How to Start a Publishing Business From Scratch
Thinking about crafting a new business with concern for the larger systems at play—all while considering your personal bandwidth and well-being—can feel pretty daunting, I know. For this reason, I work with individuals and teams in their early days to explore what forming a functioning business in publishing can and will look like for them. I help people who are looking to turn their work or ideas into a successful endeavor.
Books are art, but authors need to get paid. It can be completely overwhelming to dive both into the creative aspect of the craft while swimming in the sea with business sharks, or worse, it can feel a little bit like selling out. The good news is that formalizing a business can actually be a highly creative—and even energizing—undertaking!
Phase 1. Ideation
Ideation step 1: key questions to ask yourself.
As you think about getting a business idea off the ground, considering a few specifics can help lead you through the ideation process. Make some space to write your early ideas down, and get started by answering these questions:
Who are you, and what will your business offer? You can take this literally, or have a little fun with your answer to this one.
How are you different? Brainstorm all the ways your business’ offering will be distinct from others out there.
Are you filling a need, solving a problem, or creating something beautiful? Get clear on your offering.
Who are you selling to? Identifying your ideal client or customer is essential to planning the launch of a new business.
Keep working on your answers to the above questions until you feel good about them, because everything you write down will help you in the following steps.
Ideation step 2: a mind map.
A helpful approach for the ideation phase is ‘mind mapping’, a free-flowing process for thinking through the bigger picture of your business. To make a mind map, you’ll start with your core business idea in the center of a large piece of paper, and then add branches exploring and connecting the various ideas and plans you have for your business—all by free-association (don’t overthink and just let everything flow out of your mind and onto the page). Use symbols and draw pictures within the map, be as creative as you’d like at this stage.
Ideation step 3: an empathy map.
As you consider who your business customers will be, making an empathy map will allow you to easily explore a potential customer’s experience from a sensory and behavioral standpoint. Consider this process early market research, and also a method to imagine how you might thoughtfully connect with future clients or customers.
Once you’ve thoroughly fleshed out your business idea through an empathy map and mind map, you still may find some gaps in your planning. This may give you sort of a ‘what now?’ feeling, or a momentary lack of confidence. This is normal. Really going for it and making your business official will give you a feeling of credibility, but on the flip side, it leaves you vulnerable to the fact that you won’t know everything right off the bat, and even to the possibility of failing.
Yes. Failure happens. People fail all the time, but when we choose to see it as feedback for how we can improve or change, it really doesn’t sting so much. All the greats have failed. So go ahead and try for greatness, it’s worth failing for.
Phase 2. Business Plan
Business plan step 1: few key points to clear.
Once you’ve gone through the ideation phase for your publishing business, drafting a business plan will help you sort out and get more specific on many aspects of your business idea. Here are a few key ideas to consider including in your business plan (and, good news: much of what you worked on in the ideation phase will be helpful here):
What do you do in your books that people want to pay you for? What is your key asset? What is your advantage that will draw in readers?
How do you know that your book is fulfilling a need or want? Some simple market research will help you answer this. Look at other authors or publishing houses who offer something similar to what you plan to do and take note of what seems to attract their customers.
Who are your readers and where will you find them? What is their socio-economic portait? What are their behaviors and activities?
Who are you up against and what can you learn from them? This will open up the opportunity for more market research. Keep an open mind as you learn from your competitors and imagine how you might improve upon their offering.
What trends or upcoming changes might impact your offering? It’s valuable to do some research and think about the long-term position of your product. Try to be hypothetical and forward-thinking here.
What are the different paths you could take to find new readers? Think about all the ways you can reach a potential customer. This could be social media outreach, influencers, signings, digital marketing, press, referrals, etc.
What financial relationship will you have with your customers? Do you want to sell your product online, by subscription, cash, or credit card, etc.?
How much should you charge? Again, do some market research to try and find out what your customers are generally willing to pay. Include your own costs and time (!) to roughly come up with how much you’ll need to charge to make enough money. You can’t keep doing the valuable work you do unless there is enough income or exchange to sustain your needs, and some of your wants.
Who will you work with to make this happen? Who can you bring on board to help you deliver your book? Do you need a partner or team? What can you do on your own, and what will you need to outsource or get some help with?
What will your business need to be uniquely good at in order to thrive? Are there any key offerings or approaches your publishing business will need to make or take to ensure success? Do you have the skills and motivation to make this happen?
