End of the month planning

Today is June 30.  At the end of every month, I usually do quite a bit of planning for the upcoming months.  I review my sales stats, I review what I accomplished over the past month, and I review my goals for the rest of the year.

My goal with this blog is to be totally transparent with my publishing business so that others can learn from the mistakes I make.  So, here is my KDP dashboard for the month of June:

As you can see, my sales and borrows have been pretty steady with the exception of a couple of peaks during promotion and new release days.  The drop off at the end is just because it is only 8:30am here, so not a lot of sales or borrows have occurred yet today 🙂

I recently started using more free promo sites for my promo days, and I think that accounts for the gradual increase in borrows during the last week of June.

For my end of the month recap and future goals, I usually prepare three documents:

• update my existing and future catalogue of books, which is divided into niches
• update my 2015 publishing calendar, which indicates the books that I intend to publish each month, and
• create a new monthly writing and publishing schedule, outlining what I hope to accomplish each week.

Here are my planning documents for July:

These documents also outline how many subscribers I have on each of my lists and which days I will email the subscribers of a certain list.  I post all three of these documents on the wall in front of my desk so that I can see them everyday.  They are my “business-at-a-glance”.  I love looking at them and seeing the progress I am making, plus they motivate me to continue working on days that I just don’t feel like it.

Do you have any planning “rituals” that you do each month?

Barb