October 24, 2012 – 6:40 am
So MaKayla asked about deadlines, specifically whether they’re good or bad, interfere with the process or enrich it, etc. The answer is “It depends on the writer.” I know writers who freeze up at the mere thought of a deadline, and writers who can’t seem to write anything without one. It also depends on what [...]
A quick recap from last time: the primary principles to apply when writing a query letter are that you keep it short and specific; that the story synopsis matches the book; and that you are not coy in the manner of back-blurbs. Just in case somebody isn’t clear on this, here is a bad example [...]
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of queries about, well, queries. So I figure that it’s probably time to do a post on them, even though I feel like I’ve been talking about the “boring business stuff” an awful lot lately. Anyway, the first thing I’m going to say is that I am explicitly talking [...]
It’s June 13 and in the U.S., the first set of estimated tax payments for 2012 are due at the end of the week. And if you’re making money from your writing, and you have to pay U.S. income taxes, you need to be aware of this. You may not owe estimated taxes, but if [...]
So after all these business posts, people wanted me to write about retiring. I’m not surprised; it was kind of exhausting to think about doing all that stuff. In any case, this is the retirement-for-writers post. The very first question is: what does retirement mean to you, as a writer? Writing isn’t quite the same [...]
So there you have it: all seven areas of business – operations, sales and marketing, quality control, finance, administration, public relations, and executive – laid out for writers. Looking at them all at once like this is rather daunting, but not looking at them at all is a recipe for messing up. If you are [...]
7. Executive – This has to do with strategic planning and overseeing everything else. For writers, the Executive area means keeping an eye on all the other categories to make sure nothing is left out and everything stays in balance (which can be quite a trick for a one-person business). This is also where long-range [...]
February 29, 2012 – 6:05 am
Before we get to today’s post, I wanted to mention two things: first, some time in the next month I’m going to be changing servers. In an ideal world, this will be completely unnoticeable to all the readers of my blog and web page, but how often does everything actually go that smoothly? So if [...]
February 26, 2012 – 6:33 am
5. Administration – This is the overall organization of people and processes, including everything from office management to the human resources department. For writers, Administration covers most of the day-to-day tasks of making and tracking submissions, answering mail, returning email and phone calls, filing, organizing manuscripts, maintaining the web site and blog, and so on. [...]
February 22, 2012 – 6:35 am
4. Finance – This has to do with all the monetary aspects of a business. The financial end of the writing business needs and deserves a lot more attention than many writers give it absent emergencies. Especially the taxes part. I’ve said before that editors don’t do house-to-house searches …but the IRS does, and they’re [...]
February 19, 2012 – 6:30 am
3. Quality Control. This is where products and processes are tested for defects. For all writers, Quality Control obviously includes all of the editing and revision parts of the job; for the self-published, it includes packaging details as well – everything from design (page layout, font/typeface, cover design) to things like the choice of paper and cover [...]
February 15, 2012 – 6:47 am
2. Sales and marketing. Sales is defined as “the act of selling a product in return for money or other compensation.” Marketing is the strategy that the business uses to get to the sales part. Sales and marketing is generally considered the second of the two line functions in business, because it generates income directly. [...]
February 12, 2012 – 6:45 am
1. Operations – This includes primarily production, but also design, development, and fulfillment. The business of writing starts with Operations, the first, largest, and most important of the line function areas. It includes all of the aspects of production/manufacturing, but also such necessary elements as purchasing, order fulfillment, research, development, design, and fulfillment. For writers, [...]
February 8, 2012 – 6:03 am
I have never met a would-be writer who has a business plan. OK, I haven’t met many professional writers who have a formal business plan, either. Nevertheless, every last professional writer I know, of whatever genre, pays a great deal of attention to the business of writing, one way or another. Unfortunately, for most writers, [...]
December 14, 2011 – 6:01 am
In the last couple of months, I’ve had the opportunity to observe a number of new writers doing things that…well, to say they don’t work is a serious understatement. I’m not talking about the writing itself, at the moment. I’m talking about the business end. There are oodles of lists of what not to do [...]
December 7, 2011 – 6:34 am
A while back, I did a post on electronic publishing in general, in which I stated that I didn’t know much, but nobody else does, either, yet. In the interim, I’ve learned a bit more, and I thought this would be a good time to share, because next week, the five Lyra books are being [...]
Writing is a profession with a very long lead time. For the majority of writers, writing a novel takes somewhere between six months and two years (there are, of course, folks who can do it faster or who require even more time, but they’re outliers). Then you have a wait for editorial revisions, and then [...]
Back when I was just out of college, I remember laughing at one of my friends who was complaining about the effects of her promotion on her budget. “Sure, I get more money now,” she said. “But I only get it every two weeks, not every Friday! It’s really hard to remember not to spend [...]
I talk a lot about differences in the writing process and the way every writer thinks differently and therefore has to work differently. All those differences apply to a lot more than the writing process, though, and it is just as destructive when folks don’t understand that. Take the heady days following the publication of [...]
April 15 is coming up fast, and for anyone who made money writing, it tends to be rather traumatic. No matter how much you set aside from your payments, it never seems to be enough (for those of us in the U.S., that 15% Social Security payment is a perennial killer). And of course they [...]
People make time for the things they love. That is why I am always a bit skeptical at first when people tell me that they can’t write because they have a day job…especially when their day job is a relatively non-demanding 40 hours per week. People have to make time for the things they love, [...]
This is the time of year when I run across folks – newly published writers, generally – who have forgotten one of the most basic facts about their writing careers, and who are about to pay a painful price. What fact? The fact that they’re running a business, and they’re going to have to pay taxes [...]
October 10, 2009 – 8:46 pm
One of the things nobody ever mentioned to me when I was getting started as a writer was that if I ever got to be a full-time professional, I was going to be, in essence, a self-employed businessperson, with all the troubles and responsibilities (assorted taxes, health insurance, FICA, record-keeping) that go along with running [...]