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    Your Author Business Plan: Take Your Author Career To The Next Level
    Your Author Business Plan: Take Your Author Career To The Next Level
    Your Author Business Plan: Take Your Author Career To The Next Level
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Your Author Business Plan: Take Your Author Career To The Next Level

    By Joanna Penn

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    About this ebook

    You are an author. You turn ideas into reality in the shape of a book. 

     

    You turn the thoughts in your head into valuable intellectual property assets. You understand how powerful the written word can be. Now it's time to use your words to create a business plan to take your writing career to the next level — whatever that means for your situation.

     

    I'm Joanna Penn and I've been a full-time author-entrepreneur for almost a decade. In this book, I'll guide you through the process of creating a business plan that will help you achieve your creative and financial goals.

     

    It's relevant for fiction and non-fiction authors, as well as those who want to include other products, services, and income streams. It's also applicable whether you're just starting out or if you already have a mature author business. A plan helps at any stage of the journey.

    • Part 1 covers your business summary and author brand, taking you through the process of deciding the overall direction for what you want to achieve and who you want to serve.
    • Part 2 goes into the production process around your writing, publishing and licensing, products and services.
    • Part 3 covers your marketing strategy and author eco-system.
    • Part 4 goes into the financial side of your business, from mindset to revenue and costs, as well as paying yourself now and into the future.

    The final chapter will give you a framework for simplifying your plan and turning it into achievable steps across a chosen timeline.

    In each section, I give examples from my own business plan and there are questions for you to answer, templates, and resources that might help along the way, as well as example business plans for different kinds of authors.

     

    There is also a Companion Workbook available in print with all the questions so you can write in that if you prefer. 

    It's time to take your author career to the next level. Let's get started on your business plan.

     

    Please note: This book doesn't go into detail on how to do the specific topics, for example, how to self-publish a book, or how to do content marketing. I cover those topics in my other Books for Authors. 

     

    If you already have my previous business book, Business for Authors, this is a rewritten and updated sub-set of that material, focusing on the specifics of a plan as opposed to everything involved in running a business. This book acts as a companion as well as a more recent update to my own author journey. It will help you bring it all together into a coherent plan that you can use to take your author business into the future. 

     

    Books for Authors by Joanna Penn

    • How to Write Non-Fiction
    • How to Market a Book
    • How to Make a Living with your Writing
    • Productivity for Authors
    • Successful Self-Publishing
    • Your Author Business Plan
    • The Successful Author Mindset
    • Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives and Other Introverts
    • Audio for Authors: Audiobooks, Podcasting, and Voice Technologies
    • The Healthy Writer
    • Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur
    • Career Change
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoanna Penn
    Release dateDec 10, 2020
    ISBN9781913321536

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      Book preview

      Your Author Business Plan - Joanna Penn

      Your Author Business Plan

      Your Author Business Plan

      Take Your Author Career to the Next Level

      Joanna Penn

      Curl Up Press

      Contents

      Introduction

      What is a Business Plan?

      I. Business Summary and Brand

      1.1 Company structure

      1.2 Business summary and big-picture goals

      1.3 Author brand

      1.4 Comparison authors and reader avatar

      II. Production

      2.1 Products and/or services

      2.2 Writing process and production schedule

      2.3 Publishing and licensing strategy

      2.4 Pricing strategy

      III. Marketing

      3.1 Strategy. Author ecosystem

      3.2 Author website

      3.3 Email list and ARC team

      3.4 Content marketing

      3.5 Paid advertising

      3.6 Social media

      3.7 Author network

      IV. Financials

      4.1 Money mindset

      4.2 Revenue model and income

      4.3 Initial investment and on-going costs

      4.4 Paying yourself first and long-term investing

      Your Next Steps

      Example Business Plans

      Conclusion

      Appendix 1: Business Plan Template

      Appendix 2: List of Questions

      Appendix 3: Asset Master List

      Appendix 4: Resources

      Appendix 5: Bibliography

      More Books And Courses From Joanna Penn

      About Joanna Penn

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      You are an author.

