Monday, July 21, 2014
The more often I write about how to write book proposals and business plans for books, the more often I hear objections from writers who feel this approach to crafting ideas is not authenticity or creativity. In truth, taking a business approach to your book can be extremely creative and produce a project that is both a marketable and aligns with your values.
If you only write when you feel inspired, or from a sense of soul purpose or simply because the creative urge takes over, the idea of
creating a business plan for your book, and doing so before you even begin writing, may, indeed, feel like a huge turn off to you. Yet, like most writers, you probably want to produce a successful book?one that sells a lot of copies, gets read and has a positive and meaningful impact in the world. To do that, you must take into consideration that publishing is a business, the business of producing, distributing and selling books, including that book you want to write and publish. And success in the publishing industry is, indeed, gauged by book sales?above average book sales.
Your Book is a Product for Sale
No matter how you decide to publish, your book, ultimately, ends up a product in the marketplace?a product for sale. Yes, your creativity, craft, authenticity, knowledge, and even inspiration make it stand out from the pack. However, often, more than these things, a bestseller is created by your ability to:
- write a book that is unique in a category
- write a book that is necessary in a market and a category
- write a book that targets a large potential audience
- successfully target and promote to a market
Not only that, your own ability to sell that book makes it successful. That means you must have:
- an author platform
- a promotion plan
You Need a Business Plan
To ensure you and your book have all these elements, you need to create a business plan for your book?the moment inspiration hits. That?s right. Do not just sit down and begin writing. (Okay, you can get the first really juicy stuff down on paper if you must!) Sit down and begin planning out the most marketable ?product? you can produce. Why? To give your book the highest potential of succeeding once it hits that marketplace. You don?t want to spend months, maybe years, working on a book that sells the average 300 copies or so (or less). That?s heartbreaking.
To create a business plan for your book, start with the industry standard?no matter how you plan to publish:
a book proposal. This IS a business plan for a book. (If you plan to self-publish you need a business plan for your book, especially since you will be a start-up publishing company. Use the
book proposal as a template for your business plan.)
Adding the Soul Back In
As you accumulate all the information necessary for a business plan, or proposal, the creative process begins. Light bulbs should be going off as you complete every section of your book proposal or plan, and especially as you
evaluate the material. As you look at the market and the competition, for example, you might be getting ideas for how to better solve readers? problems or how to do a better job of covering the subject than the other authors who have previously published in the category. Use this material to generate new ideas to improve and to tweak your idea and make it more marketable?to make it the best book possible. Use thus creative exercise to produce ideas for spin-off books.
Creating the most marketable book possible is a creative process. You retool, rework, remold your initial idea. You put your creativity to use in the most effective manner. You still end up writing your original idea?just with some new angles, additions or approaches. Your book remains authentic?true to your original idea?it just gets better and more suited to the needs of your audience as you go through the process of producing the business plan or proposal.
Make these changes prior to beginning your manuscript. This ensures that when you do sit down to write, invite your muse to join you, tap into your Higher Self, and connect to your soul purpose, you can write with the confidence that allows you to do so freely and easily. Your writing will still be authentic and creative because your idea is still yours. You can write with the confidence that comes from knowing you will turn out a manuscript targeted to your ideal reader or market and with the certainty that your book will improve on all titles published in its category to date. That means you will produce a book that is creative as well as marketable, a book that will touch many lives because it will sell many copies.
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Write Nonfiction NOW!.
Nina Amir, author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual, is known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach. She moves clients from ideas to finished books to careers as authors. She teaches methods to combine passion and purpose to create products that positively and meaningfully impact the world.
A sought-after speaker as well as an author, book, blog-to-book, and results coach, some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She writes four blogs, self-published 12 books and founded National Nonfiction Writing Month.