In my last blog post, we looked at how to start making a business plan as a self-publishing author and why it is so important to do this. In this blog post, we will be continuing this theme, looking at how to apply your goals to your business plan and how to create this business plan. However, we will start by quickly reviewing why having a business plan is so important.
Why Have a Business Plan?
Having a business plan makes it easier for you to organise what you should be doing. If you are ever stuck for ideas, you can take a look back at the plan and see what needs doing and how you planned to achieve this. It also keeps all of the planning together, so that you don’t need to be worrying about making it up as you go along. It helps you to reach your goals by making you plan out a strategy.
Starting Your Business Plan
At this point, you should have your mission statement and your SMART goals from my last blog post. Now it is time to start building your business plan around them. When you are creating it, keep your original mission statement in mind. Write it at the top so that you remember it! You can then aim to apply this to every idea you have in your plan.
Next, start adding your SMART goals. It might work best if you divide these up so that you have one section on writing your book (if you haven’t finished it), one for editing, one for getting the cover art ready, one for formatting, one for printing and another for distribution. You will also need to have some ready for everything that happens after publication, such as marketing and promotion. This can include building your social media following, speaking at events or having a blog on your website.
You can also choose how you would like to organise it. One of the most common ways is to list your goals in order of time, so you would have writing first, with marketing and promotion at the end. Alternatively, you could organise goals by type, so you would have the ones that you do yourself in one section, such as writing, and ones that you hire someone else for in another, such as editing.
It’s also a good idea to leave space for new ideas. This isn’t necessarily physical space in your plan (although this is handy if your plan is on paper!). Rather, it means leaving some wriggle room in your plan for if you think of something else, such as finding a new marketing idea that you think would work well, or deciding that you would like a physical copy of your book as well as an ebook, with all the extra work this entails.
Your plan doesn’t have to be set in stone – while it’s good to have firm ideas about what you want to do and how to accomplish that, some flexibility is good too. This means that your plan is more able to adapt to any unexpected change in circumstances, or simply if you want to add something new, as above. Being flexible about some elements makes your plan stronger and benefits your book.
Budget
However, there is one thing that should be fairly inflexible – your budget! Work out early on what you can afford to spend on your book and how to divide this up between the tasks that need to be done. Stick to this – it’s all too easy to overspend on the different areas of self-publishing without realising, so it really does help to know what figures you are working with.
Build a Reader Portrait
A reader portrait lets you describe your ideal reader. First of all, determine what kind of reader your book will appeal to, based on the genre you are writing in. Next, find out more about this demographic – what age they are, what sort of area they live in and the values they are likely to have. Establish their reading preferences and habits. Once you have their profile, start to work out the best way to market to this person. It’s best if you think of more than one profile to give you extra ideas.
Decide on Distribution Methods
You will also need to think about how you will be selling your book. For example, will you have a print book, an ebook, or both? In addition, decide what selling platforms you will be using. Research the different options and see what works best for you and your book.
Marketing Methods
It’s always good to have multiple marketing methods planned! You will need some for before the launch, some for at launch and some for after to ensure sales don’t tail off. A key one is to build your mailing list so that you already have a group of people who are interested in your writing. You could also write guest posts on other blogs, speak at panels or offer free content with a link to your book at the end.
Wrapping Up
I hope that your business plan is now well underway! In my next blog post, we will be looking at some marketing methods for nonfiction books, so come back in two weeks for that!
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