I spent most of April writing what I call a jealous novel.  When I write some novels, they don’t want me to imagine much of anything else—particularly in the  novel form.  So I can’t read incredibly good books, those books that make you disappear into the world.  I was left with mediocre to bad books or excellent short stories.  For some reason, short story quality can be excellent without getting in the way of the novel.

Finished the book a little after the middle of the month, so I could finally get to reading novels again. I also had a bunch of research I have to do, so the novel-reading started up slowly.

So…all I have for recommendations this month are a few short stories, a few articles, and one novel. Here’s hoping May will be better.

April, 2010

Costa, Shelley, “As The Screw Turns,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2010.  Wonderful ghost story.  Had I read the title before the story (did I tell you I got tired in April?), I would have realized that she was playing off Henry James, but I figured it out anyway.  A lovely mystery chock-full of ghosts, all of whom must solve murders. This one pulls the heartstrings, and introduces an afterlife that I hope Costa explores again.

Estleman, Loren D., “Get Sinatra,” Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April 2010.  Nice period piece featuring the young, and mostly unknown, Frank Sinatra.  So well written, in fact, that it made me break out the early Sinatra CDs.  If I say any more, I shall reveal too much.

Jones, Chris, “The Essential Man,” Esquire, March, 2010.  Fascinating article on the film critic Roger Ebert.  His cancer surgery took his speaking voice away four years ago, but he still communicates.  Good stuff in here on writing, movies, and enjoying life.  Highly recommended.

Kamp, David, “Sweet Bard of Youth,” Vanity Fair, March, 2010.  I love Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, which comes out in time for the Oscars, but which I always manage to read in April.  I’m chronically behind on my reading. Ah, well.

Kamp’s article is about John Hughes, whose films I’ve always enjoyed.  I never knew much about Hughes himself, and this article remedies that.  It also provides a portrait of an artist who remained true to himself.  If you want to work in the arts or if you already do, check this one out.

Mockenhaupt, Brian, “Hood,” Esquire, March, 2010.  An article on Fort Hood, describing the community, the culture, and the aftershocks of last fall’s shootings.  Sad, interesting, well done.

Robb, J.D., Born in Death, Berkley, 2007.  Nora Roberts (whose sf pen name is J.D. Robb) writes faster than I can read.  She’s the only author I know I can say that about.

It’s not entirely true.  If I read only Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, then I’d keep up easily. But I do get tired of reading the same author over and over, no matter how good the writer is—and Roberts is damn good.

I usually read the Robb books when I travel. That way, if I lose it en route, I can always pick up another copy.  I decided to try this one while writing the jealous novel.  It didn’t work; but I managed to get far enough to want to finish when I was done with my own novel.

Babies, childbirth, mystery, and murder are the themes of this Eve/Roarke adventure.  And it would’ve been an uncomfortable read if it weren’t for Eve’s shock and dismay over the way that human reproduction works.  I have (and still do) feel the same way at times, so reading her dialogue often made me laugh aloud in recognition.  One of the better J.D. Robb installments.

Weller, Sheila, “Once In Love With Ali,” Vanity Fair, March, 2010.  I didn’t expect to enjoy an article on Ali McGraw.  I was never incredibly impressed with her as an actress, possibly because I loathed Love Story.  The article, though, shows what a fascinating woman she is, and what an interesting life she’s led.  Made me want to see some McGraw films, which is danged unusual—and shows the power of print.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Schedules and How to Keep Them

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

I often work with start-up publishers.  I like their enthusiasm and their vision.  After all, I once co-owned a start-up publishing company as well.

However, because I co-owned such a company, I keep a careful eye on the start-ups.  I make sure that I can get out of my contracts easily if need be.

When I see potential trouble in a start-up, I let the owner know.  If the trouble doesn’t get fixed, I do an assessment: can I live with that trouble? Will that trouble affect my work? If the answer to both of those questions is no, then I stay.  If it’s yes, I try once more to solve the problems, and if that fails, I leave.

Over the years, I have left primarily due to lack of payment.  Start-ups run through their money quicker than anyone else.  Several years ago, one start-up didn’t have enough cash to publish an anthology I had contributed to.  The owner sent a letter, saying payment would come six months after publication, which I found unacceptable.  The owner, in other words, got all the benefit, and if that owner failed to pay, I would lose first publication rights to my story and never get compensated for them.

