Betwixt and Between Books-Freelancing

The Day 25 prompt is: If your goal is to sell books, you must view your book as a business. In what ways do you treat your book as a business? Where could you improve? What resources could you leverage to improve your book business?

Okay, the gig is up–I’ve been caught betwixt and between!

While the original goal of publishing my grandfather’s manuscripts was simply a means to share that inheritance with the other members of the family (his daughters now too old to care) and that side of the family also too few to provide any kind of significant remuneration, the promise I’d made was being fulfilled.

Since writing has always been something I enjoyed, and the collateral education (Word, graphics, semi-limited internet) also of major interest, flights of fancy took wing into realms of independent freelancing–providing commercial reward. In order to have enough time to go back to school for a few of those classes (Front Page, Photoshop, JavaScript), I had to quit my day job. No loss there. After 17 years with no particular reward, either monetary or personal gratification, it was not a difficult decision.

What followed were years of non-compensatory writing–the clear definition of writing for fun. At some point, that style of writing was going to require my also taking photography classes and getting a bigger, badder, better, faster, more technical camera than the Minolta I’d been packing on my bike. And I couldn’t see where that would lead into a rewarding and high-paying second career.

Then the effort of publishing his manuscripts through Create Space steered me into a much more commercial enterprise. It was time to get serious about writing, as now sales were going to be the result of direct and concerted effort of marketing and promotion, which coincidentally requires a great deal of copywriting–for social media, web writing, content, and emails. In part, to that end, being a participant in an educational Meetup is well worth the time and an education in itself. Getting feet wet with a copywriting broker, albeit crappy pay, is another recent vehicle for learning the craft.

AH! I see where this is going! It’s that old ring-road!

Living is a life-long learning and educational process. I’m not in the middle of a new novel, but I’ll be writing–a lot. Therefore, I’ve enrolled in my local community college. There is always room for improvement and the business is growing.

See how other Author Blog Challenge participants are growing.