Starting a Writing Business
Part 1.2 of becoming an independent author
Treating your writing like a business:
Firstly, a disclaimer:
This is all advice based on my, and others who have shared, experiences in both trad and self-publishing.
Please don’t do anything you’re not 100% sure about and haven’t researched thoroughly yourself.
Many people don’t want their writing to be a business and that’s all cool and groovy - if you just want a few copies for family and yourself, it won’t be worth reading much of what follows. If you intend to make money and forge a career, some it might be relevant and useful.
I’m certain you all appreciate this anyway, but all business comes with risk, so you have to be sure you’re able to afford some of things mentioned later, and are comfortable with possibly losing money if you do invest in SP, or anything else if you’re trad.
Mindset
The first step is a mindset shift - this is no longer a hobby, this is a serious business and they only work when you invest, work very hard, and manage to make a profit…eventually…
You shouldn’t expect that this will earn you anything as much as a full-time job - at least not until you have an extensive backlist (or get v lucky!)
If you are trad published, you’re less likely to have to spend too much initially, but don’t be fooled into thinking you can spend nothing - you will have to pay for some/all of your own launch, for marketing (yup, sorry!), a good accountant - a must unless you’re very savvy in that area or know someone who is - eg Melissa has a great writer-specialist account - and to invest a lot of the other currency into what you’re doing - namely time!
Think differently - the race to 20
If you SP, don’t expect a profit straight away - speculate to accumulate
You need to reset your mind from the traditional writing model of advances with no expense on your part, to having to spend at least some money (you can get away with spending v little if you invest more of that other currency - your time!).
In SP, they talk about the sprint to 10 and the race to 20 before you can start thinking about earning enough for it to become a career.
Planning Costs
Some useful headings for your plan if you SP (*also if you’re trad):
Editing
Cover illustration/design
Uploading and distribution
Testing and Quality Assurance
ARCs
*Launch/marketing/publicity
I will talk about each of the things above in more detail in future newsletters, but they are some of the things to consider when you plan costs, e.g. testing and quality assurance is both more time-consuming and expensive than you might think.
Offering services
Editing
Mentoring
Illustration
If you offer anything to people, you will need to report all earnings from that service, and while it might seem easier to offer these as an individual and do self-assessment for the income, you get greater legal protection from setting up as a company, either limited or sole trader.
There are pros and cons to both ways, but for me the legal protection is so important - I’ve seen enough from my short time managing money to know you WILL get complaints and threats from people when it comes to paid services, and dissociating that side of things from you, as an individual, is important. Or well, it is to me.
Become Ltd
This is a personal choice, especially if you have a day job, like me, but it's worth considering for the tax benefits of a ltd company compared to an individual, as well as increased legal protection. Many trad authors get into a big mess when they start out as they don’t treat it like a business and go ‘woohoo’ and spend the cash like it’s pocket money and get a shock when HRMC come knocking - true story!
Also helps to separate your income which accountants will love you for - we’ll talk bank accounts in a minute.
And if/when you make a loss one year, it can be used to reduce tax on profits in the future. You should be thinking long term and strategic at this stage (and every stage tbh!).
Bank Accounts
Self-explanatory, but there's a few advantages to doing it a certain way.
If you are setting up a company, you’ll need a business account in the company name, so do that first, then the bank account.
I’ve found Starling to be good - easy to set up online and no charges for my moderate uses. Less faff than other banks that I’ve used before, but again you have to research this yourself and decide how best to proceed.
It’s useful to have that separate account regardless, as it’s easier to track outgoings and income and even when you make a loss, it’s a benefit if you’re set up as a company.
If you use your personal account, you will need to find a system that separates your personal finances from the book things.
And I’d suggest some form of accounting software - I use Quickbooks but lots of others out there, some free, with certain banks etc.
Final thoughts
Of course, this is all advice and there’s no one way to do this.
You may want to ignore all this as it sounds a bit hard and a bit much and you just want to write, right?
Well, that’s your choice, but if you’re thinking of the long term, future-you will thank current-you if you do all of this now while things are simple for you. It’s much harder to do it all in retrospect.
And I must finish by saying this is all advice based on my, and others who have shared, experiences in both trad and self-publishing. Please don’t do anything you’re not 100% sure about and haven’t researched thoroughly yourself.
Next time we will look at the writing side for independent author.