Taking care of YOUR Business

My short story is now a novella. If I was to be completely accurate about it, it was always a novella, only I didn’t pay enough attention to what differentiated a short story from a novella to have known that up front. Turns out, it’s kind of nebulous and is defined largely on your works word count. Go figure. You live, you learn.

Hopefully.

More about the novella in a later blog. I can’t dwell on that now, I have business to take care of. Actual business. I would much rather be finishing my novella. I’m in a good groove and I’ve got enough worthy plot lines, dialog, and quantum foam floating around my head to finish a first draft of the story—and surprise myself a couple of times along the way—in about a week.

But alas, that’s not what’s happening. Like many of you who may be writers, I’m hitting the writing of the book—aka MY JOB—intermittently. Why? I have kids for one thing, and this year, I’m the one at home with them until my writing career actually earns me some scratch. But equally as demanding, and possibly even more draining on my psyche, until I earn my way out of this position, I am research, pre-production, production, sales, advertising, marketing, information technology, and finance. For “The Last Interrogation,” “The Data Tsunami,” robmontraix.com, facebook.com/RobMontraixOfficial, and robmontraix.blogspot.com, I’m it. I am not complaining, but perhaps I could use a hug.

Sigh … there, that’s better.

I feel beat up from the feet up, as they say.

I should be thankful. Through the wonders of late 20th/early 21st Century self-education, I’ve been able to get a lot done and I’m aware of that. I’ve designed, coded and published my website, robmontraix.com (never miss the opportunity for a relevant plug, or so Marketing Director Rob Montraix tells me); I’ve written, edited and published these blogs, which I am proud of; made an initial attempt at building my Facebook presence as an author, and popped out some tweets here and there, though certainly not enough by the Twitter-verse’s standards, I’m sure. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, and I wrote, edited, and completed a nearly 500 page novel, began my second novel, and wrote two-thirds of a novella. I’m not bragging about what I have done. To be honest, I’d sell one of my left appendages for some help here. And I did have the great fortune of help from an editor that I really respect on “The Last Interrogation.” 

But there’s so much more to be done before I can breath.

With all of that going on, what else is there?

The business. This is my job, whether my family or in-laws see it as such or not, it really is. And if I want them to understand that, I have to treat it that way. This is my small business, hopefully someday to be a big business. In addition to producing my product—i.e. the books—a business plan, a marketing plan, financials, and technical resources (including databases of contacts, agents, and self-publishing resources) are a must. Perhaps most importantly, I need sales and leadership.

If you’ve done enough business plans, and I have, you may be able to get by with structuring your financials to represent the business plan you have in your head. If you’re new to the world of business, do your business plan once you’ve got a product to sell.

I mean, really, who else is going to do that for you. Your agent? Your publisher? Getting to an agent is a business in-and-of itself, let alone landing one that will do what needs to be done with your baby. Publishers are responsible for marketing and production—end of story. And should you really trust an industry that openly admits that they have “no idea of what sells,” (their justification for paying you only 15% of the income earned on your product), and who takes all of an income they may advance you for production to pay for their marketing, distribution, and physical product? Unless you have accounting, marketing, IT, advertising, and sales people willing to work pro bono for you, well, that leaves you in the same boat I am. She’s a mighty fine vessel, though, but she needs a good captain.

And that can be tough. Relentless, undaunting belief in yourself as a writer and a businessman/businesswoman, and an equal commitment to the quality of your book(s) are the requisite to making it. You have to believe. If you don’t, why should anybody else.

Jaw up, stomach in, chest out; OK, you’ve got the pride. Now you can’t stop, whatever you do, you can not stop. Not this week. Not this year. Not this decade. You have to see this through. Taking care of YOUR business is a major part of that.

Preparing for every contingency seems a common trait amongst those who are successful in any business. Then, when things don’t go the way they planned—because nothing does—they’re able to adjust and succeed in spite of the reasons they shouldn’t have. Those of us in the 2012 literary marketplace will most likely NOT have the business support of a clearly defined industry interested in developing our creative genius so that all parties involved can make a solid living off of providing quality literary entertainment to the masses. If you do, more power to you. I will continue to pursue that option as it would put some semblance of food on the table in the near term, which would be nice. If you and/or I aren’t that fortunate, why leave our fates in the hands of others? Somebody has to run my business.

The bottom line is, like everything else in this process, the responsibility falls to me. I must run my business for me to succeed. If I get the help of others along the way, that would be more than swell.

I think I’ll finish my novella this month. As I said before, I would rather finish it this week, but I have COGS to figure and spreadsheets to create.