New Quarter Planning

It’s now the beginning of September.  I love the fall.  It’s my time of year to clean things up, start new things, finish old things, re-evaluate, and plan.  The kids start school, I start teaching at the college where I work part-time after having the summer off, and I usually do a whole bunch of “spring cleaning” in the fall.

As far as my publishing company goes, I did my regular monthly recap of August and my monthly goals for September, but I also looked at my publishing business from a quarterly perspective.  First, I made “to-do” lists for the following categories of work:

• CreateSpace books to complete
• Planning
• Books that are ready to publish but need to be formatted
• Books that are partially completed
• Books that I want to write/publish before the end of the year
• Auto-Responder lists that I want to re-vamp or add to

Then, I divided each to-do list into four months which gave me monthly goals in each area.

Finally, I put it all on a sheet that I could tape to the wall in front of my desk.  I love putting my main lists and schedules on the wall in front of my desk so that I am motivated to cross things off of it and see my progress.

The last quarterly planning thing I did was to create a family/work/play/publishing weekly schedule that has all of my obligations on it (such as classes, kid activities, meals, dog walks, etc.).  This allowed me to see where I have some free time.  I filled my free time with scheduled activities that would allow me to meet my weekly/monthly/quarterly publishing goals.

Done!  Here is my fall quarterly to-do list.  Do you have one?  How are you planning for the advancement of your publishing house?  I’d love to hear about it.

Barb