How to Start your Writing Business: Famous Writer, Inc.

by Ron Estrada

Every writer has uttered the words “I want to write full time someday!” Unless you are the child of Donald and (insert bride name here) Trump, you probably don’t have the luxury of buying a beach-house in the Keys and living out your Hemingwayesque fantasy. You have bills, a mortgage, car payments, and probably someone in your home demanding food on a daily basis.

I’m here to tell you that your fantasy can become a reality. But you need to pursue this dream just as any other businessman would pursue his or her dream. Really, the business of writing isn’t all that much different than the aspiring chef who decides to open her own bakery. The odds of success are pretty much the same. It all comes down to hard work, persistence, and a plan. A little talent is helpful, but I’ll assume you possess some of that or you wouldn’t be here. If you’re not sure, reply to this post and I’ll check for spelling and grammar. Throw in a good hook. Bam. You’re a writer.

So here’s your to-do list. Your plan. Pull up a new document and type across the top in 48 point Harrington “My Plan.” Yes, it’s simple. Save your genius for the book. Okay, how do we start our writing business? Let’s do it like we’d open our bakery.

How to Start your Writing Business

1. Learn to bake. I pray you’d never hang an “Open” sign on your new bakery if you’ve never opened a box of cake mix. And if you’ve opened a box of cake mix, I hope you’ve figured out how to do it from scratch. Then figured out how to create your own recipe. And, for Pete’s sake, I hope you’ve handed out samples of your creations to friends and relatives to try before you try to make money from them. Writing is no different. You all know this. It’s as basic as it gets. Write. Every day. Learn to follow the rules. Copy Steinbeck if you have to. Once you’ve done that, then you can plot and craft a novel of your own. It’ll be bland. It’ll be vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting. Correct, but no one is going to pay you for it. After that, you can try tossing in some of your own ideas. Stir it up a bit. Pass it around to friends and family, who will lie and tell you it’s wonderful, so go find people who don’t like you as much and get them to read it. Maybe then your ready for that fat #27.86 royalty check.
2. Research how much it will cost to open a bakery. Talk to other bakery owners who won’t be competing with you. Ask them how much it costs to run their business (if you really want to be shocked, actually ask a bakery owner). What’s their overhead, monthly expenses. What surprises have come upon their little business. For writers, thankfully, we don’t need brick and mortar. We do need a kitchen, though. You may already have the computer, desk, printer, etc. But you’ll be using these necessities 8-12 hours a day now. How often will these things need to be replaced? How many conferences will you attend? How much do they cost (and don’t cheat and leave out the hotel, travel, meals…it’s a business!)? What other expenses might a writer incur? A gym membership maybe? Make a list. Ask full-time writers.
3. Is there a market for you cupcakes? This is a biggie. I just watched a bakery shut its doors because it opened in a not-so-affluent area. Shockingly, people just above the poverty line will not pay $60 for a cake. You’re not limited by geography, of course, but you need to know if there’s an audience for your writing. If your sub-sub-genre is Amish-Zombie-Chick-Lit, you’d better find out if there’s a readership out there (I’m willing to bet there is). I know, you’re an artist. Artists don’t care about an audience. It’s art. Yeah, whatever. I’m here to talk business. You with me, art boy? Then let’s not be an artist of the starving variety.
4. Get your financial house in order. This is huge. And probably the one thing that will end your dream before you read your first one-star Amazon review. Here’s the rule of thumb for starting your own business. You want to be debt-free, and I’ll throw in the mortgage. Unless you’ve got a spouse as back-up, do not go into business with a mortgage hanging over your head. This can be done. Check out DaveRamsey.com and either get his Financial Peace course or buy his book. You’d be amazed how quickly you can be debt-free when you get what Dave calls Gazelle-like intensity. After you’ve destroyed your debt like a terrier on a bunny farm, you’ll want to have one year of living expenses saved up. For normal people, it’s a 3-6 month emergency fund. But you’re not normal. You’re a writer in an uncertain market. For the average family, that will be around $40,000. Remember, it’s living expenses. You can live on little. Run the math and strip out the daily trip to Starbucks, you’ll see. Be sure to have life insurance, medical insurance, and a retirement fund started. Remember, we want to eliminate the “starving” from artist.
5. Treat it like a job. Once you clock in for work that first day, don’t take your first break after 20 minutes and catch up with your facebook friends. This is survival. You get paid to make little letters into words into sentences into paragraphs into something magical and wonderful. You also need to market, communicate with your agent and editor, and research. For no less than 8 hours a day, and more likely 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, you are focused on a writing-related activity. If you don’t despise writing every now and then, you’re doing something wrong. When you’ve made your first million you can back off…if your agent will let you (she will not).
6. Did you fail? Go back to step 3 and start again. Henry Ford failed something like a dozen times before he launched Ford Motor Co. Few businessmen hit a home run on the first try. If you do, go back to step 3, maybe even step 1, and regroup. You may have to go back to work as an accountant or something equally horrifying, but you’ll be energized because you’ll probably have a good idea where you went wrong and how to fix it.

Plan your move into the Writing Biz

Okay, those are the steps. Now, on your “My Plan” draft, lay down the steps and a timeline. If it will take you fifteen years to pay off the mortgage, so be it. Now you have a target date to shoot for. I’d bet you a dozen vanilla cupcakes that you’ll beat that target, now that you’ve got that goal in mind and a little fire inside. Note that this isn’t the plan for publication. We’re way past that people. Yes, I know most of you aren’t published. Neither am I. This is just one more small step in the big plan. Look at it in that light and it’s no more difficult than making a cake nummy enough to ask for payment. You can learn the craft. Now you need to be Writer, Inc.

Now get back to work.