One of my favourite Author Podcasts to listen to is Joanna Penn’s – The Creative Penn. What I like about it is that it covers the aspects of building an author business and mindset more than the ins and outs of the technical detail of self-publishing.
Joanna made that shift along the journey and it’s a useful website and podcast for those of us working through the early stages of authorship, and it seems from the many different people listening that experienced indie authors as well.
Recently there have been several different episodes talking about more commercial sides of being an author, and it helped me reflect on the many different angles, sides or places that people come to when undertaking this journey.
Coming from being a long term business owner and having run a web development agency for nearly 20 years to me there were some quite obvious things I should do once I started this journey.
For example, A website, branding, advertising and email list building, as well as social media, were all givens to me that had to be developed and most of mine were built before the story had begun to take shape.
I already have had a logo created for my series, which isn’t common but fits into the world I have in my mind for the series. With that logo, merchandise was top of mind and was part of the creative brief.
I guess that’s a hangover from the entrepreneurial mindset and businesses I have worked with over the years, but it seemed very obvious whereas for others it was probably something they hadn’t considered.
That’s when it dawned on me how useful listening to such podcasts are. Everyone that is in the indie publishing world is coming from many different places. While business structure, accounting, income, P&L’s and sales metrics are day to day from my history, other areas for me are like being a first grader.
Thus those people with other backgrounds I would assume would think the same about areas that I am just beginning to learn and understand.
Hearing about the different experiences in print on demand, story creation and outlining and many other topics have been invaluable to me in learning the basics of this business.
I have to assume we are all coming from many different places and angles when we sit down to write. So rather than looking to mimic exactly someone else’s exact steps, like anything else it’s about taking on board the things that you can work with and that impact you in a positive way.
Maybe already having created some of the ‘promotional’ and ‘marketing’ aspects is putting the cart before the horse, or is just reflective of the way my mind approaches tasks.
To me having that defined shape and style has helped me write more and better set my world.
No doubt I will be learning much more each month, but importantly will be closer to completion that I was last month.
One thing I have learned is that it doesn’t matter from what side or direction you come from, but more that you need always to be writing.
