Your Productivity

By Terry Whalin (@terrywhalin)

I’m always experimenting and eager to learn any new habit which will increase my productivity. Last month I gave some ideas about your email and in this article, I want to suggest some ideas for other areas which will help you.

First, let’s look at your telephone. When concentrating on a writing task, you don’t have to reach for the phone when it rings. Let it go to voicemail. Alex Mandossian, the Internet marketing entrepreneur, sets specific hours from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as his open call times for a new prospect or existing clients to phone him. There is no rule you have to be available 24 hours a day. Take control of your time on the telephone.

Another time waster is following the news continually throughout the day. Make a decision to limit this information and instead spend the time on your writing. It may take some concerted effort on your part to wean yourself from constantly monitoring an event but focus on the benefits and additional writing time you will gain from it.

How about the one-eyed monster or television as another time waster? As with the news situation, you may have to wean yourself from it but focus on the valuable writing time you will gain from such an effort.

Then there are family interruptions. Again, take control of this situation in your life. Hang a sign on the door or create a signal that you are occupied and unavailable unless something unusual occurs such as the building is burning. Make sure, however, you’re available to family members at other times but not during the time you have set aside for your writing life.

Also, what about volunteer obligations and free writing opportunities? Do these obligations fit into your long- or short-term writing plans, or are they completely separate from your goals in this area? If the latter, then look for ways to disengage from these activities so you can focus on your writing goals. 

In addition, it is a challenge for anyone to spend long periods of time at their computer writing. Perhaps it’s easier for you to write in short bursts of energy and consistently spend 50 minutes of concentrated effort on your writing. After the completion of this stint, you stand up, stretch, and take a break, and then return to your chair to work another 50 minute session. It’s been said that what your butt can’t endure, your mind can’t absorb. You will increase your productivity if you focus on shorter periods of time and write intensely during those shorter time periods. To focus on 50 minutes, use a countdown timer as a tool to put psychic pressure on you to get done faster and better. You can get a free countdown timer at: https://timeleft.info/and use it to increase your productivity.

Finally, valuable practice is to write down your plans for the next day before you leave your writing. Then throughout the night and before you return to your writing, you will have a definite plan about what you will write next. Some writers intentionally leave an incomplete sentence in their manuscript. This sentence allows them to return to the computer, open the file, and instantly begin typing on their document. Other writers will retype the last paragraph of their manuscript just to get their fingers moving. 

A critical part of our lives as writers is to continually be learning, experimenting then taking action and building habits which will increase our productivity. Which ideas are you going to try and incorporate into your writing? 

Tweetable:

New habits and experimentation can increase the productivity of your writing life. This prolific author and editor gives some more ideas in this article. (ClickToTweet)

W. Terry Whalin, a writer and acquisitions editor lives in California. Get Terry’s newsletter and a 87-page FREE ebook packed with writing insights. Just follow this link to subscribe. A former magazine editor and former literary agent, Terry is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written more than 60 nonfiction books including  Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Billy Graham. Get Terry’s recent book, 10 Publishing Myths for only $10, free shipping and bonuses worth over $200. To help writers catch the attention of editors and agents, Terry wrote his bestselling Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets To Speed Your Success. His website is located at: www.terrywhalin.com. Connect with Terry on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

You Need a Mixture of Marketing Efforts

By W. Terry Whalin

How is your writing selling? It's an old sales adage: If your books (or any writing) isn't selling, you need to be touching more people (asking for the sale) or creating new writing.  Your audience doesn't increase or your books don't sell without continued effort from you as the author. 

Whether you work with a traditional publisher who sells your book into the bookstores or you self-publish and are on your own, you still need to be reaching more people with your work. As an acquisitions editor, I tell every author that it is 80% up to them to sell more books. Yes we can sell the books into the bookstore but unless the author is building buzz and telling others about the book, those books in the bookstore will be returned to the publisher.

I wish I could tell you there is one path or one formula to sell books and become a bestseller. If such a formula existed, then every book would be a bestseller—and that is just not the case. Some books that are poorly written hit the bestseller list while other well-crafted titles sell a modest number of copies. The average self-published book sells about 200 copies during the lifetime of the book. The average traditional book sells around 1,000 copies. Now each of us want to beat these averages so how do we do it? It's through a mixture of different marketing efforts.

One of the most knowledgeable people that I know in this area is Rick Frishman. For over ten years, Rick has been our publisher at Morgan James Publishing. For almost 30 years, Rick led one of the largest public relations firms in the U.S. called Planned Television Arts (now called Media Connect). He has a huge list of bestselling authors that he has worked with like Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Stephen King and Mitch Albom. Rick is the creator of Author 101 University which will be next month in Los Angeles. I've interviewed Rick a number of times and did so again earlier this month. You can catch the 45-minute interview for FREE at: http://writersconf101.com/index.php

In this in-depth interview, Rick compares book promotion to the four legs of a stool: Internet, print, radio, television, then he gives insights about each of these legs and how authors should be working in each of these four areas. See the balance that goes into this type of approach? It is a mixture of various marketing efforts for your books.

One of the most successful series of books in the English language is called Chicken Soup for the Soul. Jack Canfield tells us about following The Rule of Five to market their books. This short video (less than two minutes) gives you the details about how to achieve your goals.

Are you mixing your marketing efforts to sell your books? Tell us the details in the comments below.

Tweetable:

Are you mixing your marketing efforts? Get ideas here. (ClickToTweet)

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W. Terry Whalin is an acquisitions editor at Morgan James Publishing. He has written for more than 50 magazines and published over 60 books with traditional publishers including Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams and Book Proposals That $ell. He loves to help writers and has a large twitter following. Evan Carmichael ranks the top 100 marketers to follow on Twitter and Terry has been consistently on this list (#56 in September). He lives in Colorado.