Your Book Is Your Business: Money-Making Sales Strategies

Call it a hobby, side gig, side hustle, or whatever you’d like—but treat it like a business.

Take your book from a single product you feel like you have to hustle to a foundational piece of your prospering entrepreneurial enterprise with the help of this encouraging, no-nonsense guide to promoting—and profiting from—your writing, whether or not you have a relationship with a traditional publisher.

Joylynn M. Ross is a bestselling author with decades of experience in multiple genres. She shares her insider knowledge of how to treat your writing as a business. She walks you through the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes details of literary finances, from finding grants to printing options to cover pricing. Ross’s straightforward, tried-and-true advice is accessible, actionable, and practical, told in brief vignettes readers can easily refer back to, or easily share with others. You don’t need to rely on fast trends, conventional wisdom, or expensive freelance support to make sure your work succeeds and your reach continues to grow. 

Don’t be discouraged: Roll up your sleeves and dive in for a more successful publication, a more profitable business, and a more empowered writing community.

Read on for an excerpt from Your Book Is Your Business, shipping now from our site and available everywhere you find Microcosm titles on June 9th.

Se mèt afè kokipe afè: A Message from the Author

There is a Haitian proverb that says: “Se mèt afè kokipe afè.” It means that an owner will always take care of his or her belongings better than someone who is watching over them temporarily.
The same goes for your business. And as an author, regardless of whether you are traditionally published or self-published, and regardless of whether or not you have a literary agent, your book is your business. No one can take care of your book and your book business better than you can—not your publisher, and not your literary agent.

When you treat your book as your business, you treat being an author as your job. And every job comes with a description. Take a moment to write down your job duties. Yeah, I kind of literally want you to dog-ear this page and write (or type) your job description as an author (beyond writing the book).

I’ll wait …
All finished?

Great! Whatever you wrote down, I hope it includes selling your book, because sales are a huge part of being an author and running a successful business.

Now, some might say that you can’t sell a book without marketing it. That’s not exactly true—you can make some sales without marketing. But it is true that marketing plays a role in the long-term success of a book. My main purpose with this resource is to help you achieve your immediate need and goal, which is to sell books … right now! At whatever stage you’re at in the writing and publishing process. And this book is full of ways for you to do just that.

Will some of the tasks require marketing? Yes. But the focus will be on effective marketing that actually leads to sales. And there are plenty of tasks in this book that require no to very little marketing effort and money, allowing you to, again, sell your books now!

Before you dive in, I want to make something clear: This book is called Your Book Is Your Business, but don’t make the same mistake I did at the beginning of my literary career and make your book your entire business. That’s to say, your business shouldn’t end with your book. Instead, look at your book as the foundation of an amazing business for which you can continue to lay bricks, aka multiple streams of cohesive literary income. Doing so can result in you building a literary empire! That means being an author can become your ultimate dream job. But as I mentioned earlier, you must know your job description, the duties involved, and how to effectively and efficiently implement and execute each task.

If you are a publisher, you may have already written a job description for authors at your company. Did you give it to your authors? Whether you did, didn’t, or are going to, consider this author resource an addendum to the job description and give them a copy of this as well.

And finally, I want to make sure you remember one thing specifically: Businesses don’t make money; people do. As an author, it’s part of your job description to sell your book as well as make the money needed to sustain your book business; this includes money outside of royalties and books sales.
So, get to taking care of your book business, and I wish you much success.

Kick your book business into gear with Your Book is Your Business, coming to a shelf near you on June 9th, or available now from our site!