A Writer’s Business Plan – Part I
Work In Progress
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You might wonder why I’m bothering with my blog on Christmas day. Well, my family did Christmas last weekend so this weekend feels less like Christmas and more like a nice, peaceful opportunity to write and think.
The kids are all out doing their own things with other family members, so I’ve got some spare time to indulge in whatever I want.
What want is to up my odds for success at a writing career.
The musing I’m engaging in here today will ultimately be a gift I’m giving myself. The sense of control-of-my-own-destiny I get from it will lead to be a more relaxed me, so it’s going to be a gift to those closest to me as well. Everyone knows a happy, relaxed momma and mate is a great thing. And a controlling woman who at least is enjoying a delusion about being in control, well, that’s a good thing too.
I’m designing my writerly business plan. I’m plotting my career, not just a book.
Sounds a little tedious and over the top, I’m sure. That’s okay. I’m thinking in strategic, long-term view today and deciding how to plot the course of my future career in writing.
Optimistic yes?
Well, I’m feeling rather on top of things right now, so it’s a good time to plan.
For the first several weeks of the year I’m going to blog on Sundays (once I return from vacation) about this plan I’m devising and my progress in following it.
For today, the takeaway is this: A business plan is about the foundation of the business, not the product or service.
So to translate that to writerly terms: A writerly business plan is about the foundation of a writing career, not the stories.
How many of you have a plan? If you do, I’d love to know how you came up with it, what points were important to you. If you don’t you’re welcome to follow along with mine to see if it’s something you might like to do for yourself.
This is a trial and error endeavor since I haven’t found much on the net to help with my research. We’ll see in a couple of years whether it has done me much good to go to all the extra effort 
Work In Progress
Writers on board:
Merry Christmas morning Roxann! Do you want to know what I think? I think you are one smart, together woman. This makes perfect sense to me. Further more, I am seriously considering doing this for myself. I’m older than you (LOL!) and I don’t have a moment to waste.:) It is an excellent gift to give to yourself for your future. I absolutely love this idea of yours and will look forward to what you come up with–and learn. Here’s to the future!
Happy Christmas/Solstice, Madison! I *love* your idea for your Sunday musings for the next several weeks. I think I’m gonna follow what you’re doing and maybe make my own Sunday posts about what I think about it. . . if that’s okay with you. I’m not trying to be lazy or anything, but this is a REALLY GOOD IDEA and I would like to explore it myself, from what you learn (and I learn by proxy). Is that okay?
Love,
Sarah
Thank you Jeannie. That’s entirely my point: I don’t have time to spend long in the learning curve either. But of course there is the fact that I still need a ready product and that’s all part of the plan. It’s nearly ready. I’m glad to know you don’t think I’m nuts!
Sent from my iPhone… Please forgive any typos!
That’s my Christmas gift to YOU Sarah. If I flop you can learn from my mistakes and if I soar then you can soar with me.
Sent from my iPhone… Please forgive any typos!
I would LOVE it if you blogged the same topics with your take on them, report how you’re doing and generally keep us abreast of what’s working and what’s not. If anyone else wants to do that, make sure I have your links and at the end of all my Sunday-topic posts, I’ll include the link to yours.
Hey Jeannie, see my response to Sarah. If you want to go along with us and post updates to your blog, let me know so I can include your link. I’d LOVE it if you join us!
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I really like this. I’ve largely just “winged it” up to this point, but I’m beginning to think that I should look at my writing as a career the way you have. Nice post.
Yes! Let’s do it! I may very well be flopping like a fish out of water but what the heck
Thank you!
Thank you H.E.
If you decide to post progress updates or musings, let me know and I’ll add you to the list of Writers on Board
Sarah posted hers just now, so I just added her.
Jeannie, if you get your intention posted today (or whenever you do) let me know and I’ll add your link to the list of Writers on Board too
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I just posted my intention! Add the link!!
This is a great idea. Mads, you have the best ideas!
I have come a long way in this last year, and I have a busier year looming. So much, in fact, that it is daunting, overwhelming sometimes to a point that I simply sit down and do nothing because there is so much to do! I think I need a plan. My mind does not naturally turn to the business end of things, but at this point in my career, to get everything accomplished that needs to be done, I need a workable, but flexible plan to follow.
I think I want to be on board with this, but will it be just one more thing I’ll need to juggle?
kd, we can all support each other in this business model thing, not unlike what we already do. If one idea doesn’t seem to be working, we can suggest others. I’m super-busy as well, so sharing ideas is very important to me.
Just added your name to the ‘Board’ members
Hi K.D., unlike the Fictioneers thing, there’s no obligation to ‘participate’ in anything for this. Today’s post was my statement of intention and I’ve invited anyone else who’s trying to organize their writing life into a career format to follow along.
If you state your intentions publicly, it does something in your brain to ‘turn on’ the subconscious to follow through (at least it does to me). As I roll out my plan, which will begin in late January, I’ll be happy to hear how others are adapting it to suite their own needs.