Besides, the owner violated the contract.  I informed the owner of this, asked for my payment (which, supposedly on acceptance, was now overdue), and when the owner reiterated that no payment would come until six months after publication, I pulled the story.  The book was already in production.  That decision cost the publisher five times more than it would have if the publisher had simply honored our contract.

Such problems are common with start-ups.  I’ve had to deal with at least one of these issues per year.  The handwriting is always on the wall at that point.  If the start-up delays payment, the start-up has money troubles.  If a start-up has money troubles, and continues to deny them, the start-up will—and I mean will—go out of business.

In this particular case, the start-up I referred to was gone one year later.  Half the authors in that anthology got their post-publication payment. The other half did not.  The authors in the next anthology never did get paid.

Money issues are a place where problems become visible.  Anyone who pays attention can see that handwriting on the wall.

But some time back, I had a different issue with a start-up.  It had to do with scheduling.

This start-up—a small press—contracted to reissue several of my books.  The editor who contacted me was one of the most reputable in the business.  The press’s owner had had a few business failures in the past, but I see that as a plus.  The owner had managed to get start-up capital despite those failures.  The owner also was a bright person who learned from mistakes.  I think failure is a good thing, if a person can learn from it, so I did not hold the failures against the owner, but I made a wary note of them, just like I would have if there were hints of money troubles.

This company had no money troubles.  It was drowning in capital and had great plans for various projects.  But I had a lot of trouble finding out when my books would be published.  My editor couldn’t get answers on that issue as well. And no one provided deadlines.  I thought that strange.

Then came some personnel changes.  My editor left. The new editor never answered e-mail.  Neither did the owner.  And I had some pretty serious questions that needed answering.  Most importantly, I needed to know the publishing schedule because some of the books being reissued had co-publishing arrangements.

After months of no response from the publisher, I finally sent a registered letter canceling the contracts.  I took longer than usual in doing so, simply because the problems seemed so unusual.  But I was complaining to Dean one afternoon and I heard myself say this, “If I’m having trouble getting responses now before publication, when a publisher is excited about a project, imagine how hard it’ll be to get a response if there’s an actual problem, like a delayed payment or a botched cover.”

That sentence decided me.  I couldn’t continue to do business with this publisher.

Eventually, the owner responded to my registered letter.  The owner demanded to know why I hadn’t e-mailed.  I sent copies of all my correspondence.  We had several backs and forths, and things seemed to be getting resolved.  Then I reiterated that I had needed the publishing schedule.

The owner asked me why I needed a schedule.  I mentioned the co-publishing agreements, and then I stated what seemed obvious to me: All publishers had a schedule.  This publisher just needed to share theirs with their authors.

“But,” the publisher wrote back, “none of my companies have ever had any schedule, and we’ve done fine.”

Suddenly, all became clear.  The previous businesses hadn’t failed from undercapitalization or from overextending. They had all failed because the owner had never ever had a schedule, and was now repeating the same mistake.

Needless to say, I stood by my cancellation, which turned out to be a good decision.

The poor business owner never did understand what had gone wrong, with me and with others.  The company, while initially on solid financial footing, started having trouble.  The troubles had nothing to do with the finances and everything to do with the lack of a schedule.

You see, without a schedule, other businesses can’t work with yours.  If you’re a publisher, bookstores won’t know when to order your books – and won’t be able to depend on them to arrive on time.  If you’re a reader, you won’t know when a book becomes available.  I got five novels this week, all of which I had pre-ordered, all of them I have been looking forward to for months and in one case, years.  The books arrived on time, and I’m a happy, if overwhelmed, fan.

If you’re a busy author, like me, you need the schedule so that you can meet your deadlines. If you’re familiar with publishing, you can also see when things start going awry.  Many years ago, an inexperienced editor at a major publishing house forgot to put my book into production.  I noticed when the copy edit was late, then when the proof didn’t show.  I—and several other authors—had our agents find out what was going on. What was going on was that this editor was very incompetent, and once writers and their representatives started complaining, this editor got fired.  My book was delayed for a year because someone hadn’t met the schedule.  (You’ll see more about this in June, when the book gets re-released from a new publisher.  I’ll tell the whole story then.)

A solid publishing schedule gives the author all kinds of flexibility, and when an author is multipublished, keeps books spaced a proper length apart (or not, if we’re jamming something for attention).

