Journaling & Juggling

By journaling, I’m talking about keeping an account of what happens during your tour. If you’re an independent author, you can simply visit your Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard to check on what’s happening with your book sales.

You can assess when you have peaks and troughs and connect them to specific activities.

Aside from watching the numbers, you can put down your thoughts at each stage of the tour.

• How do people respond to this or that post?
• Which ones were more popular? Have you figured out why?
• Can you make adjustments at this stage that will bring more attention to your tour?
• Are there any offers you might want to take up later (reviews, etc.)?
• Is there anything different you might want to try for your next tour?

The items above are among the things you will want to think about as you go along. I wouldn’t call what I did journaling, but I used a special book to keep me in order as the month progressed and ideas hit me. The information I collected was invaluable in terms of coming up with new features for the next time I do a tour.

There’s also the business of logging the new connections you’ll be making if you’ve hired someone to do your tour. During this busy time, you’ll need to leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs to get back to the places you’ve been. I can’t the amount of time I’ve lost racking my brain to remember information I should have written. That journal you’ll be keeping is a good place to stash all kinds of information.

Juggling has to do with the balancing act you’ll be doing while on tour. You’ll manage better if you put some prior thought (a LOT) into what adjustments you’ll make to your writing, social media, and day-to-day living time in order to accommodate the tour.

Prepare yourself and recognize that you won’t get any significant amount of writing done unless you’re in it full time (and at your desk a lot) or you’re someone with an awful lot of discipline and can compartmentalize and complete your tasks efficiently. 

In a Nutshell

• Keep a record of the significant happenings during your tour.
• Use the information to plan subsequent tours and complete follow-up activities.
• Plan for adjustments to your schedule.
• Prepare for and adapt to decreased writing time while on tour.