A profitable author business plan for your books is necessary for authors who seriously plan on making a living off of their books. A book is a product, and therefore you as an author are a business. Therefore, a business plan for your book acts as a roadmap towards becoming a profitable author. Without a plan, you are throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks.
Social media campaigns, KDP ads, and media outreach are all great activities to promote your book, but they need to be tied to a plan to work. If you do not see any book sales, you probably don’t have a strong business plan behind all your marketing activities.
To start generating serious book sales, you need to shift your mindset. This means thinking in business terms. If you want to make money from publishing books, you need to create a plan and act on it! A profitable author business plan will only work if action is behind it.
A Profitable Author Business Plan Is The Starting Line to Success
Every author dreams of becoming a bestseller, impacting readers, having their book read and loved, and retiring from their book sales. But to get there, you need a plan, otherwise your book will not reach its full potential. No business succeeded without a plan, and the same goes for books.
So, are you ready to make money from your book? Then it is time to create your own author business plan.
In this article, we are going to outline the nine sections of your profitable author business plan and dive deep into what you want to achieve and what true value your book gives your readers.
What Is an Author Business Plan?
A business plan for authors is a detailed action plan to outline your goals, partnerships, revenue streams, and cost structure. It is also used to outline your book’s value, target readership, activities, and resources.
Think of a business plan as a guide or a roadmap for your book’s success. Each plan will outline your goals and how you will achieve them. We usually picture multi-page, in-depth, formal booklets when we think of business plans. However, as an author, you only need a lean business plan consisting of simple bullet points and essential projections, making the planning process much less daunting.
At its heart, a profitable author business plan is just a plan for how your books will sell and become bestsellers.
The benefits of having a business plan for authors
It is a shame that so many authors think business plans are just for corporations, startups, or small businesses. The truth is that business planning offers serious benefits for anyone who has a business. If you are an author, you are a business.
So what can a solid strategy for building your author brand and readership help you accomplish? A thorough business plan for authors will help you to:
- Gain clarity around your vision for your writing career and sales.
- Nail down what exactly will help grow your readership. Define what actions, partnerships, and resources will help you reach your objectives and goals.
- Recognize and filter out the distractions, and define which actions and activities will help you sell more books, reach your goals, and increase projects. You’ll prevent yourself from wasting time on things that don’t work or don’t contribute to your success.
- Determine your future needs ahead of time while learning which platforms you need to be on and what software or resources you need to be successful.
- Beat inertia and become confident in your actions. Knowing what items will move your book forward and help you gain new readers will give you confidence.
- Notice opportunities to reward yourself for both small accomplishments and big wins. You will get a clearer understanding of what success looks like for you.
What goes into a business plan for authors?
When creating a business plan, I love using the Business Model Canvas developed by Alexander Osterwalder of Strategyzer. It provides an overview of a business as a whole, and it is a great tool to help authors gain insights into their readers in a simple format.
The Business Model Canvas is a very visual way of outlining the business side of your book. All you need are colored pens, post-it notes, and an empty Business Model Canvas, which you can download here. Make sure you print the template as large as possible to have enough space for your ideas.
How to fill out your author business plan
The Business Model Canvas categorizes and outlines an author’s business processes, systems, and internal activities into nine separate categories. Each category represents the four significant aspects of a business: your readers, product (the book), infrastructure, and financial viability. Below is an explanation for all nine categories.
1. Readership segments: Who are your target readers?
Defining and understanding your readership segments is an essential part of a business plan for authors. It is key to ensuring that you target the right group of readers for your book.
To define an influential readership segment, you must first know who your readers are. Then you must list these types of readers in terms of priority, including a list of potential future readers. Each segment of readers fits into a category, e.g. moms, teenagers, dads, homeowners, engineers, etc.
2. Value propositions: Why will readers buy and read your book?
An author’s value proposition sets their book apart and makes it valuable to readers. It answers the question: “Why would readers want to read your book?” For most authors, a value proposition is going to be qualitative, meaning it will highlight the book’s experience and results for readers.
3. Channels: How is your book promoted, sold, and delivered?
In this section, the author outlines the channels and mediums they plan on using to share their value proposition to one of their readership segments. Authors will want to pick channels that their audience engages with regularly. For example, if you target moms, you will probably want to be on Pinterest. When choosing which channels to be a part of, it is important to know which platforms your future readers are using.