Every publisher I’ve ever worked with, until this start-up, knew that a schedule was important.  Not all publishers—particularly the new ones—could keep to the schedule, but they at least tried.

Recently, I had the happy surprise of encountering an extremely organized and scheduled publisher.  I turned in a novel and got an e-mail from the managing editor, with all the important dates—when the revision (if there were any) was due, when the copy edits needed to be finished, when the proofs needed to be done, and when the book would be available for pre-order.  I about fell off my chair with delight and surprise.

Then I picked myself up, compared this publication schedule to my personal schedule, and informed the company of a possible problem—I would be traveling for weeks when one of the due dates hit.  We adjusted everything within the hour, and the managing editor told me this was why the company sent out the in-house schedule, so they could adjust it to accommodate everyone concerned.

Wow! Such professionalism.  In twenty-plus years of publishing and being published, I had never encountered such specificity before.  I loved it, and I confess, I feel spoiled now.

Now you know why schedules are so important to publishing.  But what about other businesses? Do they need schedules?

Of course they do.  Everyone needs a schedule.  If you don’t have a schedule, you end up like that poor start-up above.  After I left, I continued to pay attention, and I watched that poor business owner run from one fire to another, always trying to put them out.  Detail after detail got lost as problems blew up in the owner’s face.

Schedules provide structure.  Sometimes that structure is as simple as business hours posted on the door of a retail store.  Customers know when the store is open, and the owner knows when she needs to be there. But the store needs to keep to the posted hours. After a few tries, customers won’t return to a store that’s closed during its posted hours.

The structure provides a framework for the entire business.  It’s up to the owner of the business to enforce that structure. For example, I recently heard of two different firings that occurred in our small town.

In the first, the employee showed up hours late for work, without calling.  The employee did this repeatedly.  After a year of this (!), the employee got fired.  Was this the employee’s fault? Of course.  But it was also the business owner’s fault for not respecting the schedule and the structure it provided.

Had I been the owner, and had my employee been that late without cause (a trip to the hospital; a car breakdown outside of cell phone range), I might have fired the employee on the spot.  If the employee was particularly good, I might have issued a warning, and fired the employee the second time the employee was hours late.  But I certainly wouldn’t have waited a year.  A year meant that the schedule had no meaning.  Ignoring the problem gave the employee tacit permission to misbehave.

Another local business fired one of its three managers for failing to follow a different schedule. The manager would occasionally skip the night deposit, taking care of it the next time the manager drove past the bank.  Which meant that the books for the business were off considerably.  It also meant that the manager had an entire day’s receipts just riding around in the car.  The manager was a nice person, without guile.  It was just a case of being clueless.  In this instance, the manager was clueless exactly twice: the first time, the manager got a warning; the second time, the manager got fired.

Schedules are schedules are schedules.

So…

You work for yourself. Why do you need a schedule?

Go back to the posts on discipline, deadlines, and time. You need a schedule to help you manage your time, to acquire discipline, and to meet deadlines.  Once you become adept at your business, you will know how many hours something will take.  You’ll be able to schedule your time very well.  You’ll know in advance when you’re overextended or underextended.  You’ll know when you have to work extra hard and when you have some leisure time.  You’ll know when you need to hire help, even in the short term.

You’ll also be able to compare your schedule with that of the people you do business with and come up with a joint schedule that suits you both. That’s what I did with the publishing house that gave me its internal schedule, and what I tried to do with the start-up I had to leave.  Because I’m very scheduled and I’ve been doing this a long time, I knew that my March, April, and May would be crammed.  (They were.)  I know that I need to work extra hard in June, July, and August because I’m going to lose two, maybe three weeks of work in September due to two trips (and all the planning that goes into such trips).  I also know I’ll be tired when I return, so I have to schedule lightly.

What level of schedule do you need? That’s determined by your business.  Most businesses need some kind of external schedule, marked by deadlines and contracts.  But most employees—including you—need an internal schedule.

Just because a retail store is open from 10 to 5 doesn’t mean the owner should spend the entire time behind the counter twiddling her thumbs as she waits for customers.  She needs to have a schedule to change the inventory, to make bank deposits, to clean the store itself.  She might put inventory up on e-Bay, which has its own scheduling demands, and she might have external deadlines imposed by the state and municipality in the form of tax documents.  Even something with a seeming simple schedule might be a lot more complex when viewed from the inside.

