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.

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

Do you want to sell more books and reach more readers?

Do you want to discover how to build an author career for the long-term as well as spike your book sales right now?

If you don’t know much about marketing, don’t worry. We all start with nothing.

I’m Joanna Penn and back in 2008, I had no book sales, no audience, no website, no social media, no podcast, no email list. No nothing.

Now I’m a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers and non-fiction. My books have sold over 500,000 copies in 86 countries, and I’m an award-winning creative entrepreneur and international speaker, making a multi-six-figure income with my writing.

Learning how to market my books and my personal brand changed my life. Yes, you need to write an awesome book, but you also need to know how to get it in front of the right readers.

How to Market a Book is for authors who want to sell more books, but it's also for those writers who want to think like an entrepreneur and build a long-term income. It's for traditionally published authors who want to take control of their future, and for self-published authors who want to jump-start a career.

There are short-term tactics for those who want to boost immediate sales, but the focus of the book is more about instilling values and marketing principles that will help your long-term career as a writer.

It's also about going beyond just the book, because these methods can take you from being an author into making money from other products, professional speaking, and creating opportunities that you can't even imagine yet.

In this completely updated Third Edition, you’ll discover:

˃˃˃ Part 1: Marketing Principles

Book marketing myths, how discoverability works, and the polarities of marketing that will determine what you choose to implement

˃˃˃ Part 2: Your Book Fundamentals

Prerequisites for success, how to optimise your book for online sales, categories and keywords, exclusivity, pricing and use of free, box-sets and bundling, and writing series

˃˃˃ Part 3: No Platform Needed. Short-term Marketing

How to get customer reviews and find book bloggers, paid advertising with email blasts, paid advertising with Facebook, Amazon Ads and ad stacking, algorithm hacking, big data, and production speed

˃˃˃ Part 4: Your Author Platform. Long-term Marketing

Building an author brand, author website, list-building and email marketing, content marketing, blogging, audio and podcasting, video and book trailers, social networking, professional speaking, marketing audiobooks, PR and publicity, TV, radio and traditional media

˃˃˃ Part 5: Launching Your Book

Why launching is different for indie authors, soft launch, launch spikes, post launch, how to relaunch backlist books. Includes an example book marketing strategy and launch plan checklist.

˃˃˃ Other books for authors by Joanna Penn. Available in ebook, print and audiobook.

How to Make a Living with your Writing

Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur

The Successful Author Mindset

Public Speaking for Authors, Creatives and Other Introverts

Co-writing a Book: Collaboration and Co-Creation for Writers

Successful Self-Publishing

Career Change: Stop hating your job, discover what you really want to do with your life, and start doing it!

Joann

Do you want to make a living with your writing?

Do you want to turn your words into multiple streams of income? 

I’m Joanna Penn and I left my corporate job a decade ago to become a full-time author entrepreneur. In this completely updated Third Edition, I’ll explain how I make a living with my writing and share tips from other writers on how you can do it too with practical, actionable advice that you can implement for yourself.

If you love to create and you’re ready to learn fresh skills in a fast-changing environment, this book will give you lots of ideas on how to make money with your words. 

Each chapter provides ideas you can use to research each opportunity in more detail and questions to guide your thought process. Sometimes it’s just about knowing what’s out there in order to find what’s right for you.

The book includes: 

• Introduction 
• First principles 

Part 1: How to Make Money with Books

• 1.1 Your publishing options and how the industry has changed
• 1.2 Your book is a valuable intellectual property asset
• 1.3 Traditional publishing
• 1.4 Self-publishing or becoming an indie author
• 1.5 Write more books
• 1.6 Write books that people want to buy
• 1.7 Publish in multiple formats
• 1.8 Publish globally
• 1.9 Sell direct to your audience
• 1.10 Market your books

Part 2: How to Make Money with your Writing in Other Ways

• 2.1 Your author ecosystem
• 2.2 Affiliate income
• 2.3 Crowdfunding, patronage and subscription
• 2.4 Professional speaking, teaching, performing, and live events
• 2.5 Online courses, webinars, events, and membership sites
• 2.6 Advertising and sponsorship
• 2.7 Physical products and merchandise
• 2.8 Freelance writing and ghostwriting
• 2.9 Consulting or coaching
• 2.10 Author services
• 2.11 Other ways to make money with your writing

The transition to making a living with your writing

If you want to make a living with your writing, download a sample or buy now!

Being a writer is not just about typing. It’s also about surviving the roller-coaster of the creative journey.

Self-doubt, fear of failure, the need for validation, perfectionism, writer’s block, comparisonitis, overwhelm, and much more. When you’re going through these things, it can feel like you’re alone. But actually, they are part of the creative process, and every author goes through them too.

This book collects the mindset issues that writers experience, that I have been through myself over the last decade, and that perhaps you will experience at different times on the creative journey.

Each small chapter tackles a possible issue and then offers an antidote, so that you can dip in and out over time. It includes excerpts from my own personal journals as well as quotes from well-known writers. I hope it helps you on the road to becoming a successful author. The book includes:

Part 1: Mindset Aspects of Creativity and Writing

* Self-doubt and imposter syndrome

* Need for validation

* Fear of failure

* Fear of rejection and criticism

* Your inner critic

* Fear of judgment

* Perfectionism

* Writer’s block and procrastination

* “I’m not creative. I don’t have any ideas”

* “My writing isn’t original”

* “Why write? There are too many books in the world already”

* “I don’t have the time or self-discipline to write”

* “I’m not finding writing much fun. It’s hard work.”

