Hi friends,
I’ve been incredibly overwhelmed this week, but in the best possible way. In the last few weeks, I’ve had an article on London’s lost rivers published in Discover magazine, received amazing feedback on another short story on Vocal, finished a big project for SparkLoop, kicked off Write With Me 2022, and pored over pages and pages of a publishing contract.
Yes, you read that right! A book contract!
It’s for the memoir I’m co-writing, and it’s not a traditional publishing deal. I don’t want to say much more than that before it’s all signed, sealed, and launched, but I promise to tell you all about it as soon as we’ve made it official. (We just approved a placeholder cover for the announcement this morning!)
If that wasn’t enough, I’ve almost finished outlining my next novel, figured out how to turn my failed dystopian novel into a contemporary thriller, and created a plan for how to fund the research and writing for my next long-form journalism project, an in-depth look at British immigration. (It’s sexier than that, but again, I have to wait until I’ve put it into motion to blab about it.)
So, busy busy busy.
And that’s what I want to talk about today.
How there will be periods when nothing is happening and how, sometimes, things happen all at once, and why, in the end, the only thing that matters is how you felt through it all.
I wrote last year that one of the biggest casualties of my publishing dreams had been my writing.
How, in spending a year signing with two agents, going on submission with two books, and getting eight indie titles ready for relaunch, I had written not a word of fiction. I wondered, if a publishing model was taking me away from the work I most loved to do, was it worth it?
I don’t have an answer yet, but I do know that the responsibility of balancing the two falls on my shoulders.
That I have to find a way to write and publish simultaneously, to not fully throw myself into one at the expense of the other.
I have, for a long time, had my publishing goals clearly outlined:
- Write 3-4 books a year and create consistent, reliable, scalable, and automated income from my work.
- Tell stories of amazing and incredible women and get them into the hands of millions of readers.
Those look like two big goals, but they’re actually four:
- Write 3-4 books a year.
- Tell stories of amazing and incredible women.
- Create consistent, reliable, scalable, and automated income from my work.
- Get my work into the hands of millions of readers.
For the first decade of my career, that first goal of writing 3-4 books a year would have been laughable.
Which is why, for the first decade of my career, I focused heavily on learning the art of storytelling, learning to trust myself as an artist, and getting good at writing thousands of words a day.
I have written about that several times, here, here, and here.
Telling the stories of incredible women is not only instinctive to me, but something I’ve become known for over my career. It’s my specialty. I focused on these stories as a journalist for over a decade, and it’s seeped into the fabric of how I show up as an author.
Knowing I could hit those first two goals—writing multiple books a year and focusing on the stories I wanted to tell—was a massive win for me.
That shift from “Will I ever finish a novel?” to “I know I can write at least one novel and several nonfiction books a year” is what is now allowing me to focus on the next big goal, the income.
Not just making some money and not one lucky payoff, but a predictable career that allows for consistent, reliable, scalable, and automated income.
Most of it already comes from my business and freelancing, but I was eager to throw books into the mix as well. (I’ve now had 37 consecutive months of small but growing indie book sales.)
For an author to have reliable, sustainable income that grows over time, it is important for that author to have a backlist (multiple books) and have held on to certain rights (the ability to sell that backlist in various forms.)
Many people, especially outside of publishing, believe that books don’t make money and it’s not possible for writers to make a sustainable income. While this is frequently true, it doesn’t have to be.
Eventually, it comes down to what rights the author has sold and how they’re getting paid.
If you’re a New York Times bestselling author with only one book published through a traditional publisher, you have neither a backlist nor access to rights, so while the income may be consistent, reliable, and perhaps even automated for a while, it will not be scalable unless you write another book.
It is, of course, possible to leverage a book and make a killing from the speaking and media opportunities that come because of it.
But here, in this community, we want to make our money from writing books, not from the side gigs that come as a result of it (as much as those side gigs are desired and welcome).
We are, as I say in my goals, authors who want our work to be read by millions of people.
In order to facilitate that, I have to be smart about the contracts I sign, the rights I give away, and the opportunities that are gained or lost with each publishing model.
(It’s easy to pick on traditional publishing, but each model comes with its own costs and benefits.)
A traditional publishing contract will seek to buy up all rights for a book, in mediums and technologies that have not yet been invented, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t sign one. It means that you should know the opportunity cost, the trade-off you’re making, and whether it’s worth it in the long run. (And ask your agent to negotiate very, very hard.)
Most traditionally published authors today cannot explore new opportunities opening up in the Web 3.0 space, for instance, because they no longer own the rights to their work. They will be dependent on their publishers to exploit those rights. Some will, some won’t. Some will for their highest-selling authors. Many won’t even do that.
If you’re an author who wants to make a sustainable income that grows, then you need someone in your team, whether that’s you or your publisher, to be thinking about all the possible opportunities for each book.
Are they? Are you?
For me, as an author, it’s not just about selling or publishing a book. I can indie publish a book right now and hold it in my hands by the weekend.
The goal is not to publish a book. The goal is to create a sustainable income for me, and a large readership for my work.
How to do that effectively, especially when I write in so many different genres, is the next problem I’m looking to solve for my career over the next two years.
Starting with the publishing contract I’m about to sign for this memoir.
Can’t wait to share more about that soon.
Cheers,
Natasha