The completely impossible - possible List!

I want to start the journey with one of the main goals I have set for myself and I am fully aware just how much work it is going to take to achieve it. This particular goal is actually a two part goal and a milestone goal in one even larger than this one.

My four year goal, to be reached by April 8th 2015 (my 45th birthday) is to have sold 1000 (one thousand) of my self-published books!

I've been self-publishing for about four years now via lulu.com and have two different stores there. One for my "all ages" readers and one for my fetish audience. I can tell you from experience that trying to sell self-published books is extremely difficult if you can't afford to hire marketing help. Considering that I am a niche writer and only known in a very small circle of people, it really doesn't help.

Couple this with one more problem which I am working hard to resolve and get a lot better at. Matter of fact I have already made a huge progress on it. My grammar and spelling. English is my second language and even so I am pretty good at speaking it and do so only now, the grammar and spelling used to be my biggest Achilles heel. Word spell checking software doesn't detect a lot of the mistakes I would make and since I didn't have an editor for my books (couldn't afford one and we all know how it works with asking people for help without being able to pay them) I was stuck muddling through the best I could.

Now that I have made a progress in it, I have started the daunting task to take one book at a time, rewrite it, extend it and publish it as a second edition. As soon as the 2nd edition goes up, the original gets retired. Talk about a lot of work and in a way stressful since I don't want to give substandard work to my readers.

I have three particular books in mind which I am trying to get to the sales goal within the next four years as I said. Two of them are in the rewrite process right now and the third book is a sequel to one of them. I hope to have those done by no later then April of this year.

The good thing about me is that I have a large capacity for continuous writing. Meaning I can sit literally for upwards of 10 hours in a stretch and work without too much negative backlash. That will come in very handy at this point.

Since two of the books are mainstream sarcastic humor with a dose of reality based (which makes it PG 13) I am working on building a writer's website for it. Yes, I even had to learn how to do that myself. Chuckles, you would be surprised how many lovely little skills I picked up over the years.

I'll tell you more about the books when they have been released for sale in their 2nd and 1st edition version.

The extended and main goal once I achieve this break through is to publish a Bestseller by the time I reach 50. I realize that I started pretty late in life to work on all these goals, but for the first few adult years of my life my focus was entirely on the survival and education of my children instead. I had made the decision to have them out of the house before I would take the time it would take to work on achieving my dreams and goals. You can't serve two masters and serve them well.

Now I would be most grateful if anyone would have some solid advice for me without trying to sell me some sort of service I can't afford anyways. That always gets so depressing. :(

I would be happy to hear from you!

~ Regina Sunderland