* “I keep starting things and not finishing them”

* Dealing with friends, family and writer’s groups

* “How do I find my voice?”

* Comparisonitis or “Everyone is better than me”

Part 2: Mindset Aspects after Publishing

* Anti-climax and creative dissatisfaction

* What is your definition of success?

* What happens when you tell people that you’re an author?

* “I’m overwhelmed”

* Dealing with fans, authenticity and drawing the line

* Haters gonna hate

* Ambition, fame and fortune

* Giving up

Part 3: Tips for Success on the Author Journey

* Know thyself

* Understand and hone your creative process

* Develop professional habits

* Manage professional relationships

* Take control of your writing career

* Find your community

* Keep learning

* Schedule rest and take time off

* Think long term. Create a body of work

You're not alone on the author's journey. Download a sample or buy now.

• Identify what's really stopping you from reaching your goals
• Say no and set boundaries for others -- and for yourself
• Find more time to write
• Make the most of your writing time
• Dictate your words for a more efficient and healthy writing life
• Use outsourcing to buy yourself more creative time
• Work with co-writers to produce more books
• Use tools for specific aspects of productivity
• Focus on physical and mental health to boost your productive time

Are you ready to take the next step in your author journey?

Art for the sake of art is important. Writing for the love of it, or to create something beautiful on the page, is absolutely worthwhile and critical to expand the sum of human expression.

But I’m not here to talk about creativity or the craft of writing in this book. My aim is to take the result of your creativity into the realm of actually paying the bills.

˃˃˃ To take you from being an author to running a business as an author.

I was a business consultant for 13 years before I gave up my job in September 2011 to become a full-time author-entrepreneur. I worked for large corporates and small businesses, implementing financial systems across Europe and Asia Pacific.

I’ve also started a number of my own businesses ”" a scuba dive charter boat in New Zealand, a customized travel website, a property investment portfolio in Australia as well as my freelance consultancy. I’ve failed a lot and learned many lessons in my entrepreneurial life and I share them all in this book.

In the last six years of being an author, through tempestuous changes in the publishing world, I've learned the business side of being a writer and I now earn a good living as an author-entrepreneur. I’m an author because it's my passion and my joy but also because it's a viable business in this age of global and digital opportunity.

˃˃˃ In the book, you will learn:

** Part 1: From Author To Entrepreneur

The arc of the author’s journey, definition of an author-entrepreneur, deciding on your definition of success. Plus/ should you start a company?

** Part 2: Products and Services

How you can turn one manuscript into multiple streams of income by exploiting all the different rights, various business models for authors and how to evaluate them, information on contracts, copyright and piracy. Plus/ putting together a production plan.

** Part 3: Employees, Suppliers and Contractors

The team you need to run your business. Your role as author and what you’re committing to, as well as co-writing. Editors, agents and publishers, translators, book designers and formatters, audiobook narrators, book-keeping and accounting, virtual assistants. Plus/ how to manage your team.

** Part 4: Customers

In-depth questions to help you understand who your customers are and what they want, as well as customer service options for authors.

** Part 5: Sales and Distribution

How to sell through distributors and your options, plus all the information you need to sell direct. ISBNs and publishing imprints ”" do you need them? Plus/ your options for pricing.

** Part 6: Marketing

Key overarching marketing concepts. Book-based marketing including cover, back copy and sales pages on the distributors. Author-based marketing around building your platform, and customer-based marketing around your niche audience and targeted media.

** Part 7: Financials

Changing your mindset about money, and assessing where you are now vs where you want to be. Revenues of the author business and how to increase that revenue. Costs of the author business and funding your startup. Banking, PayPal, accounting, reporting, tax and estate planning.

** Part 8: Strategy and Planning

Developing your strategy and business plan. Managing your time and developing professional habits. The long term view and the process for becoming a full-time author. Plus/ looking after yourself.

Artificial Intelligence is already embedded in much of our daily lives and it's increasingly moving into realms that impact authors and the publishing industry. We need to embrace the opportunities and engage in conversations around possible threats in order to reinvent our industry for a very different future.

The pandemic of 2020 has accelerated converging technologies and changed human behaviour across the globe to favour digital business models. In this book, I discuss current technological and societal trends and consider the opportunities for authors and the publishing industry over the next decade.

• Writing in the age of AI, including Natural Language Generation models like GPT-3
• Copyright law, Blockchain for smart contracts, and micro-payments
• AI-assisted translation
• Voice technologies, streaming and subscription
• Virtual worlds and augmented reality
• Global, digital, mobile. A wave of new writers.
  

It’s time to change our business model.

If we embrace this wave of converging technology, we can create abundance in our industry, enabling new forms of creativity, growing the market with new products and experiences, and expanding revenue for the entire supply chain.

We are creators. We turn ideas in our heads into books in the physical realm.  We can use these technologies to surf the wave of change and invent the decade ahead — together. 

I hope you will join me on the journey.