Other businesses work off appointment schedules or on construction schedules.  Some have deadlines.  Others have seasonal demands.  All of them valid.  All of them create external schedules.

But external schedules mean nothing if you don’t have your internal schedule under control.  How do you do that?

You work backwards.

You’ve done this your whole life.  Think of it this way.  When you went to your day job, you had a schedule.  Let’s say you had to be there at nine a.m., and unlike the employee mentioned above, you couldn’t be five minutes late without a phone call and a damn good reason.

So you figured the time in your head.  You had a thirty minute commute that could stretch to forty-five on bad days.  You had to drop the kids off at school, which was fifteen minutes out of your way.

That meant you had to leave the house no later than eight o’clock.  It took you an hour to get ready, counting shower and breakfast.  If you lived on your own, you could get up at seven and make it. But you didn’t.  It always took an extra fifteen minutes to get the kids out of bed. Plus, you always hit the snooze button twice.  No matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t break yourself of that habit.

So, to be safe, you set your alarm for six in the morning, knowing you had built leeway into your schedule.  You could oversleep an hour and still get to work on time.  Maybe with practice, or as the kids got older, you could shave a half an hour off of that, and get up at six-thirty.  Or maybe you convinced your spouse to take the kids. Then you could get up at seven.

We all make those kinds of decisions, every day.  Now you have to make them for your business.  Let’s say yours is a deadline-oriented business, like mine.  The external deadline is in stone (remember the deadline section).  So you don’t want to miss it, not even if you get the flu or you lose an employee or your computer dies.

So you move the hard deadline a month earlier or two months earlier, and shot for the new date.  Then you count backwards.

In your backwards count, you must be realistic. Let’s go back to the getting to work metaphor.  A friend of mine once told me he lived ten minutes away from work when there was no traffic. The problem was the commute took thirty minutes when the traffic was going speed limit.  If there was a jam, his commute took an hour.  (This was why, he told me later, he decided to walk—he actually got there quicker.  But that’s a digression about a health decision, as well as a scheduling decision.)

If you worked at top speed, you could probably get the project done in a month.  But top speed isn’t always possible.  In fact, top speed usually leads to mistakes and burnout.

At your slowest speed, barely working at all, you could get the project done in four months.  But that would be dull and probably counterproductive, since most of us who work on deadline get paid as the deadlines get met.

So how to find a happy medium?

First, buy a calendar.  Write in holidays, days off, and vacation days.  If you have chronic health problems, like I do, plan for those as well.  (I usually plan for an unscheduled week off somewhere in a quarterly schedule.)  Put in personal time, like parent-teacher conferences, the kids’ soccer matches, dinner and a date with your spouse.  Those days are days away from work.

Then figure you can finish the project in 75 days of steady work (add the one month at top speed to the four months of slow speed and divide by two.  That gives you 2.5 months or 75 days).  Count backwards from your early deadline, skipping the days off and half days.  Circle that date on your calendar.  That’s your drop-dead start date.  Do not miss it.  You might finish the project earlier than your early deadline.  Good for you.  You’ve just become reliable.

But you might have to struggle to meet your early deadline because—guess what? Life happens.  If you’re struggling, you have some time built into your schedule. But your drop-dead deadline is just that.  Something you cannot miss.

Play whatever mind games it takes to make your schedule work.  And write it all down.  The early deadline, the start date, the time you think it will take to finish.

Because you might have to juggle everything if another deadline gets into the mix.

This happened to me in April.  I agreed to write a story that would take quite a bit of research.  The editor implied that the story would be due in June. When I asked for his actual deadline, he gave me May 15.  I looked at that, looked at my already-crammed schedule, and realized that I would have to work late into the night to get it done. But I could do it, research and all.  It meant that I had to shave some things out of my schedule—mostly, following the news (which I do obsessively).  No morning newspaper.  No evening newscasts.  No peeking at news websites.  I took to listening to NPR on my iPhone because the app let me download and listen in the middle of the night if need be, or when I was taking out the garbage or feeding the cats.

I adjusted a few other deadlines closer to their drop-deads than I liked.  And I didn’t write ahead on the Freelancer’s Guide, for instance, although I planned to.  But I managed to make it work.  I got it all done, and done well.

I would have had to turn the editor down, though, if I hadn’t already had extra time built into my schedule.  And I would have lost some significant revenue.

