About ten years ago, I realized that I was not accomplishing as much as I wanted to with my abundance of book projects. As a business owner, I had done many business plans and they helped me to accomplish goals by providing a roadmap to follow. I decided to make one for my writing. My plan is only two pages long, but it has kept me on track with my writing and publishing. Creating a business plan for your writing will help keep you focused on your goals and support your career.
You want to start with a main Objective. Mine was to “help writers self-publish their books in a professional manner by providing products and services.” Keep it simple. You can always adjust any part of your objective as things change. Even a short-term objective can be useful. The aim of completing a book and finding a publisher might be all you need to move your project forward.
I set up categories that I believed would be helpful to me as a writer and self-publisher. In the first category, Goals, I listed smaller objectives for writing and selling books, such as selling off all my printed books and completing another book that I wanted to write. Then I made a complete list of books that I planned to write. To my surprise, there ended up being fourteen books on that list. Another category was the Publicity that I needed to do to sell my books, including press releases, blog posts, and mail-outs to libraries. I even included a category for Distractions, which was pretty illuminating: I discovered that my volunteering was taking precedence over my writing and gave up a couple of organizations that I was involved with. Even though I do not make a living from my writing, I made a table of Revenue and Expenses for the current year and following year. The expenses helped me identify items that I did not need anymore, such as subscriptions that were draining my writing income.
The category What Do I Want to Do? has been one of my most useful lists. Like many writers, I talk about what I want to do such as write, publish, consult, and teach, but putting it in writing helped to give me focus. I felt that I needed to be specific with my list too. Instead of stating “write,” I put down “write at least two hours a day during the week.” That forces me to work diligently to carve out time to write every day.
I revisit my plan every couple of years and update it as needed for what I am working on at the current time. It has helped me to stay on track with my writing projects. I find a business plan for me as a writer is one of the more useful tools I have used. It can be a handy tool for any writer. Try it.
This article was originally published in the 2022 Volume III issue of WordWorks.