I’ve been working on a non-writing business plan since the end of last year. As I’ve been crunching numbers, making projections, envisioning the mature business and how to plant the seeds of the startup business, I began to realize that my writing business may have benefited from the same kind of careful consideration.

I put the thought in the back of my mind, though, because I couldn’t quite see how a writer could put any kind of sensible business plan together in the quirky world of fiction publishing, where you can spend years and write several novels before you sell the first one. Not to mention in the current ever-shifting marketplace, where it is hard to tell whether any of the big traditional publishers are going to survive the change.

However, as I’ve hammered out my own non-writing business plan, I’ve had glimmers of how I could make one work for writing. I’m going to try to do it here, today. But I think I’ll have to revisit a few more times before I see through the creative/artistic fog that is any given novel to the clean lines of a business plan for novelist that actually makes sense and is 100% non-fiction.

The most important books I’ve read (so far) on business planning have been:

The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki

E-Myth, Michael E. Gerber

Built to Last, Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras

The top three things to remember from them all: 1) build the system once, 2) check it twice, and 3) keep a sharp eye out to see where your blind spots are so you notice the cliff before you go over it. As far as I can see from here, these three principles apply to writing as universally as they do to a “normal” business (if any business is really normal).

A traditional business model has three components: production, sales, marketing. So does a novelist’s business model. Production involves writing the novel (craft, subject matter, story, writing mechanism); Sales involves (duh) selling (finding an agent, editor, publisher); Marketing involves pinpointing both distributors and individual buyers and giving them a reason to buy your product.

The reason I dismissed the idea of creating a business plan when I got started writing, was that it seemed like a wish list more than a business plan. But, after writing one for my new business, I see that it is a road map from where you are to where you want to be. For almost all businesses you’re likely going to start by walking in the right direction — the one where you can find the most opportunities to hitchhike until you earn enough to buy a car….

Or maybe, if you’re a truly innovative start-up (or a novelist) by taking some lead time to build a self-designed vehicle. And this is the key — your business plan changes from a wish list to a road map when you’ve defined and outlined the steps you need to get from where you are (unpublished, nothing written) to where you want to be (bestseller/award-winner/legend). Just like the business that needs to build a working self-designed vehicle before it can start making money, all novelists need to write a novel first. Or several. Until then, you have no product to offer for the sales team to sell, or the marketing team to drive the market to buy.

And, just like the innovative start-up, your novelist’s business will benefit from thinking very carefully about where you are, where you want to go, and how you will get there. In some ways, it doesn’t really matter to your plan if it takes you ten weeks or ten years. The only thing that matters is that you have your road map, and a willingness to adapt and keep going when you hit unexpected detours, speed bumps, and sudden pile-ups. Simple right? We’ll see next time, when I talk about Nina New Novelist and the writer’s plan she develops (which will not resemble mine, because lucky Nina New Novelist is starting from scratch, and I’m in media res).

Kelly