A successful independent publishing business is not difficult to set up or run; your success has much more to do with your mindset.
You might think that’s easy for me to say after being in business for over two decades. However, even in junior employees, it’s easy to see that ultimate success in their chosen career has little to do with ability or circumstance. Their level of success is more often due to how they think about the inevitable challenges they face.
Other than my experience, I have also studied the mindsets and habits of other successful authors. Some common attitudes and ways of approaching the business of self-publishing stand out.
I call these the five mindsets. The mindsets are:
- Successful authors know there are no barriers
- Successful authors understand art is art, and business is business
- Successful authors are entrepreneurial
- Successful authors think like a publisher
- Successful authors treat their writing as a business
Mindset 1: There are no Barriers
Anyone who has studied business will tell you it’s a truism that he who controls the means of production has the power. This had been the case since the invention of machines and didn’t change until the Internet opened up the world. There is a close parallel between the publishing industry today and the camera industry 20 years ago.
A few big-name companies dominated, with film the only medium used by “real” photographers. Then the digital camera and cheap color printer came along, followed a few years later by the smart-phone.
You may argue the finer points of history; however, the takeaway is the means of production (creating and printing a photo) went from being controlled by a few to being available to everyone.
Book publishing is the same. A few large companies no longer control the means of creating a book and getting it to readers. Access to print and digital publishing is available to everyone with an Internet connection.
This doesn’t mean becoming a successful author is easy; no more than having a digital camera makes you a photographer. Some will succeed. The majority will fail because they have not learned the lessons I am teaching you. To be a successful author, you don’t need a traditional publisher or an agent.
There are no barriers.
Write it down and stick it on your bathroom mirror. Carve it into a plank and nail it to the wall. Tattoo it on your forearm. Whatever you need to do to burn it in your brain because it’s the most important mindset of all.
In modern publishing, there is no walled garden, no golden palace. The gates to paradise are an illusion. The path ahead of you leads straight to your success, and there are no obstacles in your way you didn’t put there yourself. I think you get my point. Best to move on before I start to sound like a self-help guru.
Mindset 2: Art and Business are Separate
It’s essential for authors to remember when running their indie publishing business that art is art and business is business. Most creatives know this instinctively—Creative Brain is so different from Normal Brain, it’s almost like two people are running around in your head.
While this book is about your publishing business, understanding you must make time for your art is a crucial mindset. Without quality products, your publishing business is just a bookshop with empty shelves.
When you are making your art, make art. It’s imperative that you develop a mindset that allows you to do your creative work and exclude other distractions. Most authors experience this when trying to keep the editor at bay while in the middle of creating. Separating art and business becomes more difficult for self-published authors. This is because they also have other aspects of their publishing business encroaching on their writing time.
Learning to focus by removing distractions is a difficult skill to master. More so in the Internet age, where we’re besieged by distractions. It is, however, a skill you must learn to build a full-time career as a writer.
Once you “came out” as an aspiring author, I bet it surprised you how many people told you how they always wanted to write a book or had been writing for years.
Ninety-nine out of one-hundred of these people will never publish a book. Not because they all lack talent, but because they will never focus long enough to finish and publish a book.
Even if they publish one book, they will never achieve the level of long-term focus necessary to publish multiple books and build a profitable career.
I find the best way to develop this mindset is to set aside time in your schedule for creative time. It can be as little as an hour a day. It can be a day or two a week. Whatever works for you, but that time must be creative time. Turn off phones and email. Turn off the Internet. Ban the family from your workspace. Be ruthless.
Carving out time for your art can be a challenge to put into practice, so don’t be too hard on yourself at first. It’s something I still struggle with every week. I work in a home office attached to a house that’s empty most days, and I still distract myself. However, as I improve at removing distractions, I see my productivity take a step up each time.
My favorite tool for removing distractions is Cold Turkey Blocker. Not only is it hard to cheat (this coming from an ex-computer programmer), but it’s easy to set up. With Cold Turkey, you set a schedule and a list of programs to block during scheduled hours, and you’re done—bye-bye Facebook, news websites, HuffPo, Twitter and everything else that distracts you. Cold Turkey will even block gaming platforms like Steam and desktop games.
Mindset 3: Become an Author Entrepreneur
The third mindset is that you must learn to think like an entrepreneur.
Corporate-speak had unfortunately butchered the true meaning of entrepreneurship over the years. The original and simple definition of an entrepreneur is someone who “… sets up a business and takes risks hoping to make a profit”. Setting up the business is simple—it takes only a few hours and requires minimal financial outlay.
For authors, it’s the “risk” part that’s often the problem. For an introverted author, it’s hard to step out of their comfort zone, to take a risk and put themselves out there. However, to be successful as an independent author, you must step out of your comfort zone. You must take on tasks you would rather not do (e.g., marketing and accounting), and you must keep doing them until you win.
Part of becoming an author-entrepreneur is also learning to ask questions that lead to positive action.
An entrepreneur doesn’t ask, “Dan Brown’s books are full of plot holes and shallow characterizations, so why the hell does anyone buy this crap?”.
An entrepreneur asks, “Dan Brown can afford to feed Beluga caviar to his cat. How can I emulate his success?”.
An entrepreneurial mindset also allows you to see opportunities in the market where others do not. Early Kindle pioneers saw an opportunity in the digital book revolution that other authors did not. Pioneers like Hugh Howey, Amanda Hocking, Joe Konrath, and H.P. Mallory(to name a few).
It’s my firm belief that the unwillingness to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset and take risks is why talented authors fail. The fear of taking risks drives them to collect rejection letters from publishers for a decade. To eventually giving up when all they needed to do was put out their best work and let readers decide if their work is great or not.
