I’ve been working on this presentation for a while now, because I want to have a ready-to-go discussion in my back pocket for any time a speaking opportunity arises.

But I didn’t want my go-to talk to be about writing books, even though I have a lot of things to say about the writing craft after 20 years. 

I wanted to explore a different topic because a) every writer under the sun talks about writing; and b) I have decades of experience in related industries. That experience has been instrumental in growing my author career, and it will be just as useful to anyone else who wants to make a go at becoming an author.

As you probably figured out from the ‘Part One’ notation, I’m breaking my full presentation into small bites for the blog. Just like in the live presentation, each part is going to be centered around a simple graphic that I’ve created to illustrate the key point.

Here’s the first one:

This graphic leads us into the foundation of my talk, probably the most important detail that we need to examine. 

The idea of “treating your writing like a business.” 

A forewarning that my graphics aren’t meant to be hard metrics. They’re representative of the core concepts we’re going to explore in this talk (sort of like a memorable glyph).

In this example, we’re looking at the “division of labor” as it differs between being a traditionally published author or a self-published author. 

When you go the tradpub route, as illustrated on the left, writing a book is 80% of your concern. (a = the role of author, the largest piece of that pie.) The rest is mostly finding an agent and self promotion. 

But when you plan to turn your writing into a business by taking on the indie publishing route, the division changes considerably. The actual act of writing books drops to a fraction of your workload, because 95% of what it takes to make a living writing novels exists outside of the manuscript. (b = role of bookseller, the much, much larger piece of that pie.)

We’re going to assume that if you plan on making a business out of writing books, you can write books. Let’s say you’ve already got the part about writing a marketable book down. 

That’s fantastic! Being able to write a good book is one hell of a skill. Anyone who does it should be proud. But when you decide to pivot from author to bookseller, you’re changing businesses. 

This isn’t a different lane…it’s a different highway altogether.

This understanding isn’t anything new. You’ve heard it a million times:

“When you’re an indie author, you have to treat your writing like a business!”

But here’s the rub. This advice sucks if you don’t know how to run a business. It’s all too easy to assume it means “work harder at writing books,” but that’s not quite right.

Let’s consider what “treating it like a business” actually means. 

• It doesn’t mean setting a writing schedule. That’s just being a more disciplined writer. 
• It doesn’t mean putting out six to twelve books a year. That’s just being a more prolific writer.
• It doesn’t mean making sacrifices, giving up your social life, or obsessing over your prose. That’s just being a writer.😏

Your books are important, of course, but the situation demands that you change your perspective even moreso. You have to create the business. You are not innately a business. Your books are not a business.

You are a manufacturer. Your books are a product.

A manufacturer and a product are not a complete business. To make those things into a business, you need things like infrastructure, distribution, management, promotion, and — the biggest one — revenue.

In short, you have to draw a COMPLETE line connecting an idea to the consumer. Somewhere along that line you and your stakeholders make money. That’s a business.

In traditional publishing, the publisher connects those dots for you. An army of people connects them. When you’re indie, you are that army.

And drawing that line is what we’re going to talk about in part two:

See you then!