Mid-Year Check: Reassessing Your 2020 Author Platform Goals

by E.J. Wenstrom
published in Community

So, we’re a little more than halfway through the year. And holy moly has it been a year.  A pretty tough one, and one that has upended just about all of our well-intentioned plans. How have you been doing with your author platforming goals through all this?

Personally, social distancing totally took my March book launch hostage. And though I started the year in a very comfortable position to meet my goal of eight in-person events this year, most of those have been canceled now, and the rest postponed. 

2020 is just not the year we all thought we were going to have, and it’s changed everything—including how we need to connect with readers. 

Checking in with yourself halfway through the year to see if you’re on track to reach your platforming goals is always a best practice. But this year, even more than most, all of us are probably overdue for a total reassessment. 

Ready? 

Assessing Your Goals

Dust off that planner you started in January for the life you meant to live at the start of 2020.  Take a deep breath and open it. What plans and ambitions did that sweet summer child of six months ago dream of accomplishing this year? 

It’s surreal to look back at pre-pandemic plans, but the only way you’re going to get back on track for author platforming progress this year is to revisit these goals. Ask yourself…

  • What did I set out to accomplish this year? 
  • What have I already accomplished?
  • Have the unexpected twists of 2020 changed what’s possible for me to accomplish? 

Pivoting for Progress

Once you have revisited your original goals for the year (I didn’t even remember writing some of mine, it’s been that much of a year), and identified the ways in which they’ve been derailed, it’s time to think about how you can pivot. 

Sure, you probably won’t make it to that writing conference you were planning on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find another way to network. How about a Twitter chat? Or perhaps you can find a Facebook group of like-minded authors to join. 

Get creative if you have to, but don’t give up! 

It’s Not Too Late for Progress in 2020

You might not be able to do everything for your author platform you hoped in exactly the way you planned this year. But readers are still out there; the publishing industry is still out there. Sure, the opportunities look way different than any of us could have predicted, but they’re still out there. 

Which means there’s still good reason for you to reset your plan and get out there, too. You can still accomplish tangible goals for your author platform this year! It’ll just take some reassessment and adaptability. 


By day, E. J. Wenstrom is a digital strategy pro with over 10 years at communications firms. By early-early morning, she’s an award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author of the Chronicles of the Third Realm War novels, starting with Mud. She believes in complicated characters, terrifying monsters, and purple hair dye.


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