BC Writing Workshop #5 - Business Plan, Cont.

In the last module, we talked about your business plan’s executive summary.

So let’s recap.

Your business plan will (roughly) include:

-Executive Summary

-Business Description

-Market Strategies

-Competitive Analysis

-Design and Development Plan

-Operations & Management Plan

-Financial Factors

Business Description

The next section, business description, is pretty straightforward.  You can look up examples of how to structure this online, and this section won’t be much different for a writer than a retail shop owner.

Just make sure to answer:

---What you are writing

---Who you are writing it for

---List other successful authors in this genre

---What kind of stories are popular

---What tropes are common

Like I said, this is pretty straightforward.  However, the information this section calls for is often overlooked by smaller authors, and write to market people.  It’s a lot easier to be successful in a genre if you have actually read books in the genre...and you like it.  Some writers try to write stories in genres they don’t like, but very few are successful.  It’s hard to make your reader excited to read a story that you hate.

I know this seems basic, but you’d be surprised how many writers still try to write something they hate just for money.  This might work for technical writing and non-fiction, but it’s hard to write about magic and epic adventure when the work is a slog.

Market Strategies

This section is pretty straightforward, too.  Seriously.  This might be a bit counterintuitive as an indie, because we all know that marketing is the hardest part of indie writing, right?

Well, yes.  However, /how/ we’re going to market isn’t super hard to figure out, it’s /executing/, actually implementing these plans that is difficult.

Still, having your general direction noted here is not a bad thing.  So let’s look at what kind of information we need here.

-How do you plan to market?

-Are you publishing traditional or indie? (more on this in a future workshop)

-How well known are you, if at all?

-Who is your target market?

-How are you going to present your brand?

-Do you have any slogans?

-What phases of your marketing plan have you laid out?

-What is your 5 year marketing plan?

Once again, all of this stuff seems simple, but actually planning it out and executing it, as in the minutia--that is the hard part.

There will be several future workshops based on marketing later in this writing course.

Competitive Analysis

This is basically the section to lay out your SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

There are countless resources online for how to do a SWOT analysis.  This section is super straightforward if you know how to do a SWOT, and if you don’t, stay tuned.

SWOT will be covered in-depth in a later workshop.

Design and Development Plan

The design section of your business plan is (in my opinion) one of the fun parts.

I personally love commissioning artwork and graphics.  I had my branding done far, far before publishing my first book.

The design and development section is where you will list everything that makes you...you as an author--from a visual and tone perspective.

A lot of these decisions are fairly weighty and should only be made after careful consideration and research.  For instance, I decided to find high quality, custom covers for my books because this is what readers expect in the Fantasy genre.

If you write mystery, you might be served better with an abstract or austere cover.

What is your author photo going to look like?  For my first author photo, I used a fuzzy picture from years ago where I was holding a tarantula.  Some writers get professional headshots.  Your genre can really help your decision here if you don’t know what to do.

If you are writing YA, middle grade, or children’s books, you should probably get a professional headshot.  If you write for adults, there are a number of ways you can be creative.

Remember--this is your brand.  How do you want people to think of you?  Do you want to write camp, or serious thrillers?  Whatever it is you are doing to make money (outlined in the Executive Summary), your overall design should reflect this.

Some other things to makes sure you cover in this section:

-What will be the name you publish under?

-Are you going to get a PO box for fan mail and business mail?

-Are you going to create a website?

-How will your art (if any) make readers think of you?

-What will your covers look like?
-Are you going to publish physical books? Audio books?

-Do you have a website?  What does it look like?  Do you have a 5 year improvement plan?
-Do you have a blog?

Financials

In the next workshop, we will be talking about the final section of your business plan. 

Even if the the past few modules on business plans have just been a refresher, you will still want to pay attention during this next workshop.

I’m going to dish on some harsh realities of the indie publishing world, and talk brass tacks.  The Financials section of your business plan is an important enough section to get its own workshop.  If you have been craving some more blunt, no-nonsense industry knowledge, this will probably be where you get some more of it.