About the Book
Title: Writing a Business Plan for Writers
Author: Tiffany Shand
Genre: Nonfiction
When you wrote your first book you thought you’d sit back, watch the royalties roll in and start working on your next book, right? Being an author today is so much more than just writing. Writing is a business and has to be treated like one.
In this short ebook I’ll take your through the reasons why you need a business plan, how to write one and the different elements that make up one to help you become a successful author.
Author Bio
Tiffany Shand was born in Essex, UK and started writing short stories when she was a child. She has always done writing in one form or another and started writing novels in her early teens. Tiffany loves to read books and discovered her love for fantasy and paranormal romance during this time. She writes both non-fiction and fiction, and love helping writers to build their author platforms. After doing a creative writing course in her early 20s, she is now a freelance writer and professional editor. Tiffany lives in Essex with her two spoiled cats and one very nutty hamster.
Find Tiffany on:
Amazon Link for How To Write A Business Plan
Tiffany’s blog
Book Excerpts
Excerpt 1
Writers who make a living from their writing are entrepreneurs in their own way, and the one thing they all have in common is that they have direction and know what they’re doing. One of the best ways of doing that is by having a business plan and treating the job of being an author as an actual business. A lot of authors would love to make a living from their writing, but many view writing as an art form rather than an actual business. Many authors struggle and fail to make very much money from their books. This isn’t because they’re bad writers, either they don’t know how to make the money or they don’t have the direction to make a business out of it.
Writers who work for a living are freelancers, teachers or online entrepreneurs who don’t just publish and market books. They treat the entire process as a business and re-purpose the content of their books into multiple different formats such as paperbacks, e-books, audiobooks and courses.
This book is for both writers who would like to make a living from their work and for entrepreneurial writers who plan their businesses around their books. Any entrepreneur has a plan and direction for their business and will see writing as a business.
Whether you dream of six-figure advances, or write because you simply must write, you may not think of writing as a business but just something you love doing.
What is a business plan?
A business plan is an outline of your goals or a statement of the things you want and how you will to get them. It includes an assessment of the goals and how you’ll obtain them.
A good business plan should outline how you plan to learn about the publishing process and how you plan to build up your audience of readers and work with others in the writing community.
The plan I talk about in this book may look very different than one used by a start-up company as it is specifically written for writers and creative entrepreneurs.
Excerpt 2
Why You Need to Treat Writing Like a Business
Writers write books, but in this new world of digital publishing, they have to be a lot more than that. Writers have to be marketers and entrepreneurs. They have to build themselves an author platform, grow their readership, engage on social media, network and so much more.
Writing a book is really only the tip of the iceberg. To be a serious writer you have to treat publishing like a business.
If you become traditionally published, you may think that your publisher will do all the work for you, but that’s very rarely the case. Publishers expect authors to market their own books and build their own platforms. If you don’t have a strong author platform in place, a publisher is unlikely to take much interest in you. It’s harder to get a traditional book publishing deal now, but not impossible. EBooks have provided authors opportunities that have never been open to them before.
If you decide to self-publish your books you are essentially your own publisher. Publishing is a business and has to be treated as such. You have to sort out things such as editing, formatting, cover design and marketing.
Although you can do some of these things yourself, some of it does have to be outsourced and like any business that takes time and money. Being a writer isn’t an easy business.
From the moment you decide to publish your book, you became your own business. That’s right a business. Most writers just think they’re writing when they write their book – I used to think the same thing. They don’t think of it as the product it is.
I’m a writer first and foremost, but I also have to be a lot of other things.
Yes, it takes a lot of work to publish books well and get some profit out of it. But it’s also a very exciting and rewarding job.
It’s best to start writing your business plan as soon as you decide that you want to publish books.
I didn’t start writing my own business plan until after I’d published two novels.
What do you want to write?
So you want to be a writer? That’s great news, but where do you start?
One of the most important steps on your journey to write a business plan is deciding what you actually want to write. This may seem obvious, maybe you want to write romance, thrillers and more.
Another important thing to decide is what you want to get out of your writing.
- Do you want to earn a living from your writing? If so, how much do you want to earn each month or year? This will vary from person to person.
- Do you want to write novels or short stories?
- Do you want to write and run a profitable blog?
- Do you want to write a blog and turn your posts into a book?
- Do you want to be a freelance writer writing for magazines or online publications?
- Do you want to write fiction? If so, what kind of fiction? Fantasy, romance, crime, sci-fi?
- Do you want to write non-fiction? Such as business or self-help books?
- Do you want to become a New York Times bestselling author?
- Do you want to edit books too?
Once you’ve figured out those questions, here are some very important questions to ask yourself:
- Who is your target audience? Who will read your books? Who is your ideal reader?
- Do you want to traditionally publish your book or self-publish it?
- Do you have enough knowledge to make your writing into a career? If you don’t, are you willing to learn?
Once you’ve figured out these questions it will help you figure out on how you how you will work as a writer. We’ll be covering some of those questions in more depth later in the book.
The most popular things I have heard in answer to those questions from other authors are making money or becoming famous. Making money is doable, but becoming famous is a lot harder.
Having your own business plan will help you achieve your goals and more. Even if you only plan to write part-time to make passive income, you still need a plan.
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