Writers first diving in to the business of becoming a published author may trip over unexpected business overhead. I have.

One doesn’t know what one doesn’t know.

In my case, I did intend to have the business side be a small impact to my time available for writing. I wrote a business plan almost first thing. I considered my process, my brand, genres, social media, things not to do at the beginning to save precious time for writing…

But, despite the hit to overhead, I took the advice to start building my author platform right away. I started small: Facebook and a simple website updated on a modest basis.

Now I found myself spending time, at least monthly, on researching, planning, writing, and scheduling social media posts. I review my business plan every few months, more frequently if I have a new component to add.

This month I did add a new component, an email newsletter —
mainly because last month someone subscribed! I felt compelled to figure out the whole newsletter thing and send out the first issue. I succeeded after way more time than I wanted to spend.

So, my point? The overhead of social media, the business plan, and research don’t scale well. Those of us new writers limited to five to ten hours a week — well, prepare to be frustrated, or at least jealous of the time spent actually writing.