I need a new rucksack. I was gifted a solid leather one about 10 years ago and I’ve worn it out. But, I’m very specific about colour, style, comfort and weight. Especially comfort, my top value. It needs to support my posture and not dig into my shoulders.
So, I go into a shop with what looks like a good selection (confusingly: it’s a toy shop). Nice colourways; zips in the right place; a good weight. But I don’t like the grey straps they all have, and I don’t like that the straps aren’t padded. I leave empty-handed.
On the walk home, I decide that I need to launch a rucksack business myself. All the rucksacks will be in natural hues, to match all outfits (I have a capsule wardrobe in black, white, beige and brown; everything goes with at least one of these colours).
I start working out how I will design these bags, who I’ll get in to help, what the branding will be like, where the bags will be manufactured, how I’ll sell them (online, not in toy shops) and I start to design a marketing strategy, in my mind.
Then I remember I’m a writer. Not a bag designer.
And then I remember that I’m a creative entrepreneur. I know how to launch and run businesses. This is why I get excited by, and carried away with, new business ideas. But, back to my writing. How can I shift that entrepreneurial energy into it?
Questions start rolling in…
How do I grow my paid subscribers on Substack? How do I get the poetry book deal I’m after? Do I want to try and write another non-fiction book? When will I find time for the novel? (Do I want to find time for it?).
As writers, we need to be entrepreneurial. This isn’t a hobby, it’s a profession. That means we need to be paid for our writing. That means we have to sell our writing like we would any product or service. Many of us have several income streams.
I know this strips some of the romance out of writing. The idea of pure creativity. The image of a poor struggling poet who is writing because s/he just can’t not write. Who walks in nature and pours philosophical musings onto paper, using ink.
But let me tell you: if that poor struggling poet could also be earning a decent living from their poetry, they would be. I don’t believe anyone wants to be struggling, financially. Though I do believe that it’s the price some people pay to live as an artist.
In the digital age, it’s arguably easier to earn a living as a writer. We can drag in paywalls, write across multiple platforms, shift genres, trial different niches, grow a community through social media and sell our words directly to our audience.
But that’s not to say that being entrepreneurial, as a writer, is a modern approach. It’s not. Writers have always needed to balance bill-paying with keeping their art alive and getting it out into the world - and this requires entrepreneurial spirit.
Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf were entrepreneurs
Charles Dickens was known to be a shrewd businessman. He did public readings to raise his profile, worked on a magazine alongside writing novels and published some of his novels in instalments, to keep people coming back for more.
Virgina Woolf started a publishing company, Hogarth Press, in 1917, with her husband, Leonard Woolf, using a hand press in their home. From 1921, she published her own books through Hogarth Press and would print, market and distribute them.
In more recent decades and years, we’ve seen authors like E.L. James who self-published Fifty Shades of Grey before it was picked up by Random House and traditionally published (and turned into a film). Also, see J.K. Rowling.
(Side note: if I was A.L. Ridout, rather than Annie, would I start making my millions?)
Being rich doesn’t always help
Of course, there are also those artists who live on trust funds or shareholder dividends but here’s a thought on that: being given money by your family so that you can focus on your art full-time doesn’t always work out.
I know of this guy whose parents are super-rich. Maybe aristocracy. He wanted to write novels. And because his life was funded by family money, he had the time to do it. He wrote one, it didn’t get published and then he became stuck. Unmotivated.
He never wrote another novel.
There is something about either having to earn directly from your art, or earn a living to fund your life so that you are then free around the edges to work on your creative projects, that feels like a rocket up the arse. It gives you drive and determination.
I have never been more motivated and driven than since becoming a mother and having my working hours reduced to a couple of hours a day while my baby sleeps and now, 11 years in, sometimes less than that, as I currently have a child home full-time.
In those hours, I have to earn a living to pay my bills and there isn’t time left around the edges to work on my passion projects (because: motherhood). So, I choose to make the work I do in that time my art and to make it pay. I turn my writing into a business.
I do that by inviting people to support me on Substack through a paid subscription, which gives you access to all my essays, including those with a paywall (which is most of them). Launching online courses. Writing non-fiction books. Ghostwriting.