Once I’m done with the plan building, I’ll hold a monthly ‘Board’ meeting where we can all share how we’re doing with our ‘businesses’. My personal board members for MY business will include myself (and Rob when he’s done with his contract in Afghanistan, because he helps me a lot with brainstorming and is key to the foundation of my business).
While the plan unfolds, I’ll have guest posters to give us tips and ideas on things that pertain to the business end of our careers. David Rozansky has agreed to post on ‘Bookkeeping for Writers’ on the first Thursday in February. I have a couple more reviewers to discuss their review processes and invite review submissions (since reviews are part of the writerly business plan).
Things like that – no pressure on you. However, if you are overwhelmed, the greatest gift you could give yourself would be to get organized and have a time-management priority meeting with yourself once a week. If you want to post that to your blog it might help you to stay focused. That’s what I’ll be doing too, and I’m happy to link back to anyone else doing the same or similar (this is what I do already on Mondays with my goal-statements).
Yeah, what she said
I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to see that there is a writer that understands that writing a business plan is the most important thing they will ever write in their writing career.
I am a professional writer and journalist of 24 years. I had the usual starving period filled with a smorgasbord of rejection letters. Once I became tired of that, I established a business plan, and my career took off.
The plan pretty much hinged on “Find editors who have holes in their publication and need great content on an impossible deadlines,” “Query editors in mass mailings monthly with a menu of slants on topics you’ve researched,” and “Don’t even look at the rejection letters, and don’t make it easy for anyone to send you a rejection letter.” It was a fairly simple plan (as all plans should be). But the net result was that I quickly found myself getting assignments from editors whose tail I had saved, ahead of the writers they had known for years. It led to job offers. It led to launching my own publications, to where I own and operate my own book-publishing house, Flying Pen Press.
It’s been quite a ride. It all started with a plan and taking every opportunity that lay along the path pointed to by the plan.
Now, I’m sharing two and half decades of experience of being a business person in the writing game. I’ve put out my shingle as a professional Author’s Business Manager. I take struggling writers who have talent but cannot seem to get their career off the ground and show them what they are doing wrong and how they can become a force in the publishing business. And it always starts with an author’s business plan.
I’m writing a book titled Fishnets & Platforms: The Writers Guide to Whoring Your Book. The premise of the book is that writers know they have to market their book and promote themselves, but often see it as hucksterism and prostitution, full of dread and indignity; that the solution is to remove the dread by creating a simple marketing plan with easy steps, a sort of series of recipe cards for getting the word out every day.
And now that I have come to your blog and read this, I realize that the next book after Fishnets & Platforms should be focused on how to create the professional writer’s business plan. I just need a good title.
Meanwhile, I’ll be working on that guest bog you asked me for. on “Bookkeeping for Writers.” It’s another good topic that is often overlooked on writers blogs. I wish more writers would spend time on thinking about the business side of this business like you have.
Keep ‘em Flying,
David Rozansky, Publisher, Flying Pen Press http://FlyingPenPress.com
and Author’s Business Manager.
Thanks, David – that’s some awesome validation that I didn’t just wake up on the crazy side of things when I let this post slip out. Seriously, though, once I started thinking of my writing as a career, I produced more short stories (necessary for part of my plan to get my name known) more flash fiction to offer free on my blog (so I don’t have to offer parts of things I want to sell) and have made more productive progress on my novel (even though I’m basically rewriting it because I discovered major flaws while writing the synopsis). If I wouldn’t have had a long-term vision, it would have felt like a major setback to be starting over on the novel edit.
And yes, building a foundation is going to seem like it’s taking me longer to reach the ‘success’ I’m craving. But so does building a house on firm footings seem to take longer when there’s a lot of excavation to be done first.
Thanks for visiting and supporting my effort with your guest post – I’m so excited because I think it’ll be a great addition to this series plus it’s an area in which I am clueless and want to learn how to properly file my writing as a home-based business (and I hope you’re planning to mention that aspect
See you in February!
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Wonderful concept Madison – I set up a Business Plan back in 1987. I had taken some aptitude tests that said I had “low foresight” – today was real, the future was hard for me to conceptualize. So I needed to stay focused, with goal setting a big part of that process. So I decided to draft a business plan for myself as a creative person.
I set mine up like a business plan I had seen in graduate school for business, and did the same analysis of myself as a creative person that you would for any new business. I began with the mission statement “to fully steward my God given talents in a God directed yet goal oriented manner.” Then I did an evaluation of assets and liabilities, role models, a study of the market, an evaluation of how my talents would fit in to the market, and concluded with a section on implementation.
I’ve updated my plan regularly, and it has become a holiday tradition to review the year, see what I’ve accomplished, and set goals for next year. The interesting part is that I sometimes forget the goals I have set, and upon returning to the business plan the next year, I find that I’ve accomplished most of my goals – without being actively focused on them. Yes, I have just written this year’s update, and will print it and add it to the plan as sort of a New Year’s ceremony.
I have published my first book, am about to publish my second, and I consider the business plan the “guiding light” that has kept me focused on my writing career – the bigger picture outside of the project de jour.
