4 Career Development Aspects Worth an Author’s Time
Over the course of an author’s career, it’s crucial to keep developing your own knowledge and skills in order to be successful
In order to have a successful career as an author, the key is to keep growing your knowledge and skills in your writing and the industry in general.
Why? Because like most things, the publishing and book industry is constantly changing. This means that we need to keep ourselves relevant and evolving with it.
Here are four development aspects that are worth an author’s time:
Create a schedule for yourself
Authors wear many hats to ensure their own success.
By this I mean authors wear the hats of:
An editor
A cover designer
A marketer
An event coordinator
A social media planner
Realistically, in order to achieve all of these jobs, order of some kind is essential.
This is where creating a schedule for yourself comes into play. A schedule where one day you work on marketing content, a day for writing, and a day for engagement on social media.
By creating a schedule and assigning times to tasks, you ensure that they are all completed.
Research your genre and the market regularly
Not only does the publishing world change over time, but so do the interests of readers.
By regularly conducting research on your chosen genre and the market, you are keeping yourself up to date on what speaks to readers.
When doing this research you learn about:
Topics of interest to readers
Covers that spark purchases
A font that catches readers’ eyes
See what’s going well for authors in your genre
Taking notes and applying what you’ve learned to what you’re doing will take you far.
Keep learning about marketing and publishing to stay on top
Again, the industry is always changing.
This also means that publishing tools and platforms are also being updated or adding features that weren’t available before. And you can continue to learn tricks of the trade that could aid your career. Other authors are also sharing their experiences to help others in places such as YouTube, Facebook, Medium, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and X.
Explore what’s happening and what others are doing and see how it fits with your own strategies.
Have the right tools to write and publish
Take the time to research what tools are available to write and publish.
Doing some research can go a long way in terms of discovering tools that do the job of many or finding tools that cut your costs over time.
For example, when I began self-publishing, I was paying for many services and tools I didn’t need mainly because I wasn’t aware of some that existed. But, after some research and speaking with other seasoned authors, I found alternative tools that cost less and were more effective.
Some great tools I use are:
Reedsy is free (for writing and formatting)
Canva costs $9 a month (cover design and marketing)
Word one-time cost $159.99(writing)
To ensure that you aren’t wasting money or effort, you need to take the time to develop yourself, your skills, and content is a must.