Writing For Pleasure Or Profit
WHICH KIND OF WRITER ARE YOU?
In my mind, there are two kinds of writing.
One: Writing for pleasure or because you have to release the stories in your head. If this is you then blessings and continue to write, share your stories (gifts) in the quiet and silence of your journals or share them with the world, while enjoying the creative process.
Two: Writing to earn income. If you fall into this category and you want to make money from what you write then you have to consider it a business or a profession – because it is. Therefore, you must treat it as a business. Writing for profit means engaging in the learning, growing, and building of your writing career or business. So that demands an investment of time, energy, and yes money.
You need to not only learn the mechanics of good storytelling: word collection and turn of phrase, grammar, tone, description, arc, and more but you also must learn enough of the details of profit and loss, pricing, cost analysis, marketing (websites, social media and more), sales, distribution (online platforms, retailers, schools, libraries, to name a few), hiring or contracting smart people to do the activities you are not good at and don’t really want to learn.
The good news is all of this is learnable. Information is readily available just be sure you are receiving it from a reputable and knowledgeable source who has actually been there and has experience publishing. Luckily, there are a thousand tools (apps and more) to help you and there are others who love to do what you hate to do – so start building a list of what kind of support you will need on this author publishing journey (I will talk more about this in another article).
If you have an entrepreneurial spirit, love books and learning, want to help people, and are always up for a challenge then the business of publishing might be for you.
To your continued success on this always exciting author adventure.
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I will be offering a 12-month intensive Build Your Publishing Biz program later this year. During the program, you will define your publishing model, identify the writers you want to help most, establish your business structure, start building your brand, get your first clients, and start to monetize your dream publishing biz. If you are interested in pursuing Publishing as a Business and want to have someone by your side to shorten the learning curve, help you avoid costly mistakes, and have fun transitioning to a new phase of your career and life, send me a note at publish@lizlawless.com with the subject Let’s Build A Publishing Biz.
Creatively, Liz