Do what it takes to set up your internal schedule.  I use calendars and computerized reminders.  I also maintain a daily, weekly, and monthly to-do list.  I frequently look ahead at my list, so that I make sure I’m on track.

I work on a project basis—sometimes working 12-hour days, sometimes working 6-hour days.  (Occasionally slacking with 4-hour days).  Others work on an hourly schedule. They sit at their desks from 9 to 5 just like they would if they had a day job.  Or they give themselves a certain number of tasks to complete each hour.

That minute level of scheduling is an individual thing.  But there are two things that  must be absolute:

1. Your schedule must help you complete work.  That sounds so elementary.  But if I had an hourly schedule, I’d subvert it and get nothing done.  I learned that a long time ago.  However, I love to finish things, so I try to finish as many projects as possible in the space of a year.  I also like to challenge myself, so I make sure most of the projects are outside my comfort zone.

Long ago, I defined the things I could not cut from my schedule.  An hour for meals.  (Half an hour for lunch, if need be.) Reading. Exercise. A good night’s sleep.  An hour of TV per night.  I could jettison those things, but not for long.  Those were absolutes.  And if I skipped some, like exercise and sleep, I wouldn’t be effective at my job.  So there are times I eat at my desk, but I skip an hour of TV before I skip my daily run.  (Dammit.)  You have things like that too. Be honest about them. That’ll help you keep your schedule and meet your deadlines.

The other absolute is this:

2. You must enforce your schedule.  Just like that business owner who let his employee arrive late every day for a year (!), you risk losing control of your business if you think of a schedule as a suggestion rather than something written in stone.  You’ll run from crisis to crisis like that publisher I mentioned, instead of completing good and productive work on time.

Not to mention the fact that if you use a schedule as a suggestion instead of a structure, you’ll be in a constant state of panic. Everyone from your suppliers to your creditors to your clients will be angry with you for neglecting one or another detail.  Your business will suffer, even if you thrive on conflict.  And, ultimately, you’ll end up hating the job you created for yourself.

A schedule is as essential to a business as the skeleton is to the human body.  Often outsiders can’t see the schedule—or just get hints of it—but they’d know if it were missing.  A human being would be a packet of flesh and fluids without the skeleton.  A business is just a bunch of good intentions without the structure provided by a schedule.

Figure out your schedule—both internal and external.  Refine it as time goes on.  Figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.  Then implement it.  Make sure that the people around you know about the schedule and respect it.  You have to respect it as well. It’s the thing that will make or break your business.

Why do you think I haven’t missed in sixty-one weeks of the Freelancer’s Guide? Schedule, my friends.  Some weeks, it was the only thing that got me to the computer—despite being tired or cranky or just plain reluctant.  It got me to the computer tonight, even though I would much rather be working on a new project that has me all excited or reading those five new pre-ordered books.

I have time for both of those things in my schedule.  And I can get to them now, since this week’s Guide is done.

I know some of you have built a weekly trip to  my blog into your schedule so that you can read the Freelancer’s Guide. For that, I thank you.  I also appreciate all comments, thoughts, and donations.   You guys are great.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Schedules And How To Keep Them” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

My story, “The Dark Man,” has just appeared in the anthology Is Anybody Out There, edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern.  As a reader, I’ve been looking forward to this anthology for some time.  It has some great writers, and deals with the Fermi Paradox (if there are aliens, why haven’t we met them?).  Besides mine, the stories in the anthology include ones by Pat Cadigan, Alex Irvine, James Morrow, Ray Vukcevich, and Ian Watson.  Marty Halpern is posting some of the stories for free on his blog.  You can check that out here: http://martyhalpern.blogspot.com/ and you can buy a copy at your favorite retailer or find one here.

The wonderful folks at The Drabblecast have done a spectacular production of my (somewhat creepy) sf story, “The Observer.”  Sarah Tolbert did a fantastic reading of the story.  Take a listen.  You can find it–for free–here, along with some other wonderful stories.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Expanding Your Business

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

For the last six months, I have lived in a constant state of panic—and weirdly, that panic exists mostly in my own mind.  From the outside, everything is going well, extremely well, in fact.  But inside—well, a few mini volcanoes are going off—all of them triggered by the digital revolution.

I had already come to terms with the fact that I have more story ideas than I can write.  Somewhere in the past, I figured that the  marketplace would take care of some of them—meaning that the marketplace would deny me the opportunity to publish some of those ideas.  In fact, the marketplace has closed the door on a number of projects, deemed unworthy by major New York publishers to be taken to readers.