There are two basic categories of channels for authors:
- The first is author-owned channels, such as an author’s website.
- The second category is partner channels, such as distributors.
A company can choose either one category or employ a combination of both. Most authors, however, are going to select a combination of both.
4. Reader relationships: How do you plan to interact with your readers?
An author must decide on the type of relationship they want to foster with their readers. Knowing this will help create financial success and sustainability.
Reader relationships can be categorized as follows:
- Automated services: An automated service uses technology and tools to create an experience for potential readers. The goal of creating this experience is to lead people towards purchasing your book.
- Communities: Creating communities of readers (on social media, for example) allows authors to communicate with them directly. This allows for an enhanced reader experience because the community allows them to share their experiences and engage with the author’s works.
- Co-creation: Co-creation involves the author asking their readers for their opinions on future projects. This allows the reader to directly influence how the author’s next book will turn out.
Most authors will establish a relationship that combines all three of the above categories.
5. Revenue streams: How does your book earn revenue?
A revenue stream is an author’s method to get their readers to buy into their brand. It can be created through the following ways:
- The first book: This is a no-brainer and should be the focus.
- More books: An author continues to write and sell more books.
- Promotional products: An author sells promotional products such as bookmarks, t-shirts, pillows, etc.
- A Workshop: Maybe you have more to offer outside of the book and want to create a workshop that gives more benefit to readers.
- Speaking: You have a great book and people want to hear about what you have to say face to face.
- Advertising: An author charges others to advertise their products on the author’s website or social media channels.
6. Key activities: What strategic things do you need to do to get book sales?
Activities are key to producing the author’s value proposition. An author must list the key activities relevant to getting more book sales. These activities are essential processes that need to happen for the business plan to be effective and help drive sales. Key activities will coincide with revenue streams. Now, it is essential to evaluate which activities are key by adding or removing some and assess their impact as you implement them. Key activities could include ads, media outreach, an instagram campaign, or a testimonial outreach. There are endless activities you can do. But it is crucial to pick the ones that will generate the most book sales.
7. Key resources: What unique strategic assets must you have to sell your book?
Key resources are the assets behind how an author provides value to their readers. For example, your resource could be giving away the first chapter of your book or even giving away a few copies of your print book in a contest. Think of resources as what items do you need to generate sales.
8. Key partnerships: Who do you need to partner with to ensure your book succeeds?
Every author needs to form partnerships with distributors, libraries, bookstores, and other key stakeholders, to help promote their book. Partnerships can be categorized as follows:
- Industry-related partnerships (with a publisher, influencer, libraries, etc.)
- Joint ventures
- Relationships between buyers and suppliers
Once these key partners are identified, you can start making future partnership plans.
9. Cost structure: What are the book’s major cost drivers?
This section defines the cost of publishing and promoting your book (a.k.a. your business). A realistic understanding of the costs of an author’s business is one of the hallmarks of a good business model. Therefore, it is essential to list all the costs on your business plan to calculate your expected profit. Some costs may be decreased through specific measures, while others may go up if you decide that an investment in a particular section will increase book sales.
The Business Model Canvas is very visual, helping to give you a clear overview of your goals and how to reach them. It also provides a breakdown of the significant items impacting your growth. At Talk+Tell, we use our own version of The Business Model Canvas with all our authors when they first start working with us.
How to use your profitable author business plan to achieve faster growth
Your profitable author business plan will help you get ahead and sell more books. Authors who write business plans grow 30 percent faster than those who don’t. However, just writing a business plan does not guarantee your success.
The best way for your business plan to help grow your readership is to use it as an ongoing management tool. To do this, your business plan must be constantly revisited to reflect what campaigns and tactics are currently working to grow your readership and which ones are not.
When you’re running a business, you are learning new things every day: what your readers like, what they don’t like, which marketing tactics work, which ones don’t, etc. Your business plan should reflect those learnings to guide your future strategy.
Conclusion
If you’re serious about making more money as an author and aren’t sure how to make that happen, then creating a business plan is your first step. Business plans are for serious authors who want to get more than a thousand book sales per month and turn writing into a full-time career. Remember: a business plan is fluid and always evolving with your books. So always review and re-examine your plan regularly to help keep yourself and your writing career on track.
Reach out to us at Talk+Tell if you have any other questions about creating a business plan!
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