Mindset 4: Think Like a Publisher
For most authors, the next mindset is the hardest to adopt. Once you finish your book, it’s no longer your baby, your labor of love, the expression of your heart and soul—it’s a widget.
Publishers don’t care about a book’s artistic use of metaphor, the soaring beauty of Chapter 3, or how the book will make the world a better place. Publishers care about whether the book will sell enough copies to cover the publisher’s costs and return a profit.
Publishers don’t pick best-sellers, because they know it’s a fool’s game—they wait until a book forges ahead of the crowd and then back it to the hilt. The also-rans are forgotten.
You won’t be this ruthless with your work, but it’s a helpful perspective for when you finish your masterpiece and put on your publisher’s hat.
A finished book is a product, or more accurately, an asset. We define an asset as something that generates an income and increases in value over time, like an investment property or shares in a company.
Too many authors think of the Big Win; the one book that will take them from instant noodles in front of the TV to champagne and caviar at the Ritz-Carlton. The problem with this thinking is that you are entrusting your writing career to blind luck. Publishers don’t think like this, and neither should you.
You, as a publisher, manage assets. Your books are assets. When you put money into a house or a bunch of shares, you expect to get a return on the investment. With a book, the investment is your time, with some additional costs if you pay for editing, covers, and layout.
So what is a good return on investment, you ask?
In investment circles, an average of 7% per annum over time is considered a solid return.
So, if you set your hourly rate at $40 an hour ($80,000 a year), a book that takes 300 hours to produce is an investment of $12,000.
To expand on our simple example, say you invested another $3000 in editing, typesetting, and book covers—bringing your total investment to $15,000.
7% of $15,000 is $1050. Can you make $1000 a year? If you were making $2 on your eBooks, that’s only 28 books a month.
$1000 a year is a much more achievable goal than waiting for a lottery win.
The catch here is you can’t live on $1000 a year; you need lots of books earning $1000 a year to make a decent living. If you think of your books as assets, you can see the one-book superstar dream for the con it is. How many professional property managers do you know own one house? Have you met a wealthy stockbroker who owns one share?
I always tell authors—if you have one book, you have a lottery ticket, but if you have two books, you have the start of an investment portfolio.
You need to stop listening to the “overnight success” stories online. Even in the rare case that it’s true, you’re looking at someone who won the publishing lottery. Your chances of winning are not better than those of any other lottery.
The immutable math of publishing is where most aspiring indies give up. To make a decent living, you must accumulate more assets (write more books) and get a better return on your existing assets (sell more books).
Lucky for you, this isn’t as hard as it looks. It is possible to build a full-time income out of books that don’t sell in high volumes by doing it repeatedly. The best thing is, if you keep putting out quality content, each book will increase sales of the rest, so over time your 500 a year seller can become a 5000 or 10,000 a year seller.
Mindset 5: Treat it Like a Business
The final mindset for building an independent publishing career is that it is a business, and you must treat it as a business.
Writing a book is just the beginning. Being able to write a book doesn’t qualify you to sell your book. Michael E. Gerber (The E-myth) calls this the Fatal Assumption—the technical work of a business is not the same as the work required to run a business that does technical work.
Translated to book publishing, this means that the craft and skill required to write books is totally different to the skills required to sell books.
The primary aim of this book is to teach you the skills needed to run a successful independent self-publishing business. To succeed, you must develop a business mindset.
Core to adopting a business mindset is implementing the five key criteria for a valid business:
- A business has business hours
- A business sets performance targets for employees
- A business has plans in place
- A business controls its finances; and
- A business hires experts
If you are missing any of these key criteria, you don’t have a business; you have a hobby.
A business has business hours
Even if business hours translates to “after the kids go to bed”, you need to allocate that time and be ruthless in protecting it. You wouldn’t keep a job long if you watched TV or went to a bar instead of turning up for work. You must treat your publishing business with the same level of respect.
A business sets performance targets for employees
A business expects a certain level of performance from its employees. You need to set production targets for yourself. In its simplest form, this is a word quota. A more comprehensive approach could be a project plan for your next book—complete with a deadline and significant milestones.
A business has plans in place
A business needs a plan. The plan does not have to be complex, but it must be in writing.
Your business plan should cover the basics:
- How many sales do you need to make each month to meet your income goals?
- If your sales are not achieving your goal, how do you plan to fix it?
- What rights do you want to manage yourself and what rights would you like to license to others? Rights include digital, audio, print, regional distribution, and translations.
- When a traditional publisher comes knocking at your door (and they will), what would you be willing to license to them and on what terms?
- Agents will also approach you in time. An agent is unnecessary in most English-language markets. They can, however, be useful for getting you into publishers that use agents as gatekeepers, or for foreign markets that need local expertise. You must plan for this eventuality, so you don’t give away the farm in your excitement.
A business controls its finances
You must be in control of your finances. At a minimum, you need a spreadsheet to record your publishing income and expenses.
You should also register your publishing business as a proper business. The rules vary from country to country, so I can’t provide any specific advice. However, when you are running a business enterprise, most countries allow you to claim legitimate expenses. A serious businessperson takes advantage of all the benefits their country’s laws provide.
A business hires experts
Hire professionals where you can. Remember, there is no “self” in indie publishing. You are running a small business and will need professional help for tasks where you lack the skills (or the motivation). I appreciate this can be tough early on, as we often start with little to no money. However, as I will show you in Chapter 11, you can find professional help for many publishing business tasks, even if you’re on a tight budget.
That’s it for the five mindsets. In the next chapter, we will cover the one thing all authors struggle with—book marketing.