Create A Business Plan For Your Book

Many writers think that completing their book is the hardest part, and while that may be true in some ways, it s also important to give careful consideration to what you do with it afterwards. For most of us, the ideal scenario would see our book being picked up by one of the biggest publishing houses who would put a huge amount of money into marketing it, and then effortlessly watch it become a global phenomenon as the pounds roll in. While that would be nice, the truth is for the majority of authors that completing your book is only the tip of the iceberg, and it is only once you have finished it that the real work begins.

Sometimes publishers actually ask for authors to create a business plan, or ‘proposal’ for their book. They want you to do the leg work and tell them, or rather prove to them, why your book will be popular, and which markets it will do best in. They need to know that publishing your book will make them money, and it is your job as the author to do your research and to write an impressive business plan which will convince them of its commercial potential.

Even if you intend to go down the self-publishing route, which thousands of authors these days do, it is import ant to have a robust business plan in place. Since you effectively become the publisher of your own book, you must determine how to market it effectively and what groundwork you must put in place in order to make it sell. Ideally you should actually do this before you even start writing, as if you can’t convince yourself your book is worth buying, how on earth do you plan to convince anyone else?

So why create a business plan for your book?

A business plan helps you understand whether your story, or information, is a product the public will want.

If you can’t market your book no one will buy it, it is as simple as that. It is better to find out sooner rather than later whether this is or is not the case. Write down a pitch that focuses on what benefits your book can bring to its audience, why someone would chose your book over someone else’s in a similar genre, and how it provides value to that genre. If you are really struggling with this, perhaps you need to rethink your idea.

A business plan helps you understand whether there is in fact a market for your book.

Research whether their is an audience out there for the type of book you want to write. If you discover there is, the larger the better. However if there is no appetite for your book, it won’t sell, so if you can’t find any section of society that might be interested in it, can you really justify writing it?

3. A business plan helps you write your book in an original way.

If you create your business plan properly, you will have to do a lot of research around what is already out there that might be similar to the book you are trying to write. You need to analyse the competition, see which books in your genre are the most and least successful, and try to determine why. You need your book to have all the ingredients for it to be popular, but also make it original enough to stand out from the crowd.

A business plan will determine whether it is the right time to publish.

If you have already written your book and plan to publish it yourself, why wait right? Wrong! There may be a good reason why, if you publish your book now, it won’t sell well. However if you are willing to be patient a change appetite and attitude may mean your book will be far more popular down the line.

A business plan will help you create an excellent marketing strategy.

Regardless of whether you self-publish or land a publishing deal, you should plan for what will happen if you book becomes a success. Having a well thought out promotion plan could make all the difference, all you need is for it to start to catch on, and your book could end up doing extremely well.

Making a business plan for your book is just good sense. The bottom line is it increases the chances of your book becoming a success, and really isn’t that the most important thing of all?

Bethany Cadman -contributor

Related Posts

• How To Organize Your Writing Day
  How To Organize Your Writing Day
• Should You Kill Off A Character?
  Should You Kill Off A Character?
• 

  How To Test Your Story Idea
  How To Test Your Story Idea
• Book Publishers To Submit To Without An Agent
  Book Publishers To Submit To Without An Agent

One Comment