Transcript

Welcome to the Indie Author Biz Guide Podcast. I’m Tora Moon, genre bending fantasy and sci fi author, indie business author and entrepreneur. Here we talk about the business of self-publishing, or as I prefer to call it, indie publishing. As an indie author, you have entered the wonderful world of entrepreneurship!

On this show, I guide you through the rocky waters of the indie publishing industry. I share business basics and principles you can apply to your author business, really, any business. Other indie authors share their experiences and expertise to give you insight in your career and build your business.

You can download your free indie author business checklist, find additional resources, and the show notes at IndieAuthorBizGuide.com.

And now, here’s today’s episode…

Hi, I’m Tora Moon and I write genre bending, science fiction and fantasy. I love mixing and blending genres together, especially those within the science fiction and fantasy genres. So my epic fantasy set on another world has all your wide sweeping battles and quests, but it also has shape shifters, and it has an alien invasion, and it has Griffins instead of dragons. That’s my Legends of Lairheim series, and it’s complete.

And the new series that I’ve started is an urban fantasy. And it’s a dark, edgy, and the first book has supernatural thriller vibes to it. And it’s about witches fighting demons.

I also write nonfiction. So, I have one book out so far, Business and Accounting for Authors. I’m working on the second book in the Indie Author Guide series, and that’s Business Plans for Authors, and that’s just about done.

I am an indie author. I work in the industry. I publish my own books. I have my own publishing company, Lunar Alchemy Publishing. But that isn’t all of my expertise of why I can help you as an indie author biz guide.

For over 25 years, I was a CPA and I didn’t do taxes–I hate taxes. I worked with small businesses in their business and helping them set up their businesses, run their businesses, be their CFO for hire. For five years, I was the CFO for a multinational multi-million dollar software development company. I have the business expertise, along with the writing expertise, so that I can help you.

I don’t do accounting anymore, but I love business and I love writing and I love the writing industry. So I want to help other people be indie authors. And I’m embracing my business background to help my fellow indie authors make sense of and succeed in their businesses.

I love being indie author, and I love how empowering it is for me to have full control of my intellectual property. I can decide what I want to do with my stories or my books. I can decide to sell them directly on my website, sell them on whatever platforms that I want, in whatever format that I want. I can do just about anything I want with my books because I am the publisher as well as the writer.

And I think when we give our rights away to a publisher, that that’s a little bit disempowering. So one of my defining core values is empowering women. And so many women have stories, whether they’re fiction or nonfiction stories, to tell. They have expertise to share. And still it’s still a man’s world in the traditional publishing arena. And it’s sometimes hard and difficult for us to get our stories told the way we need to tell them. And it’s not the way that men tell stories. Nothing wrong with that.

I want to see women and help women who have stories about their sexual abuse tell it in the way they want to tell it. I want to help older women like myself to be able to share their stories, to publish their stories, and not have age is an issue. I don’t want to have women be told by their publisher that because they’re over 40, they’re not going to publish their work because they can’t make it on TikTok or whatever the newest social media is.

Older women have stories to tell, and just because we have a little bit of gray. (Well, I don’t, because I’ve just had my hair done, but I usually do.) Just because we have a little bit of gray doesn’t mean that our words aren’t valuable.

And at one point, because of the way things were, I believed that to help women publish their stories that I needed to be a publisher because that was the way things have always been done. And then the indie publishing, self-publishing, world opened up. And this world is amazing! And I realized that the way I can help empower women to share their stories, and men, to share their stories is to help them become indie publishers. And to help them be successful in their business, because a lot of writers are doing this because they love their stories, because it’s stories that are not letting them go.

I know this. I’ve been there. There are stories, you know, that they grab hold of you and they won’t let you go until you write them. Whether that’s a nonfiction story or fiction story. And in this amazing world of indie publishing, I can help women authors and men authors to tell their stories the way they want to, to tell the stories that’s been in their hearts and on their minds for ages, sometimes in the way that they want to tell them, because they have full control over that. They have control over how they market that story.

We don’t have to do it the way it’s always been done.

