Develop a Plan for How Your Self-Publishing Empire Will Function - Developing a Business Plan Part II

You have made the big decision to self-publish. The process of researching the industry has begun and you are diligently gathering ideas and information for a business plan to insure the success of your fledgling empire.

As you engage in this process, ask yourself how will your self-publishing business function? Is it meant to drive sales and derive income by:

• serving strictly as a source of entertainment for your readers? (fiction)
• serving as a "how to" source of information for your readers? (non-fiction)
• providing a platform for other sales opportunities?
• provide a platform to create other revenue streams?

The answer to this question will determine how you market your book, interact with your readers, how many books you may need/want to write, determine the form in which the book is published and countless other business decisions that you will have to make as a self-publishing author.

Authors often view the book as the sole means of income in the publishing business. A book can actually be just the tip of the iceberg.

Merchandising can be huge for fiction authors, and in come cases this is true for non-fiction as well.
Speaking opportunities can result from a book which often earns an author more than the book itself.

Other products can be introduced and marketed as the result of the success of the book, particularly a how to book or one aimed at a particular niche market where information is valuable.

When you are crafting your business plan, keep all of these issues in mind. Always look for alternate viable sources of income that can be derived from self-publishing your book.

Review of Writing As a Small Business by Nash Black

Being a self-published author is a business. This means the author must run his or her affairs like a business in order to be successful as a self-publisher. When starting down the path to learn all that is necessary to successfully self-publish, most authors focus on writing and marketing their book. Writing as a Small Business, Kindle Edition looks at the tax side of being a working author.

I was amazed at the shear amount of information in the book and while I did not understand much of it - I don't do our taxes and don't understand accounting, I quickly realized after about 45 minutes of reading this was a book I was going to have read several times and there was much to learn.

Christie Pinheiro, who hosts the blog The Publishing Maven, is a tax accountant and may have more to contribute on this matter.

I do not feel comfortable commenting about the content as I quickly realized how much I do not know about this topic. I do want to say for $2.99 this book has lots of information. Black does an excellent job of writing in a clear and easy to understand fashion, making the topic much less intimidating to me.

While the focus is on taxes and record keeping, the information covers a wide range of topics about running a small business from a publishing point of view. What records must be kept, what do all those accounting terms mean, dealing with audits, types of small businesses, methods and types of publishing, legal issues, estate planning and more.

This is a valuable resource and has joined books on my list of must reads for any author planning to venture into the realm of self-publishing.