I don’t give up, but with so many projects, some have taken the back burner while others—more viable by publishing standards—rose to the forefront.

And then the digital revolution happened.  This Guide happened.  Kindle, Nook, and smart phones happened. Suddenly, I can publish what I want.  Five thousand readers might seem small to New York, but to my little cottage industry, five thousand readers is huge.

All of those story ideas on the back burner?  They’re crowding the forefront of my brain, boiling over, and causing a mess in my writing kitchen.  (Or to stretch the metaphor in another direction: they’re children who used to sit quietly in the back of the room and are now crowding the front screaming, “Me first! Me! Me!”)

Add to that my entire backlist of already published material, most of which I control all the rights to.  (For an idea how big that is, click on my bibliography)  Over three hundred short stories and more than two dozen novels.

Not to mention all the work that’s already in play, stuff I’m currently writing and stuff I have committed to write.  Plus the teaching that I do because I believe in paying forward (I can’t pay my wonderful teachers back, so I’m paying forward by teaching the next generation), and the reading I do to keep up, and the stories I watch on TV and movies—again to keep up—and the music I listen to because I love music (and without it, I would not exercise) and the newspapers, the magazines, the blogs, and…ack!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Internal panic ensues.

Now, those of you who have regularly read the Guide have already figured out that I’m very, very disciplined and very, very good at time management.  I make lists, I know my priorities, I meet my deadlines.

But I want to step into this brave new world of publishing, and to do so I need to make choices.  First, I need to prioritize my projects.  Then, I need to make a budget of both time and money (projected incoming and projected outgoing).  Then I need to figure out my timeline.  And finally, I need to factor in where (if anywhere) I need help.

Let’s start with the last thing first.  Do I need help? (Okay, you wags.  I mean employees, not, y’know, professional help of the kind you’re thinking of.)

There are some things in my business that only I can do.  I’m not like Alexander Dumas or James Patterson: I can’t farm my ideas with a great outline to other writers and be happy with the result.  I recently told an editor who proposed just such a project to me the same thing: I have learned through several long hard lessons that I don’t play well with others when it comes to the actual writing.

So all those new backburner projects currently bubbling over from volcano #1? My problem.  Something I’ll have to solve through time management and discipline and sheer joy (can you tell I’m looking forward to this?)

But that pesky backlist.  I don’t have time to put it online—not and write new material.  If I wanted to retire right now, I could and live off my backlist, thanks to the brave new world of publishing and some other changes in the industry.  (See my husband Dean Wesley Smith’s post on The Magic Bakery to understand how backlist translates into money for writers.)

Of course, once I figure out what I want to do with that backlist, I could hire someone to do the actual conversion to online formats for me.  The question is: do I want to do that?

If only it were so easy.  In a magical world—the ideal world—the world of expectations (see last week’s post), I could just hire someone and all of my problems would be solved.

But I’ve run enough businesses to know it doesn’t work that way.

First, look at the Guide sections on employees. You’ll see that often employees are more trouble than they’re worth.  You have to train them, supervise them, and pay them.  All of this costs money—and worse for me—time.

So I have to do a cost-benefit analysis.  Is it worth my incredibly precious time to train an employee who may or may not work out? Is it worth the money to hire someone? And if I do hire them, where would they work? Do I bring them into my home office? (okay: that sound you just heard? Me, screaming.  Apparently no.  They can’t work here, in my home.) Do I let them work in their home office? (Nope: can’t supervise very well there.)  Or do I rent an office for them to work in?

Given my personality, my choice is the office outside of the home.  I can supervise and I can keep them out of my home.  But…an office costs money.  Rent, utilities, insurance, as well as the employee’s salary, and furniture for the office, a topflight computer so they can do the work, and here it is again…time.  I’d have to stop in every day to make sure they’re getting the job done.

The very idea of all of this makes me tired.  I really don’t want an employee at this stage of my career.

But what that means is that all of my volcanic plans must take a backseat to time—my time—and my focus.  If I’m going to do this myself, then I need to carve out some time to do so, and I need to realize that going it alone will make the changeover much slower.

Again, I’d have to do a cost-benefit analysis.  Can I make more money going it alone? Will slow get the job done—without the office expenses, without the employee hassle?  Will I be able to make the change?

