Every so often I get this bug up my ass that makes me think I can be commercially viable as an author. I don't know why I get it. I mean, out of all the transgender publishing houses out there, not one will touch my stuff but I see other authors who I outsell by considerable amounts continue to get publishing contracts.
But, I digress.
I've been thinking about being a full time writer again. Not only that, I've been thinking about starting my own damn publishing company and saying to hell with all the others. I am not the best selling TG author from this site, that would probably be Tanya. I am not the most loved either, that would probably be Maddy, but I may just be the most tenacious bitch on the pond.
Here is what is currently going on. I am writing Phenom, which is the fourth book of the God Bless the Child saga. I am also writing (but not as much) Deep Undercover, a biography about an undercover transgender narcotics officer. And, added to that, I am mentoring Kristin Beck on her autobiography "lady valor" before it becomes a movie. Kristin also mentions that she keeps running into prominent transgender people who want to write biographies but don't have the time or talent and she wants to funnel them my way.
Then I have this idea. With all these new contacts, I can start a publishing company that is geared towards Transgender biographies and true to life stories (there are so few published). I even have a name Lavender Rose Publishing.
But there are doubts and risks. Currently I am not selling as well as I like and that means less money coming in. I don't even know if I write what the transgender community wants to read and am trying to find where my niche is (I am selling books to someone). I am getting killed on reviews too lately and no one bothered to review The Long Ride Home or Stranger at the Table, which makes me frown.
Currently I have very little in the way of bills. 300 dollars pays my gas electric and cable. But having a job means I can do more. If I quit, I think I could produce more books and get more done marketing. So either pump me up or play devil's advocate, I am really town between what I can do? Should I quit my job and make a go at my dreams, or should I wait for clearer signs.
Comments
Risk vs Reward
It all comes down to what you are comfortable risking in a new business, vs the potential reward. If you consider this a labor of love, and making money is a secondary concern you will never be disappointed. most new businesses fail, that's a cold hard fact without consideration for the merit of the product they offer.
If this is something that will bring you joy in the act of doing it, I say go for it, very few of us have the chance to do something for a living that makes us happy.
Good luck.
Safety Net
Katie, I like your books. I'd like to see you writing more books... but I'd advise against you quitting your job, at least until you have sufficient 'steady' income from writing to live for a year without having to write new work that sells. And I'm not just talking about your current bills. Best example I can give you is myself. I ran into a situation a while ago where I was extremely glad to have a paying job... because my own (part time) business wouldn't cover the medical treatments I suddenly needed. I work as an underground miner in a gold mine, but my business is photography, taking, printing, and selling pictures. My problem, I was diagnosed with diabetes related wet macular degeneration and I needed treatment quickly or I'd go blind. The drug plan my employer provided covered the cost of the meds (thank goodness), because I needed two shots a month. One in each eye, at $2,000 per shot. Not covered by my employer was the 10 hour round trip to the clinic, or the nights stay in a motel or meals while there. So far it's cost my employer almost $60,000 for the drugs, something I couldn't have afforded along with the associated expenses. But I can still see... vital if I want to be a photographer. ;)
So, my suggestion is that you keep your job, at least until you have a fair sized bank account to live off if needed.
Of course, this only my opinion and as such is worth only as much as you paid for it. :)
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Options
Do you have 6 months of salary saved?
Does your work offer Leave of Absences? Maybe you could take a few months of unpaid leave to explore the idea with a job safety net if it didn't work out?
Cut the cable? If you're close enough to the broadcast towers, free over the air tv is pretty darn good. Add a Netflix account and good to go. Besides, TV just distracts from writing, right? :)
-- Sleethr
Cable
The cable is vital for the broadband connection. TV is an optional luxury.
Penny
Your Current Job
Does your current job give you satisfaction, even if it is less than what you get from writing?
If you did quit your job, would you actually spend that extra time marketing and writing?
Have you explored all the channels to increase your income from writing . . . that you can do without quitting your current job?
Jobs have a positive influence on our lives. They might seem tedious, and might actually be tedious, but they offer discipline and rewards beyond the basic paycheck and benefits package.
Good luck, whichever way you choose.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
As someone currently unemployed and writing
I would say I agree with the consensus that, unless you have a sizeable nest egg saved up, you should hold back from quitting your job until you do.
You already do a much better job about remaining dedicated to your craft than a lot of us other writers do, with a respectable output giving you a good base to building a reliable income from your stories.
You've been publishing for, what, two years on Kindle now? And you're raking in about 1k a month? Imagine if you set your sights on a five-year plan of writing while working. We could argue diminishing returns and assume that at the end of that fifth year -- three from now -- you've roughly doubled your income from your books per month, at which time the income would help make up from your losses due to quitting your job. In the interim, you could set yourself a budget per month and save anything past that, building up the funds needed to provide for yourself if something should go wrong.
Do you have insurance, and if so is it private or covered by your job? That could be another important issue to look into, since not all business insurance plans will allow holders to continue paying for the insurance and its use if they are no longer employed by the original provider.
There are a lot of things to consider. Is it worth the risk of not having something to fall back on if your plans DO fall through?
Melanie E.
You can't quit.
Katie... You really can't. You love writing. It's obvious in your work, it's obvious in how emotional you get about it.
Please don't quit.
~And so it goes...
not quitting writing
I was talking about quitting my job delivering papers, not quitting writing.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Plan first
Don't do it until you've researched all the costs involved and have a business plan for how you're going to market your products to consumers. It might not be worth it to transform your enterprise into a full-on publishing company where you'd have to deal with the costs of printing, shipping and warehousing some volume of books, with more people switching from paper books to e-readers every day. Since some of what you'd need to do for your hypothetical new company would be sales and marketing work to get customers to your products, you may want to look into doing more rigorous marketing of your titles at Amazon without needing as much of an initial capital investment.
Answers
I'll answer all the questions in one post:
My job is not rewarding, I deliver newspapers in the wee hours of the morning. I make more money at it than a lot of people there because my route has a lot of driving and a lot of bad roads. I don't get health insurance, I don't even get a day off. It's a 7 day 365 day a year job and that wears on you.
Would I write more if I didn't have the job? I don't know. That is a concern. I work 4 hours a night and make full time money (I bring home about 425 a week) I could be writing more, but I seem to spend a lot of time playing Candy Crush and a new racing game on my phone. I would like to think I could set my schedule better. Currently I write 2k words a day, part of my plan prior to quitting work is to write 4 hours a day (so a part time job) and not worry so much about word count as I do time at the keyboard (which will have to be on a computer with no internet because I'm bad about checking messages).
I think it might be a good idea to get a nest egg. Maybe 20k in the bank. I've had good prior success with marketing, but have decided this year to do it less often, but with more strength (I do a push every quarter and one is coming). I have been ranked high in serious categories against serious authors like Stephen King and W.E.B. Griffin. I have had books hit best seller status and I thought if I concentrated more on my efforts I could do it more often.
With being around Kristin, I have the desire to be more visible as well. It upsets me that an author made the Trans100 and I didn't. I would like to work on my visibility and define my message more. I probably need to learn more about marketing and publishing anyway. I do a few things very well, and one of those things is tell really good stories with solid plots and realistic emotions. I don't appeal to some who only want escapists fiction or titillating stories, but I think I fill a much needed void. I'm trying to figure out how to get that information into more hands.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Some suggestions
Jerry Pourelle (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/) and Sarah Hoyt (http://accordingtohoyt.com/) have both written on the business of being a writer. And there is a definite business aspect that's completely separate from the skills of being a good writer.
Before making any major changes, I would read some of what they have written and some of their referred materials.
Janice