In the past, I’ve self-published poetry collections and sold prints of some of my poems that have gone viral on Instagram. I shamelessly turn my poetry into a product, because poetry is my first love and if I can earn a living as a poet, I’m doing it.
During the pandemic, I was running an online course business that brought in good money, but it took up so much time and focus, alongside looking after my kids (then aged five, three and six months), that I felt my writing was slipping away.
So, I slowed down the business and made writing the centre piece, once again. Now, the courses happen around my writing, rather than the other way round. And all of it happens around motherhood, which is the epicentre of my days, and life.
Being entrepreneurial about my writing
So, back to the questions I asked about my writing career, answered with my entrepreneurial hat on:
How do I grow my paid subscribers on Substack?
Adding in a well-placed paywall will seduce some readers to become paid subscribers, so that they can read whatever lies beneath paywall (eg. And then I realised that there is one clear way for every writer to earn £70,000 a year. You just need to…).
But you can also offer discounts on a paid subscription (not too often, as this cheapens your Substack and people get bored of yet anther discount email). Or add a new section to your Substack for paid subscribers (like: workshops, interviews, group coaching).
How do I get the poetry book deal I’m after?
If you want a book deal, you have to put together a book proposal and send it out to agents/publishers. We’re told that you can’t pitch directly to publishers but that’s not true. I’ve done it twice. However, some people like to have the support of an agent.
You don’t pitch once and get the representation/offer. I’ve never heard of this happen. Rather, you keep finding new people to pitch to, new ways to pitch, new angles to open an email with. You keep going going going. And then going a little bit more.
So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m on the pitch. I’m hearing back from editors who might be interested and I’m in that lovely stage where I’m pitching, hearing sparks of interests and I haven’t yet received the rejections. They will come, though.
And at that point: rejection point; the beginning of failure - that’s when you’ve really got to keep going. You can’t give up. You can’t hear one ‘no’ and think that your work is too shit to be published. You have to keep believing, keep pitching. Sell your work.
Do I want to try and write another non-fiction book?
If I do, that means coming up with a good idea, knowing that I’m the right person to write the book and putting together a solid proposal (I teach all this in an online course). It takes time, energy and commitment. I want the poetry book deal more.
For me, it’s a bit like running a business and knowing there’s a product that has sold well before, and that you still know how to sell, but you’re feeling ready to put your energy into a new product. You can’t do both; you have to choose one.
I’m not choosing non-fiction right now. If something came to me - if an editor had an idea for a book they wanted to commission, and they thought I’d be good to write it - I’d be keen, subject-permitting. But I’m not putting together my own proposals.
When will I find time for the novel?
There is always a way to find time for the writing you really want to do.
Writer and founder of The Fold writing membership
talks about this a lot. A single mother and carer to a disabled son, she found the time to write two non-fiction books and a novel alongside her career as a photographer, and doing an MA.It sounds impossible. But it’s not. As long as you are truly, deeply committed and you are ready to prioritise this writing project in the same way you prioritise your paid work and caring roles. Penny does the writing she loves most first, rather than last.
Right now, I’m not making time for the novel. That makes me realise it’s not the priority. Once the poetry book is happening, I’ll fill the time and space it’s taking to pitch that out with writing my novel. Maybe. My writing goals are ever-shifting.
Do you see? It’s about designing your career as a writer to ensure that your bills will be paid (this is what Substack can be amazing for: recurring monthly income without having to work 9-5 hours) and that your focus is on the right book project.
Whether you’re writing articles as a journalist, pitching a book, growing your Substack, self-publishing poetry books or working on a novel: part of the process will be selling your idea so that you can be paid for your writing.
Unless you have the trust fund and it doesn’t demotivate you, in which case: lucky you.
Annie x
Great to see all this, which I kind of know in my bones, articulated with such clarity. Thanks for taking the time and not paywalling…still trying to figure out where to put my £££. Meanwhile, have you tried Herschel and/or Roka backpacks? Both makes are great I think. ( and wide choice of colours!)
This was really helpful advice as a beginner writer hoping to someday be paid for my writing. I loved the examples you used with Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf!