business

The major difference between a self-publishing author and a traditional author is the amount of work that has to be done on the business side. Self-publishing workflows can help.

The traditional author doesn’t have to worry about filing for copyright, advertising campaigns, discount promotions, editing your book and getting a cover for it. That’s the publisher’s job.

The self-publishing author, however, does all those jobs, plus more. The more part varies from author to author, depending on their personal circumstances, their inclinations, and their ideas for promoting their books. It could mean visiting schools to talk about writing, offering classes online, attending cat shows to sell their cat-themed books, offering editorial and consulting services, or visiting bookstores and secretly inserting their books on the shelves (don’t do this, by the way).

Handling the business side of your self-publishing empire demands developing a new set of skills to perform those tasks efficiently. Even if you have an obliging spouse, child, or personal assistant, it’s still important to develop procedures to perform these tasks. These are jobs that will be done regularly, so it’s important to do them consistently, correctly, and leave behind enough data to judge the success of that task and figure out how to do it more efficiently next time.

This is best accomplished using workflows.

What are self-publishing workflows?

In the business world, there are processes and workflows. Processes or procedures defines a particular task that you want to accomplish. Workflows are the steps that you take to perform that task. It’s that simple.

So a process can be mail the monthly newsletter. The workflow for that process can be:

1. Write the newsletter in Word. List art you need between “***”.
2. Create the art, no larger than 700 pixels and 96 dots per inch.
3. Open MailerLite.
4. Use the saved template to create the newsletter.
5. Test-send the newsletter to your publishing partner for comments.
6. If approved, schedule the newsletter to run at 9 a.m. EST the next day.
7. Save newsletter in Business / Newsletter / 2021 folder.
8. Go to website, schedule publishing newsletter for next month.
9. Revise page “Newsletter Archive” with URL for next month’s newsletter. Scheduling updating for same time as newsletter post next month.
Now, I’m not saying that you should do it this way, but it is the way we do it at Peschel Press in a truncated form.

That’s It?

If this is so simple, you may ask, why do it at all? Why take the trouble to laboriously type it out?

It is a simple process, but your business is made up of many simple processes. Rather than keep all of them in your head, write them down and you won’t have to try to remember the details of this process. If you know you won’t have to remember the details of the process, your brain will be able to focus on remembering the things that are really important to you, such as that important plot twist you want to introduce in the next chapter. Or the names of your children. Whatever is important to you.

Does every process need a self-publishing workflow?

No. Only the ones that you feel need a workflow.

I don’t use one for publishing books online. The forms are easy to find and fill out.

I do use a metadata form for each book. This form, one for each book, is my central storehouse of information about that books life online. It contains all the metadata needed to fill out the forms: title, subtitle, series name, series number, book description, keywords, price, cost of book, etc. It also keeps track of where and when we publish that book, and any problems we encountered.

As you work on your business from day-to-day, you’ll see when you need to work up a workflow and when not to. Generally, any process that you use regularly will end up needing a self-publishing workflow.

(Ad alert: In our book Career Indie Author, we provide a metadata form that you can modify and use.)

Welcome to the new series of mini-lessons about the business of self-publishing. The first one is on the business mindset, because that is the foundation of everything which will follow.

These mini-lessons consist of ideas and concepts which have occurred to me in the 12 years that I have been writing, selling, and publishing books. I’ll also be posting mini-lessons in writing fiction and nonfiction, but I want to focus here on everything else apart from the creation of works.

Many of us spend our lives working for somebody else, but when you start your writing journey – if you have an ambition to make money at this – you need to change your way of thinking.

No matter what emotional attachment you may have to your story, whether it’s a memoir or an essay or a full-length book, at the end you holding your hand a product that must be packaged and sold.

If you intend to make money at this, especially if you’re going to deduct your business expenses on your tax return, you have to start thinking like a business owner and less like an artist.

Even if you intend to turn over the business decisions to a partner, a spouse, or a publisher, keep an eye on what they’re doing. There are way too many object lessons of artists who have signed away their rights and their money to unscrupulous people. Just ask Chuck Palahniuk.

Elements of the business mindset

Here’s what I mean the business mindset:

1. Keep track of your work. File your stories where you can find them. File away any contracts you signed where you can find them. Make backups of your work, preferably multiple backups on paper or CD.

2. Keep track of your expenses. Open a separate business checking account. Get a credit card that you use only for business expenses. Record your expenses, whether on paper or on Excel.

3. Keep track of your daily tasks. You need to prove to the IRS you are operating a business. If they’re not convinced, they’ll classify what you’re doing as a hobby and disallow your business expenses, and you’ll be left with a whopping tax bill to pay.

4. Adopt a cold unemotional eye. No matter how much you love your book cover, if it doesn’t catch your readers’ attention, if it’s not genre-appropriate, if it’s not what readers in that genre are seeing RIGHT NOW, consider replacing it. No matter how much you love your prose, if readers disagree, consider ways of improving your writing.

Why we resist change

Recognize that people default to doubling down on their decisions and beliefs. We resist reconsidering them in light of new information. When it comes to your favorite sports team, author, or movies, this is not necessarily harmful.

Believing that you’re writing career is on the right course despite low sales and negative reviews, however, will hurt you financially and emotionally.

(At the same time, don’t let one person’s opinion sway you. Or even everyone’s. History is full of examples. Did you know “Casablanca” was a B-movie potboiler that no one thought would work? Or that “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was a box office bomb? Or that J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter was rejected by multiple publishers, and it was the publisher’s daughter who recommended acquiring it?)

It boils down to that line from “The Godfather”: “It’s not personal. It’s strictly business.” When bad things happen to you, you need to bounce back emotionally. Adopting the business mindset lets you distance yourself from other people’s decisions and opinions will help safeguard your ego and give you the mental energy to push on.

We’ll go into bouncing back from adversity in a future mini-lesson. But when you’re not neck deep in your next story, look at your business like a boss, not an employee.