Thread by @annasproul

I am reading this book by @idler’s Tom Hodgkinson and HEARTILY recommend it for the aspiring nonfiction writers among you, especially those under contract. (No personal connection here, just found it at the library.) #pubtip

@idler ::whips out megaphone:: being an author is running a small business. It is running a small business! Treat it like a small business. And read up on what brings the most revenue to small businesses and what doesn’t. Examples of advice I like in this book:

@idler 1. Audiences like to feel cool and like part of a clique. If you can market your book as part of a larger movement, event, lifestyle, etc., do it. If you can make your book something that conveys a social or status message with ownership, make it so.

@idler 2. Social media popularity is not money. If people can signal their in-group status just by sharing or tweeting about your message or identity, they’ll do that and only that because it’s free. Market in such a way that they have to OWN THE THING to get the value/status.

@idler 3. I need to start monetizing these threads because Hodgkinson is right. I’m doing them to get more followers and make more of you like me, and I should be doing them for money! But I digress.

@idler 4. A small business typically takes 5 to 10 years to get off the ground. Your book might come at any point in that stretch, but if you’re not expecting 5 to 10 years of continuous grind to become a successful nonfiction authority, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

@idler 5. DO SPREADSHEETS. Do not be a wuss about money. Do not leave it to others. Know what money is incoming when, plan for delays, and budget for your business within your means.

@idler And finally 6. Do not rely on family and friends. Many many fewer of them will buy your product than you think. Expecting different is ignorance or worse, self-sabotage — engineering your own disappointment bc for some reason you need it to feel at home in yourself.

@idler Your audience consists of the people who want to buy into your message because of the way it makes THEM feel. No more. No less. No one should be expected to buy it because they care about the way *you* feel.

@idler Many more good nuggets in this book, which is purportedly about things like opening a bookshop/magazine/Etsy store but is in fact completely applicable to authors as well. Fin

@idler Psst: of all my recent #pubtip threads, this is the one that I think is most important - or at least the one that has the most distance between level of importance and number of would-be authors paying attention. TREAT IT LIKE A SMALL BUSINESS, people.