A few years ago, writer, media consultant, and avid Stoic, Ryan Holiday, decided to open a bookstore with his wife. What with being a writer who is very into philosophy and how one lives one’s life (seriously check out some of his books), he decided to share some thoughts about what he learned from running the bookstore. The 23 lessons are on the shorter side, but are thought-provoking and often link to longer pieces that…
I know a lot of self-employed and small business folk who are hurting during this pandemic. And for my own business, we’ve needed to rethink how and what we’re doing. One of those entrepreneurial, self-employed friends, Russell Nohelty, wrote a post about how he retools his business… as he has done many times. It’s a non-trivial amount of time –especially if you haven’t done it before– and figuring out how to best attribute the costs…
Given the sheer numbers of self-published books, it statistically unlikely that someone will make a living via self-publishing… except that given the sheer number of self-published books there’s a non-trivial number of writers who make a living via self-publishing. So with that caveat in mind, take a look at Sam Haysom’s article on Mashable about three self-published authors who have succeeded.
I’m always interested in different people’s writing processes, including how they balance non-writing. Okay, I should probably specify productive non-writing. It’s pretty easy to procrastinate and not write. Novelist Vincent Zandri has an interesting approach that I’ve heard from other writers in how they approach the business of writing by being very definite about both the writing part and the business part. I appreciate the level of detail.
I’ve mentioned author and indie published Russell Nohelty a couple times on the blog, both specifically about his book on selling your work and in his detailing his efforts to build his business. So, as a bit of follow-up, all last year he did a monthly income and expense report about his business, often detailing what worked and what didn’t, what his predictions were, and what the basis of those predictions was. It was wonderfully…
Trying to make a living –or just some nontrivial income– from your creative endeavors seems like a monumental task. At least it feels so for me. Luckily, for me, I enjoy some of the minutiae of process and procedures and figuring out devilish details I can repeat so all that small stuff is not stuff I sweat over. Then I constantly get reminded about how much I don’t know. Also I don’t have enough time.…
Let me start by giving credit where credit where credit is due. The inspiration for this post, and indeed the title above, comes from a post this past May by Russell Nohelty on his Complete Creative site. His post hit on the current issue I have with Jabberwocky Audio Theater. It’s perhaps the most difficult metaphorical needle I’ve ever had to thread — and so I’m writing it about it here in case you’re in…
One of the biggest issues plaguing independent entrepreneurial creators (authors, artists, filmmakers, etc.) would be how to find an audience — and even if that nut is well and truly cracked: how do you maintain or even grow it? That’s a topic for many another post, but amid forums and social media I follow where people discuss the topic, there’s the inevitable discussion of what Faustian bargain should be made with Amazon, the everything store…
There is a theory that placing two coat hangers in a closet produces more coat hangers through some frenzied yet illogical process of inorganic reproduction that’s best left unexamined outside of a Philip K. Dick short story. If someone suggested that placing two web articles in the Internet equivalent of a closet would produce an article about writing, I would believe them (whether or not the person suggesting it was Phillip K. Dick). This may explain the overwhelming amount of articles about…
Between yesterday and today, you could accurately deduce I have business plans on my mind. Today, I wanted to share another article I found on Entrepreneur. This one goes over six business plan mistakes to avoid. Many of them are ones fellow filmmakers and I have discussed (especially about #4 and money) and, hey, it may be useful to you.