Any would be publisher is usually exhorted on the various discussion lists to "do a business plan".
I've sometimes joined that exhortation but when I was writing Success in Store: How to Start or Buy a Retail Business, Enjoy Running It and Make Money, I told my co-author that I've never had a business plan.
He then took me through how I'd started a couple of businesses, and justified his own "always have a business plan" position. He claimed I'd had quite a detailed plan in each instance -- it was just that I had not written it down! So, as a writer, the one thing I've never written down, is my plan for success. However, more of those businesses have gone according to plan than those which have not.
You will need a formal plan if you are going to borrow money. However, even then a business plan can be drawn up on the back of an envelope.
A nice restaurant I used to go to had paper tablecloths and marker pens in a glass on every table because the owner said her original business plan was drawn up over a meal in another restaurant and she had to appeal to the manager of that restaurant for some paper to write it down.
It also helps to include, in advance, what you will consider to be failure. ("I will have failed if I do not publish two books in the first six months, sell 1000 copies or not be within a few hundred dollars of breaking even in the second six months").
Too many people struggle on because they attempt to justify the changed cicumstances.
There's no reason why a "business" plan can't be that within 12 months "I will have published Uncle Joe's memoir, sold 20 copies and he'd added me to his will".
You could probably carry that one in your head.
I've sometimes joined that exhortation but when I was writing Success in Store: How to Start or Buy a Retail Business, Enjoy Running It and Make Money, I told my co-author that I've never had a business plan.
He then took me through how I'd started a couple of businesses, and justified his own "always have a business plan" position. He claimed I'd had quite a detailed plan in each instance -- it was just that I had not written it down! So, as a writer, the one thing I've never written down, is my plan for success. However, more of those businesses have gone according to plan than those which have not.
You will need a formal plan if you are going to borrow money. However, even then a business plan can be drawn up on the back of an envelope.
A nice restaurant I used to go to had paper tablecloths and marker pens in a glass on every table because the owner said her original business plan was drawn up over a meal in another restaurant and she had to appeal to the manager of that restaurant for some paper to write it down.
It also helps to include, in advance, what you will consider to be failure. ("I will have failed if I do not publish two books in the first six months, sell 1000 copies or not be within a few hundred dollars of breaking even in the second six months").
Too many people struggle on because they attempt to justify the changed cicumstances.
There's no reason why a "business" plan can't be that within 12 months "I will have published Uncle Joe's memoir, sold 20 copies and he'd added me to his will".
You could probably carry that one in your head.
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