Speaker 1: Hey everybody my name is Brendan Noble and I'm a good old author. Sorry again for missing last week. These videos take time to make and last week I did not have much of that. So but I'm back this week and I'm talking about something that I'm working on right now with my own writing and that is planning and your publishing schedule, your writing schedule, and everything around it. I'm not a very good planner so this is something that I found to actually be very important to me in the upcoming time to avoid some of the anxieties around writing and publishing. So I'm gonna give you some tips about writing your own publishing schedule and how I've decided to do this for myself. I'm not sure how perfect this kind of system has been. I have this is still new to me but I'd like to share some of the ideas if you see what I'm going through, see what some of you guys are going through, and see how those things relate. So first of all why is this kind of scheduling thing important? For someone like me I'm very spontaneous. I really don't like to plan things you can ask my wife. I very much feel constrained when it comes to scheduling things. I like to have my schedule open but when it comes to writing I found that what the longer I've gotten into writing as a hobby but as well as trying to make some money off of it I found that it really is beneficial to know where I'm going, when I'm gonna have releases, especially as my writing continues to pick up and I have more projects going on it can be a lot to juggle. So there you have a lot of things often especially you have writing, you have your editing, you have beta readers, editors, alpha readers, ARC copies for people to review, you can have audiobooks being worked on, you can have different release dates, and so there's a lot that can potentially be dates all over the place that can be hard to manage if you don't have a schedule. So I found that it is incredibly helpful for me even though I'm just getting started using this schedule just to look forward and have clarity on what I need to do and what deadlines I've set for myself. If you're someone that is publishing like a book a year or a book every two years this might not be super important but if you have a lot of overlapping projects or even a couple overlapping projects this can get really difficult. It can be a lot to manage in your head, you might lose track of things and you can miss the mark on what you're looking for. I'm trying to take my publishing as seriously as possible and that means having a schedule to make sure that my launches go well, I'm launching with the reviews I need, and that my book is as edited as possible. The worst thing possible would be to not have a fully edited book and having my pre-order set too early or things like that. You really want to act professional and make sure that everything's lined up and execute on the plan. Step one for creating this plan is to open up an Excel doc or Google Sheet or whatever system you want to use. This is how I've done it and I found it to be kind of easy and a lot more straightforward than some other programs might be. All you got to do is put a column with the date of the month and year on the left side and then you can have multiple columns. So in mine I have what I'm currently writing, my self-editing phase, my alpha reader phase, my beta reader phase, my ARC review phase, and then other things are being worked on for audiobooks, when I'm planning to do cover reveals, and then any releases that will happen in that month. There's a lot in there and I don't necessarily want to go over every single one of those steps because a lot of those are important for publishing. Some people might not do some of those steps, they might add other steps, but be able to have those columns set up will be able to see what you're working on in that month. So in each of these columns what you're going to do is, first of all, I use an abbreviation instead of just the whole name because it can get to a really wide document, but you're gonna put what book you're working on in each column. For example, right now I'm writing the first book in a Slavic mythology series, so that goes into the writing column. But I'm also working on, with my alpha readers right now, on book four of the Prism Files series. So right now that goes under the alpha reader column. There's nothing currently going on the beta readers or ARC reviewers, but the audiobook is under work way for Pride Fall, so that goes under the audiobook column. So sometimes you'll have lighter months where there won't be something in a lot of those categories, but other months you'll have a lot, and in my future schedule I've seen that I have a lot. Sometimes you'll be writing something, be managing the ARC reviews, be managing the beta reviews, and sometimes you'll realize that there might be too much in that month. You got to be able to know your own writing schedule, your own editing schedule, know how quickly you can do these things. And when things start piling up, you have to give yourself more time to make sure it's done correctly. The worst thing to do would be rush yourself into your book and write a poor book. Having a quick release can be very positive, but also having the time and putting it in in that time to make sure the release is good is likely more important. You really want to have a good book no matter how quick it comes out. So once you have the books written into different categories and you start to visualize it, you can realize it real quickly there's a lot all over the place. So what I do is I pick a color that I paint onto the background of each of these abbreviations. So for Pride Fall I have the background color of blue, I have for the book four I've got a lighter blue that I'll probably be using on the cover. Spoiler. For the next series I use different colors. That way each book has its own color and you can more visually track how things go. And this can become apparent when you're accidentally overlapping things. For example you don't want to be giving out ARC copies of your book while the beta read process is going on because the book isn't fully edited yet. So making sure you can see those overlaps, seeing where you're not giving yourself enough time, maybe you're aware you schedule too much time. And this can also really help what I found in visualizing what's happening publicly each month. Because often if nothing publicly is happening for a long time and people can sometimes lose a little bit of interest. So if you can manage to have your paperback released one month along with your ebook, maybe a hardcover released another month, an audiobook released another month, a cover reveal another month. Having these overlaps and little announcements each month can keep people interested even if it's a little tidbit. So find ways to overlap these things and keep people interested can be big. And kind of work that into your own schedule. Maybe you have what's promotions you're gonna run into your schedule. That's something I'm planning to do but I haven't quite worked into my own schedule yet. But having promotions and knowing when you're going to do things, when you're gonna put your book at a certain price, when you're gonna do a book bob or things like that can be really beneficial. And so once you've had that colored, yeah yeah again reflect on your own writing. For example I usually allocate about three to four months for my own writing. And because that's the space I've found that I can write best on. It's best to go a little conservative here instead of being very aggressive. And why is because it's much easier to move things forward quickly or even just hit the mark when it's conservative. For example I can often actually write a book in two to three months but I usually allocate four months. That way I have more time to edit and make sure that the release is done correctly. And getting the book done quicker doesn't hurt anything. All it does is make sure I hit the end date. But if you put yourself at two months or three months and you can't hit that writing style. And for example you've started your pre-order or something too early. Now you can run into issues and you can over promise and under deliver. And that's not a great thing to do because people will start see you as unreliable. So the key is make sure you're hitting a schedule that works both for yourself and your releases. Don't over pressure yourself and put a burden on yourself. It's better to leave a little bit of a gap and deliver a good book that keeps you healthy as a person mentally and physically as well. You can't write well if you're overstressing yourself and putting things out too quickly. If you're one of those people that can write really quickly go ahead and do that but just understand your own pace. So a lot of this was very long-winded and ranty but that's just how I work so deal with it. But again what I'm emphasizing is even if you're not a planner being able to look at the schedule and see what's ahead. You can always mold it always change it but being able to know what's coming can be incredibly helpful. So you can keep yourself accountable but also know what needs to get done and to be able to achieve your goals. If you want to be ambitious you got to be ambitious with your scheduling and make sure that even if you don't like the scheduling you do the tough work to get it done. So that's all I have for you on planning but on a personal note I'm planning to potentially do a every other week schedule currently on Friday or Saturday releases. Friday for more of these writing style releases on these videos and Saturday I'm going to do kind of some promo stuff for my next series. I'm calling Slavic Saturdays. I'll be doing posts either every week or every other week on my Facebook and Twitter pages and then on YouTube I'll be combining either those one or two posts into a post about the Slavic mythology. It'll be about different creatures different gods and goddesses. There's a lot of cool stuff a lot of dark stuff and I love to talk about it with you guys so stay tuned for those. Those will be coming out on probably Saturdays in which there isn't a Friday video. That way I can have enough time to do both. I want to be able to balance both of these things without overburdening myself because it does take time to do these videos.