business

5 Ways Your Business of Writing Will Change

by Cindy Rae

Your business of writing will change. To help you as a writer, here are 5 tips centered around the fact change happens.

1. The Unknown Becomes Known

  • You don’t know what you know until you know it– except…
  • You discover what you like
  • You discover what you don’t like
  • You discover you have more talent for one kind of writing over another
  • You understand the industry better
  • You learn more about the business of writing
  • Through experience and feedback you learn better of not only how to “level up” your writing but also of its quality

2. Your Circumstances Change

  • You have more time to write
  • You have less time to write
  • You go through a trial that informs and shapes what you want to write
  • You go through a trial that changes your physical or mental abilities
  • You have one or more of life’s major stressors going on

3. Connections Change

  • You learn how to engage with others in your field
  • You learn how to find your readers
  • You get to know one of your writing heroes
  • You get in touch with others in the same writing boat, online or in-person
  • You connect with others who train you to be a better writer — critique groups, podcasts, conference speakers, etc.

4. Market Changes

  • The market changes for what you are writing, like cross-pollination
  • You discover market demand for something else you’d like to write
  • Demand surges for a particular format (audiobooks)
  • Demand surges overseas for your market
  • You learn in what market segments demand is growing for your writing
  • You learn to that “marketing” isn’t a dirty word, the difference between publicity and marketing, and how much marketing depends on engaging with others

5. The Industry Shifts

  • Major publishing houses condense further (or expand, but not likely)
  • Independent bookstores rise in popularity
  • Amazon totally changes their ebook strategy, and you flourish (or perish, depending)
  • Different distribution channels appear or disappear in the industry for your supported formats (a channel allowing easy access to ebooks in libraries, for instance)
  • Technology impacts drive production changes, or publication changes, or popular formats, or revenue models
Marketing is Making Connections

Writers: Marketing Means Connections

by Cindy Rae

Writers, stop thinking about marketing and start thinking about connections.

Many of us do find marketing intimidating (Credit: Karen Arnold, Pixabay)

Intimidating and Overwhelming

The insecure, the nerdy, the introverted, the unproven writers among us (pardon me while I raise my hand for each of those) can find the concept of marketing to be intimidating and overwhelming, a mountainous thunderstorm of unknown looming in the distance, casting its ominous shadow over the our road we want to travel.

We hear “build a platform” to “market” your books. But maybe we need to rewire.

Rewire your brain, replacing "marketing" with "connections". (Credit: OpenClipArt-Vectors at Pixabay)

Marketing to Connections: Rewire and Rethink

Let’s rewire our brains. Every time you hear “marketing,” replace it with “connecting”. Or connections. Or connect. Or engagement. Or meeting new people. Or relationship. Or… you get my drift. Whatever word or phrase that helps you, that makes sense to you.

Connections: Be Intentional

Blindly following advice on your marketing platform may not be the best choice (Credit: Gerd Altmann, Pixabay)

And, let’s be intentional. You don’t have to blindly create a blog or post daily ramblings on Twitter or have a Facebook page or a presence on Goodreads or… whatever the next piece of platform advice tells you. It’s not about blogging weekly or tweeting daily. It’s not about joining every possible writing-related group online or journeying far to make a conference. It’s not about joining the “best” critique group or becoming a super-fan of the rock stars of our industry.

Marketing: Meaningful and Individual

Your platform is as individual and unique as you are. (Credit: Gerd Atlmann, Pixabay)

It’s about doing whatever makes sense for you to connect with others who have something in common with you, with your interests, or with who you want to become. That’s your platform.

Your writing is meaningful and unique to you. Your marketing — excuse me — connections — will be as unique.

And that set of connections? It should be meaningful, as well.

Conclusion

Your time is precious. You want to spend the bulk of your available time writing, not blindly building a platform with pieces grabbed randomly on some pundit’s recommendation.

In the next post in this series, let’s talk more about being intentional. Let’s consider some of the factors in choosing connections.

Operating Online: Social Media Operations

by Cindy Rae

My current business plan section on operating online definitely needs an overhaul.

I have, however, collected quite a few best practices and quite a few thoughts on content, newsletters, websites and more.

Up this week is my current schedule for content:

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Operating a Writing Career as a Business: What are the Pieces?

by Cindy Rae

So, you’re taking this writing thing seriously. You want to develop it into a business and a career.

What are the pieces to operating a writing business? How are you going to do so?

Here are the sections in my operations plan:

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Writers: the Audience of Your Business Plan?

by Cindy Rae

Who is the intended audience of your business plan?

Well, if you’re an established writer like Brandon Sanderson, L.E. Modesitt, or David Weber, and you have a business plan, the intended audience may include investors, publishers, fellow writers, employees… Of course, I’m guessing, as I remain unpublished.

While I hope you benefit indirectly from my business plan via this series, my business plan is primarily for my own benefit.

Look out for the next in the series where I discuss how my business plan benefits me in becoming a published novelist.

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