How to Write a Novelist Business Plan
Writing novels isn't your typical business, but you can still benefit from a business plan. Rather than writing the plan to entice investors, you write the plan to clarify your goals and strategies and to forecast the viability of your success. A novelist business plan isn't as long as the documents written to investors, but as a writer knows, every word counts. The terminology of a typical business plan applies to a novelist business in a slightly different manner as well. Your product is your novels. Your strategies are how you'll write and how you'll get published, industry trends are what is currently happening within your genre, and your niche is your genre and any accompanying subgenres. To prepare for success as a novelist, write a business plan that gives you a personal outline of your goals and how to reach them.
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Instructions
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Allot yourself anywhere from a week to a month to several months, depending on the amount of research about the industry (reading the books of competitors--that is, currently publishing authors within your niche, reading industry publications such as "Publishers Weekly" and "Writer's Market," etc.) you've already completed.
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Classify your niche. If you write romance, choose subgenres such as standalone or series. Contemporary, historical, paranormal. Sometimes your niche has even further depth in subgenres, such as not just chick lit or paranormal chick lit, but vampire paranormal chick lit. Use your research to determine the size of your niche and then its viability for success.
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Research major authors, publishers, agents and trends within the industry. To research authors, consult your librarian and bookstore owners. At your library, you may have access to the database NoveList, which will help you create a list of similar authors and their novels. You can also consult readers themselves and websites such as Amazon, which offers suggestions and contains user-generated lists of suggested titles. To research publishers, consult market listings such as "Writer's Market" and "The Novel and Short Story Writer's Market." Look at the books of the authors you've researched to see who their publishers are. To research agents, look again through those two references, as well as the "Literary Market Place." Check the acknowledgments sections and websites of the authors you've researched. To research the industry, consult the periodical "Publishers Weekly."
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Analyze the career of a novelist within your niche whom you've researched who is still currently publishing. Model his successes and avoid his failures to set goals for your own career.
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Determine the strategies to reach your goals, such as daily writing quota. Whether you measure your writing quotas in time, in word count, in page count, in scene count or in chapter count is largely dependent on what you feel will best help you reach your goals.
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Outline your expected income and expenses. Find the average advances within your genre. Subtract the agent's commission as an expense, as well as postage, printing, website name and hosting fees, computer maintenance, and so on.
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Appraise your current credentials as a novelist and establish some growth goals to help you acquire more.
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Tips & Warnings
Be realistic in your estimated revenues and costs.
Don't guess on any information. Thoroughly research your business plan.