      You turn ideas into reality in the shape of a book. You turn the thoughts in your head into valuable intellectual property assets. You understand how powerful the written word can be.

      This book will help you use your words to create a business plan to take your writing career to the next level — whatever that means for your situation.

      I’m Joanna Penn and in 2009, I created a business plan for what became The Creative Penn Limited, a multi-six-figure company with books at its heart. I’m an award-nominated New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller and dark fantasy author as J.F. Penn, and I also write non-fiction for authors. I’m an award-winning podcaster with two shows, The Creative Penn and Books and Travel, and an international professional speaker.

      My business has multiple streams of income, including books in different formats in multiple stores, and I’ve sold copies in 159 countries. I also have online courses, affiliate income, podcast sponsorship and Patreon, among others.

      But it wasn’t always like this.

      I started out with one book, no audience, and no experience in publishing or online sales and marketing. But I wrote a plan for my creative and financial future and took action on my ideas, learning the necessary skills along the way. Since then, I’ve continued to work toward those original goals and in 2011, I left my corporate job to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. I’ve never gone back and I love my creative, entrepreneurial life.

      In this book, I’ll guide you through the process of creating a business plan that will help you achieve your creative and financial goals.

      It’s relevant for fiction and non-fiction authors, as well as those who want to include other products, services, and income streams. It’s also applicable whether you’re just starting out or if you already have a mature author business. A plan helps at any stage of the journey.

      Your business plan structure

      This book follows the structure of the business plan so you can focus on each section in turn as you go through.

      Part 1 covers your business summary and author brand, taking you through the process of deciding the overall direction for what you want to achieve and who you want to serve.

      Part 2 goes into the production process around your writing, publishing and licensing, products and services.

      Part 3 covers your marketing strategy and author ecosystem.

      Part 4 goes into the financial side of your business, from mindset to revenue and costs, as well as paying yourself now and into the future.

      The final chapter will give you a framework for simplifying your plan and turning it into achievable steps across a chosen timeline.

      In each section, I give examples from my own business plan and there are questions for you to answer and resources that might help along the way.

      You can find templates and a workbook to download and fill in and more resources at:

      www.TheCreativePenn.com/yourplan

      There is also a Companion Workbook available in print with all the questions so you can write in that if you prefer.

      Importantly, this book doesn’t go into detail on how to do the specific topics, for example, how to self-publish a book, or how to do content marketing. I cover that in my other Books for Authors.

      If you already have my previous business book, Business for Authors, this is a rewritten and updated sub-set of that material, focusing on the specifics of a plan as opposed to everything involved in running a business. This book acts as a companion as well as a more recent update to my own author journey. It will help you bring it all together into a coherent plan that you can use to take your author business into the future.

      Let’s get into the details.

      Note: There are affiliate links within this book to products and services that I recommend and use personally. This means that I receive a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you, and in some cases, you may receive a discount for using my link. I only recommend products and services that I believe are great for authors, so I hope you find them useful.

      What is a Business Plan?

      A‘business plan’ might seem like a dry, soulless document — the complete opposite to the creative words that you pour onto the page for your books. But think again.

      Business is creative

      Look around you. People working in some kind of business created much of what you see. Business creates jobs and meaningful work. It fuels income and enables money to flow between people. It turns ideas into reality.

      If you can reframe business as creative, then you can also reframe your business plan that way. You are actively shaping your future writing career, and what could be more creative than that!

      If you can articulate what you want, you can turn it into reality

      You might think you know what you want to achieve and how to do that, but when you try to write it down, you may well discover that your thought process is fuzzy and you haven’t quite worked out what you want to say. That happens with our books, and will likely happen with your business plan, but the very act of writing it down will help make it clearer.

      You’ll discover where you’re being over-ambitious, or over-complicating things, or trying to do too much based on the time you have. You’ll also find aspects that will challenge you and help you face the fears that are part of every creative life.

      You’ll also consider the reasons behind what you want. So often we plow ahead into busy tasks and getting things done without ensuring that our actions will lead

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