That’s one of the reasons why I’m doing this podcast and why I help women authors in their business. And many times, writers are just writing their story and they want to get it published and they get it published, and all of a sudden they realize they now have a business and quite often they don’t know anything about business and they’re just flying by the seat of their pants.

Now that works with writing because I’m a pantser, for the most part, and it works with our writing. But it does not work for our business!

We need to know, have some knowledge about business and about marketing. And so that’s what this podcast is about, is to help give you those business basics and those business principles that you need for your author business to succeed. Because you can have the best book out there, but if you’re not running your business well, it can just flounder and die.

And we don’t want that. We want our books to reach the people that they’re for. We want to reach our readers and help turn their lives around, or help them escape their lives for a few minutes, or just be entertained, or share experience. And we can’t do that if our business is floundering and if we’re worried about our business, because that affects our creativity.

I know. I’m a writer, too. I experience this. When I’m worried about money, when I’m worried about my business, I can’t write. My creativity and my mind is just so taken up with, How am I going to market? How am I going to get my readers? How am I going to pay this bill that I can’t let the creativity flow and tell my stories or write the books that I need to be writing. That are like, Hello, I’m here. Hello? Are you going to write me? Because if I don’t write them, the muse is going to knock on somebody else’s door. And I don’t want that to happen to me or to you.

For a long time, I wanted nothing to do with my accounting experience. I was done with it. Done! Done! Done! And I’m still done with accounting. But I’ve since realized that I still love business. I love talking about business. I love sharing about business and helping people with their businesses. I love helping people figure out their business and developing it and figuring out their business plans and what they can do with their business.

That’s exciting!

And that’s part of what this podcast is for. And part of what I do in my author services is help authors develop their businesses and develop their business plan and even their budget. That’s about as far as I’m going with accounting is helping authors developing their budget and making sure that their accounting system is good. That’s as far as I’m going.

But the business side and everything and my experiences that I’ve had with business, that’s what I want to share. And that’s why I’m doing this podcast.

I plan on having interviews with other authors. I would love other authors, Indie authors, come on and share their experiences and their expertise, not only to help me grow my business, but to help you grow your business too. Because I’m not an expert in marketing. Believe me…this…that’s my struggle point is marketing. But there are people who are experts in marketing that are writers that we can talk to. There are experts with newsletters. There are experts with the psychology of writing. Part of business is not just the numbers. Part of it is our business mindset and things like the Clifton Strengths or Human Design can help us in our businesses and in our writing. And those are the types of people I want to talk to on this podcast.

I think there’s so many things that we can share and learn together in the indie publishing business. And as we do this, we’re creating a community. And for me, community is important. I think we’ve lost a lot of community, and that’s one thing I do really love about the indie author self-publishing business is it is a community. People help people. We get together. You’ve got this problem. I may have a solution. Oh, I have that problem, too. Here’s what I did. And I see that over and over and over again in the various Facebook groups and the other podcasts that are out there. And I want to be part of that community. And part of me being in that community is sharing my expertise in this podcast and in other ways.

And lastly, but most importantly, I want to have fun!

I want to have fun on this podcast because business can be fun. Writing can be fun. Sharing about our stories and sharing about our writing can be fun. And I’m looking forward to doing that and sharing that with you.

So, this is a short episode this time just to introduce myself and why I’m doing it and some of my background.

If you want to know more about managing your business, you can get my book, Business and Accounting for Authors: how to treat your business as a… How to treat your writing as a business, manage your own money. I always get the subtitle wrong because it’s a really long subtitle! So, it’s how to treat your writing as a business, manage your money, and use your accounting data to make better decisions. And this is a primer.

It gives you the basics of what you need to set up your business, your writing business, and what you need to make it successful and include some accounting. And I’ve tried to make it without the accounting jargon, so it’s an easy-to-understand guide that will help you in a process that many find daunting. And you can get it on my website, in e-book, print or audiobook form, or if you have to, you can get it at any of the major retailers.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Indie Author Biz Guide Podcast. I hope you found value in it. You can get your free business checklist, find more information, and any downloads mentioned at IndieAuthorBizGuide.com/podcast.

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Thank you and I hope you have an amazing day!