Act Like a Publisher

I recently read an amazing series of articles written by one of the most prolific writers I know, Dean Wesley Smith.

This is a man who has already written more books than most of us will ever write.

And from everything I've read about him on his blog and in his books, is that the reason that he is so successful is because he acts like a publisher.
I know of far too many writers who sit and think that it only takes one book to make a lot of money.

Then there are others who know that the only way to success as an author is to write lots of books. Not only that, but they love to write so don't have any problem focusing and getting their writing done.

But if you want to make money writing books, then you need to act like a publisher, not just a writer.

You need a business plan which includes how much you want to earn as well as how you are going to achieve it.

Not only that but you need to also consider a business name, how you will structure the business (inventory, accountant, bank accounts, etc), who will do all you the work (you or freelancers or cover designers, editors,etc) and how you will market your books.

You also need a publishing schedule, as in how many books you aim to publish every month or year, how you are going to publish them (digital, print or both) and how you're going to sell them. It's best if you decide these things early on so that you can set up your processes and then you can get down to the actual writing of your books without wondering what you'll need to do next.

Having a 5 year plan is best so that you have long term goals to keep working towards and you'll know what you have to do for the next 5 years and you can just keep on writing and writing.

And naturally, the most important thing you need is to know what books you'll be writing. You may want to write fiction or non-fiction or both. You can write a whole series of books or write books that stand alone.

But a 5 year plan means you'll need to write a lot of books, especially if you want to earn all your income this way. Of course you don't need a 5-year list of books to write but you at least need to know what books you'll be writing each year.

And it's not just the books that you'll need to write, but also emails, blog posts, articles, etc to keep the marketing machine working.

So can you do all this on your own?

You see, so many writers think that writing books for living is easy. But it's not. As I've shown you it takes hours of work every day.

You need to be dedicated and you need to have focus. And most of all you need a publishing plan.

You have to treat your publishing as a proper business and not as a hobby.

And most of all you need to be able to put in the hours to get all the work done.

No one said it would be easy.

But if you love to write, it sure is a lot of (exhausting) fun.