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Books,  Business,  Publishing,  Writing

The Business of Being an Author Part 1

November 26, 2019 /

Things I’ve had to learn besides writing the damn book

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Being an author is so much more than writing stories. It sounds so simple. Write a great story, publish it and watch the money come in. Cue hysterical laughter from the writing community. While writing can be a hobby, if you are serious about publishing the stories you create, you must understand it is a business. Indie publishing is a demanding, full-time business even if you only work at it part-time.

Publishing Paths

Authors can follow one of three paths to becoming published. One can; A) go the traditional route and get a contract with a publishing house, B) go the Independent aka Indie route and self-publish, or C) go the Hybrid route, which is a combination of both. There are pros and cons to all three approaches, and that’s a topic for another time. Since I am taking the Indie path, I’ll focus on the things I have or will be learning to successfully publish my books.

Writing is the majority of the work, and I will share my thoughts about the craft of writing in other articles. But first, I want to sell my books, and there are a whole host of things I must do, or pay someone to do before I publish.
The business of being an indie author requires one to operate in many roles. Each job has a skillset you can either learn or contract out to someone who has expertise in that particular task. I’m going to back up for a minute and state a fact that may or may not be obvious. As I said above, publishing is a business, and like any business, there are startup costs associated with it. Those costs will vary depending on what you are willing or able to spend as well as which skills you can master.

Off the top of my head, here are the various jobs related to indie publishing:

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WebMaster
Publisher
Marketer
Agent
Editor
Graphic Designer
Salesperson
Cover Designer
Copywriter
Social Media Rep
Newsletter Manager
and last but not least, Author

This isn’t a complete list, and almost all of the roles cover more than one task with plenty of overlap. All of these positions can be separated into three general areas, Website, Publishing, and Promotional.

In the next posts, I will tackle the importance and detail the necessity of each and what jobs I am learning versus the ones I have chosen to contract out and why. Read Part 2 here.

Are there any major jobs I overlooked in the above list that I should have included?