When I went to a writer’s conference a couple of years ago, I went to a seminar on the business side of writing – contracts, literary agents, that sort of thing. I was surprised that it was not very well attended. The business side of a writing career is, I believe, underappreciated by a lot of authors. I agree with David – I wish a lot more authors would attend to the business side.
This is a solid post on a tremendous concept, Madison! Well done, and I’ll be waiting for Part Two!
Dan
Thank you Dan
I started thinking hard about this after noticing how difficult it seems to be to actually make a living at writing. I see plenty authors writing and publishing books, but not too many are shouting about how many they’re selling. I think that might be because “the plan” only involved writing the book and the selling conundrum is becoming obvious after the fact. Even with a traditional publisher’s backing, most of us will still need to do our own work on the business end of things – moving product is paramount.
It just seems that the odds for success increase exponentially with a plan. I’m going to use the SBA small business guidelines and just translate what fits to a writerly business plan.
Part II will be in late January, so everyone has time to think about what they want to accomplish in the long term and we’ll get busy working on building a plan when I come back from vacation.
I like the tradition of reviewing the plan at this time of year every year. I think I’ll do that too
I agree Madison – writing is a tough way to make a living. The thing I noticed at a writer’s conference was that there were a lot of writers wandering around with a manuscript, almost begging someone to tell them what to do with it. And yes, even with traditional publishing these days, there’s not much publicity support any more.
I think you’re going about the business plan in a very orderly way – I like that because it’s the way I work too!
Glad you like the idea of regular updates – it has certainly enhanced the process for me! I’m really looking forward to Part II and how this all unfolds! Great that we’ve made this connection – I found your post through Writers Etc, and I’ve grown to really value the writer connections I’ve made!
Thanks for letting me know how you found my post. I had just made a post the other day about market research and in it I polled to see how folks had found me originally. It helps to know where to focus the most time and effort for the future.
I love the Writer’s etc. group. It’s a very diverse membership and plenty willingness to connect and network in a professional manner. It’s like a virtual industry-specific rotary club.
I agree, Madison – Writers Etc has been a very solid resource of writer connections. They used to have regular forums, listed under the discussion threads, with people from publishing and the movie industry who would chat online and share their expertise – wonderful resource. Then FB decided to get rid of discussion threads, without telling anyone ahead of time, and those wonderful discussions were lost. There have been some attempts to find a way to have more, but they haven’t taken off yet. “A virtual industry-specific rotary club” – LOL – wonderfully well said!
“I’m designing my writerly business plan. I’m plotting my career, not just a book.” Doesn’t that just give you chills, to think about it, contemplate it and decide that’s what you’re going to do?
Yes! But a *good* kind. The chill that lets me know I’ve set foot on the correct path, the one that leads where I am meant to tread
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Just finished Part 2, and actually–I’m done.:)
This Business Called Writing, #2
Oh boy – heading your way in a few minutes to see what you came up with!
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Well written discussion. Totally interesting. Without a doubt will share.
Slowly, slowly I am finding a need to develop a writing plan. Thanks for gently kicking me along the planning path.
Thanks Nancy, I try to be gentle when I can
This post has recently gotten attention for reasons unknown to me and it’s a pretty old one. I think I might move a link to it over to my new blog. Thanks for visiting and for subscribing to my new blog 
Thanks!
Hey Madison – a quick update on the writer life, since we chatted about business plans. I have been earning money as a freelance writer since February 2012, and it’s amazing how those things unfold. I have been writing for an online magazine for several years, and the guy who runs that magazine connected me with a colleague who was looking for a freelance writer.
Now I am generating creative copy on travel destinations for SEO purposes. It’s so much fun I hate to call it work. As my nephew so aptly put it “Uncle Dan, you’re writing short stories for a living.” When that sunk in, I realized that it was true, and I credit the business plan I developed for keeping my eye on the goal, and leading to this wonderful outcome!
One of my 2012 goals for my business plan was: “find that business mechanism that will fund my writing.” I just never imagined that the funding mechanism would also be writing! WOW!
Reading this gave me chills Dan!! That’s awesome. I too have been steadily plugging away at my goals. Since this post I’ve received a paycheck for my first pro-rate short story sale, had a non-fiction article accepted, and have been slowly but surely getting my novel edited. Thank you for checking back in to update me on your progress. I’m very excited for you
Wow – it sounds like we’re both making steady progress. Isn’t that cool? Congratulations on your short story sale, the non-fiction article, and getting your novel edited! Wonderful forward motion!
Thanks for sharing the excitement, and being excited for my good news – I get chills talking about it!
I also think it’s so cool that your nephew recognized what had happened and pointed it out to you
Nancy, are you going to be at the OWL meeting in Branson? The talk I’m giving will help you with your plan. If you’re not, perhaps you’ll be able to download the presentation when I get it on my website. There’s a lot I’ll be saying between the slides, but the slides will give you a basic start.
Indeed – he’s a sharp kid. The comment came up as he was describing his new artistic path and how he wanted to make it a profitable business for himself and his family (completely attainable – he’s a creative genius). We were having the discussion about setting up a business plan for him!