Did You Self-Publish a Book?
You Have a Business!
There’s more to being an author than writing and publishing your books. Quite often, writers, especially fiction authors, don’t think past publishing the book in their hearts. When you self-published, or as I prefer to call it, Indie published your book, you created a business. You are now an authorpreneur and have entered the wonderful world of entrepreneurship.
As an author, we are selling our books—our product—to generate income. And we incur expenses; oh, boy, do we incur expenses! Between editors, cover design, and formatting, we spend a lot of money to create our books. We advertise our books to find new readers/buyers. All these are business activities. We have a business!
Many new authors aren’t aware they’ve established a business. It can be a rude awakening to realize they now own a business they’re not sure how to run or manage. They scramble to learn how to publish better, or to market their books, but many times forget to focus on learning how to manage their business and money. Even seasoned authors fall into this trap.
It’s so easy to focus on writing, publishing, and marketing our books that we let the business side slide. We hope, by some miracle, things will fall into place. Everything will be great, if we just figure out the right ad copy or place to advertise our books.
But what happens if that ad or TikTok video takes off?
Is your business set up to handle the influx of income? Do you know how to account for it? Are the foundations in place to support sustained growth?
These are considerations to think of and plan for BEFORE you need it. If you don’t treat your writing as the business it is, you won’t find the success you desire, or if you do, you’ll flounder.
However, it’s never too late to start learning how to better manage and run your business. Many business principles and practices apply to indie publishing, but there are some things that are unique to our industry. As a business owner, you need to learn what these are and how to manage them.
This book is a great place to start learning about managing your author business.
Business and Accounting for Authors is a primer on treating your writing as a business, how to manage your money, and to make better decisions. You’ll learn some basic accounting to help you understand and read your financial statements.
