As happens every year at this time, the blogosphere is filled with looks back at the previous year–what we learned–and a look ahead at the coming year–either predictions of what’s to come in publishing or goals we would like to accomplish.

I know nothing of what will happen, I just roll with the tide. I can however make goals for myself and my business, so here goes:

Pre-orders: one of my clients has determined that she wants to have the preorder for her next book available at the end of the book she’s publishing now. I think that’s a fantastic idea. I would love to emulate her. The catch, of course, is that I don’t have that next book even started by the time I’m ready to publish the first book. Sometimes I don’t even have it thought out beyond a vague idea. My other problem with this great idea is that I’m writing two different series at the same time, switching off books so I write a Vallen book, then a traditional Regency, then another Vallen book, and so on. I’ve also got a few different Vallen series going at once–I’ve got my Regency series, which still has at least one more book planned, and now I’ve got my contemporary series, with at least two more books planned. So it will be some time between books of a series. It’s a problem. I may just need to stick with what I did last year which was just to put my book on pre-order 3-4 weeks before it goes live while I get my book edited and beta read.

Another broad goal for myself this year is marketing. Last year I experimented with hiring others to do my marketing for me-after years of proving that my own marketing efforts are pretty much worthless. I’m definitely going to continue with this trend since it seems as if it might actually be working.  The trick with hiring others to do your marketing for you is that you need to have a firm date by which your book will be ready for release, and you have to stick to it. I’ll work harder on this since I have been used to taking full advantage of being a self-published author and just releasing a book whenever it was done, as soon as it was done and not being too concerned with sticking to a deadline. But a definite trend, I think, is to build your publishing team. Many self-published authors have, for years, relied on one, maybe two outside people to work on various aspects of publishing a book—a cover design, editing, or whatever. But now there are so many more options: you can get someone to design your cover, edit you work, write your blurb, market your book, and, of course, format it. Really, all an author needs to do on their own is write the book. What do you think, is this a good trend?

There also seems to be a new trend becoming popular again–book trailers. People are talking about them again and posting them to Facebook. This time I might not just dismiss this as I did a few years ago when they were very popular, but maybe look into getting one made (since I really don’t think I’ve  got the creative chops to make one myself).

Audio books are still hot. Maybe this year I’ll do something about this and work harder to actually get some made.

On a more personal note, looking after one’s health, both mental and physical are goals we should all strive for in the coming year. Eat better, exercise more, take more time for those long, healthy, mind clearing walks. Those are some of my personal goals for this coming year. They’re important for my health and they’ll make my work better and easier.

So what have you learned this past year that you’d like to work on in the coming year? Is there anything new that you’d like to try?