Business plan step 2: a business model canvas.
The Business Model Canvas (BMC) is literally a one-page business plan. These days, the BMC has taken the place of the 100-page traditional business plan (which does offer a much more in-depth analysis, but also tends to put people to sleep and is a real pain to write). It’s not to say that careful consideration isn’t still at play in a one-page plan—rather, a super concise plan forces you to become extremely clear on your plan, and articulate it as such.
As you work on your BMC, it’s always a good idea to invite others to contribute ideas to your draft. Get feedback from people you respect, and from those with differing experiences and perspectives. It’s okay to have a few gaps or blanks here and there—that just lets you know which areas may need additional research, ideation, or attention as you move forward.
Phase 3. Field Research
Field research step 1: a SWOT chart.
To make a SWOT chart, divide a page of paper into four squares: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Fill it out, and see if this enhances or informs any part of your ideation or business plan phases.
As you do this, the main objective is to get clear on areas where you can improve your plan. Again, ask others for input here (the ideal would be the shared knowledge from various publishing professionals, other authors, and influencers). This process is meant to be collaborative, since more people’s perspectives will only strengthen your approach and awareness. We don’t always see every aspect of our own impact on the world, and gaining insight from another person’s perception of what you do/make/have to offer can help as often as hinder, so take it at face value and then move on to the next step.
Field research step 2: a competitor analysis sheet.
Now that you’re clear on the plan for your publishing business (or close to it), spend a little more time looking at what you’ll offer your target audience, and how that compares to what others are offering. By researching the businesses that will be in competition with yours, you’ll know what you’re up against.
As you research your competitors in the same field, remember to keep an open mind. Always try to be as unbiased as possible, and consider the perspective of the consumer (versus your own perspective), who may place a different value on certain offerings of each business. Running through a mini SWOT for each competing business will really help you familiarize yourself with the other players in the space, and how each of their offerings are slightly different. It will showcase your qualities and help you speak to the uniqueness of your offering.
Phase 4. Vision, Mission, and Values
To formulate your vision statement, imagine how the world will be different in 1, 3, or 5 years if your business is successful in accomplishing its goals. In the same statement, try to articulate why this vision matters.
To create your mission, craft a clean, clear statement about what you do. Great mission statements are short and to the point. It can take some time to distill your ideas into the right words, so share your drafts with others and keep tweaking until you feel you’ve clearly conveyed the offering of your business in an authentic way.
To articulate your business values, jot down a dozen qualities or attributes that are important to you and those you work with. For this, try to imagine what words and ideas feel foundational to the very existence of your publishing business.
Phase 5. Formalization
Now that you’ve thought in-depth about your business idea, you’re left with two choices: go for it and formalize your publishing business, or hang back. You can always offer services under your own name as a Sole Proprietor, and for this, while you do pay income taxes on any financial gain, you don’t need to register anything or apply for a license.
The cons of getting started with your own formalized business include, well, ownership. Once you own a business, you also own all of the liabilities associated with it, and are accountable for everything that happens with it. Additionally, getting a new business off the ground takes hard work and long hours. It also may require venturing into unknown territory with regard to legal and financial requirements. It can be a lot of pressure, and it may take longer than you’d like to turn a profit.
On the upside, when you own your own business, you are the boss. You set your own hours. It’s also easier to bill someone for your product or service when you have an EIN number (something you can only get when you’re registered as a business). Also, as a small-business entrepreneur you have the opportunity to take advantage of some nice tax perks. You can write off many expenses like travel, food, phone bills, portions of car payments/insurance, and more. And, certain businesses qualify for government incentives. Being a minority, veteran, or female-owned business are examples.
Consider the pros and cons, take stock of all the information you’ve gathered, and decide to formalize your business (or not).
If you’re still on the fence, answer the below questions as you consider whether or not to go for it and make your business official:
Will a formal business designation…
Increase your income?
Give you more credibility?
Legitimize your creativity?
Help you from a tax perspective?
Create an opportunity to take safer risks?
Make you eligible for more funding/grants?
Motivate you to get organized about your work?
Serve a need or fix a problem for your customers?
Help you segue out of a career that you don’t enjoy?
Allow you to become more independent career-wise?
Allow others to more easily hire you (because you have an EIN, etc.)?
Enable you to legally hire—and potentially offer benefits to—employees?
Let you offer something better than or unique to what’s currently out there?
