Writers’ Business plan: Write more books

If a company made one product, and after years of refinement, market research, paying consultants and pushing it at every niche and trade show there was, they still couldn’t get it to sell, what would you advise them?

Keep in mind that their product might be great. But the market doesn’t want it, right now.

Would you tell them to keep pushing? Would you tell them to give up? Close up shop, stop being a company now because your one product isn’t selling.

What if you knew that because they created this one product, they could create other products? That it was, in fact, their specialty to create these products, similar but not the same. With all the experience they had making and fixing and marketing their product, they had an expertise in the field that they couldn’t pay for.

Yes, I’m nudging you toward the answer I’m looking for, because all of the time I see writers clinging to their first novels with their cold dead fingers, insisting “I will not write another book until this one is perfect! Until this one is sold! I will keep pushing it until the bitter end! It deserves my unrelenting attention!”

Year after year after year, they are pushing just one product, and it is not selling.

Now, I will admit that being an artistic type is different that being a corporate type, to an extent. There are plenty of writers out there that do not care to make a living writing books. They write books because they love it, and that is a good thing.

But if you want to make money doing what you love (which is completely valid and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You do not need to starve to be an artist) you need to consider the market and the best way to meet the demands of the market are to have more than one product to sell.

Put down your baby. Try something new. Make friends with new characters.

Then do it again.

Each book will be better. Each rejection will hurt less. Each accomplishment will be more rewarding.