Here are some of the implications of formalizing your business:
The act of formalizing your business will take some work, and some money.
There is also an ongoing fee to keep your LLC or corporation registered (this fee is usually incurred every 1-2 years, depending on the state you register with).
Will having to either ‘do it all’ yourself or hire and train employees be more stress than benefit to you?
Is having to produce things in order to meet the demand for your offering going to work out well for you?
Phase 6. Money, Money, Money
The costs of getting your business formalized.
You can register your business as an LLC pretty painlessly online, or you can work with a CPA (Certified Public Accountant) to do it on your behalf.
The formalization step is simple but trips up a lot of people. Understanding what you need when you don’t know what you don’t know can feel frustrating. If you feel stuck, call your local Small Business Association and ask for help in whatever area is holding you back.
Financial modeling is not so bad.
In your financial model, include every expense you can possibly think of. There are always unexpected costs, such as:
Shipping costs
Transportation
Increase in rent, utilities, storage, co-working memberships, etc.
Outsourcing for things you don’t do but need
Registrations for events, conferences, etc.
The list goes on…
Phase 7. Deep Breath Before Dive-in
The pitch.
Crafting your pitch is a process that challenges you to become succinctly clear and compelling about who you are, what you do, and why it matters. Can you communicate this in a couple of sentences?
As you edit, tweak, and further refine your pitch, ask more than one person to hit you up at random for your spiel. Be ready to fumble through and miss several elements for a while. This one is bigger than it sounds—you’re distilling all the information you want to share about you and your future book while also fitting in why it matters to your potential readers who you want to take a chance on you. So give yourself grace here and try out multiple versions until it feels authentic.
Getting the word out.
Now that you’re ‘official’ and have your pitch down, get ready to build or freshen up your marketing efforts. Marketing is how you let new people know that you as an author exist, and entice them to consider buying your book. In short, marketing is how you build up an engaged audience and customer base for your publishing business.
As you get going with a marketing plan, be sure to make use of those free trials out there. Canva and other tools are great resources if money is tight and you want to try to design your own marketing. Most email services, ecommerce sites, and others offer free trials, allowing you to play around with different options before committing to any one specific marketing tool. Just remember to set a calendar reminder to cancel it in time, in case you don’t end up loving it.
Developing a long-term strategic plan.
A strategic plan breaks down your business goals into bite-size pieces so that you’re able to take small, reasonable steps toward achieving a long-term vision. There are many ways to go about this, and some people don’t worry about it until they feel more established. However, I like to plant these strategic seeds early because setting goals and planning for how to reach them will get you to where you hope and dream to be in a reasonable timeframe.
To start conceptualizing your strategic plan, pick three categories that feel most important for your business (examples might be Community, Entertainment Universe, Merch etc.) and figure out a reasonable goal for year 1, year 2, and year 3.
After you have a sense of your goals for each category, go back and write down everything you can think of that needs to happen in order for you to get there.
Name the tasks associated with each goal.
Assign each task to yourself, someone else you’ll be working with, or an expert you’ll need to hire.
Add anticipated completion dates if you can.
Follow up on your plan.
Try to review and adjust your plan as you move forward. Just like your BMC, this can be an evolving document that shifts as your progress and priorities shift. As you work towards your goals, reflect and share the outcomes. Celebrate your successes and talk through the gaps or missed milestones.
Plan time to work towards your strategic goals.
Building a business from the ground up can feel like a lot (or even way too much) when daily life continues to happen, so plan one day a week (or even a half day) to chip away at the action items detailed in your strategic plan. Make it a regular time when you don’t schedule any meetings, respond to emails, or even answer your phone, so you can get in the habit of really focusing on progress. As the saying goes, don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees.
Work with a mentor to add some accountability.
If you’re working on your business solo, find someone you can talk with for an hour or so each week to review your progress, bounce ideas off of, and keep you accountable. This person doesn’t need to be a business expert—it could be a friend, or even a family member. As long as you have someone to report your progress (or lack thereof) to, it’ll be a huge help.
If you have a partner or team, start each strategic-plan work session by checking in on any action items from the last time you met. If something is blocking an action item from being completed, take time to address it and come up with a plan for how to get unstuck.
In summary…
Don’t be scared to start, take full control of your dreams, and play the long game. And even though it may seem that the publishing industry is impossibly saturated, there is room for everyone, I swear!