Is the change worthwhile?

And if I decide that the change is worthwhile, is it something that needs to get done now, this instant, or something that can stretch out over several years?

All personal questions about my business, all with both empirical answers (timeline, money) and personal answers (figuring out what I really want).  Let me state here and now, however, that my decision to do work on future projects means that I will not approve fan fiction and I don’t want anyone to do the work for me “as a favor.”  I license my copyrights and my worlds, and I am not in any way giving anyone blanket permission to work in them.  (Remember? I do not play well with others.)

My analysis here is a textbook example of what all businesses go through when they want to expand.  So let’s discuss expansion.

First, let me deal with the elephant in the room.  Unsuccessful businesses often expand to increase revenue.  It sounds counterintuitive, but some businesses can only get capital (investment money) if they have a new project to spend the money on.  This leads to businesses that get stretched too thin.  When you hear that a business was a house of cards, and once one card fell the entire thing toppled, you can pretty much guarantee that the business expanded too quickly—whether internally (hiring too many employees, rushing out too much product) or externally (opening too many storefronts).  If you’re thinking of expanding to get more capital because you’re already underfunded, stop now. That way will guarantee the collapse of your business.  All you’re doing is holding off the inevitable.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s discuss successful businesses.

At some point, every successful businesses will reach a point where expansion looks like a good idea. But is it?

The first question you must answer is this: Can your business continue to thrive without expanding?

Most businesses can thrive without growing. Even though growing seems like a natural state, it is sometimes the death of a healthy business.  The owners get spread too thin or the expansion doesn’t work out or the economy has a downturn. The expansion might actually weaken the business itself.

Does your expansion have its roots in changing neighborhoods or changing technologies?  If you own a storefront, would you be better off in a different neighborhood with more traffic? Or another neighborhood with a different kind of traffic? Is your neighborhood aging or going downhill, facing economic changes or a retooling?  You need to consider all of that when considering moving your business to a large space or adding another storefront in a different location.

Changing technology is another matter, and it happens to be the one I’m facing.  My business would thrive just fine on the old technological model.  But will my business thrive in five years? Ten? If I believe that the new technologies are essential to the publishing industry, then I need to jump on the wave now.  I won’t be an early adapter—that’s Michael A. Stackpole and others—but I’d be in the early wave.  Already I’m getting e-mails and tweets from around the world, asking for digital copies of my work.  Imagine how many I’d have to fend off if I refuse to cross into e-publishing.

I’ve analyzed my industry and feel for me that working in conventional publishing and e-publishing will be beneficial.  (Remember, I have a mountain of real-world publishing experience, as the former owner of a publishing house, a former editor, and a non-writing-related small business owner.  In other words, I have a lot more experience than most writers going into this, not counting the goodwill from my writing career.)  Now that I’ve figured out that it’s beneficial, I need to figure out what works for me in my expansion.

But moving into new technologies might not work for your business.  The technology might be a fad—something that seems like a good idea, but doesn’t catch on. Remember, we have had video phone technology since the 1980s, but it’s taken 20+ years for the technology to garner even marginal usage—and that’s via computer, not through a landline.  If you had been an early adapter of video phone technology for your business or running a communications business with video phones as a main selling point, you would have lost money, particularly if you adapted that tech in the late 1980s.

Sometimes letting others adapt early is the best response.  They’ll work out the bugs, and take the risks.  The key for any business that feels it must grow and change due to changes in technology is research.

Before I made the decision to add digital onto my writing business, I did two years of research—and I’m still doing research.  This blog is part of that research.  But I’m reading about digital, trying some of the products on a consumer basis (I have a Kindle and an iPhone, and have already had some hands-on contact with an iPad), and continue to look at pricing, as well as successful—and unsuccessful—adapters of the new technology.

Research—as I say almost every week—is an important part of your business.

If you are going to expand due to new technologies, you also have to look into the future.  If it takes 20 years for these changes in your field to establish itself—like a video phone—will you be around to capitalize on it?  Do you want to be self-employed in 20 years? Will you be retired? Can you imagine yourself selling the business and moving onto something else?

If any of those things are true, and you don’t need the new technology to maintain your thriving business, then technological expansion might not be for you.

Other things to consider as you expand:

1. The financial cost of expansion.  I delineated my costs above.  I’d need an outside office and an employee.  Here in my tiny town, I’m looking at a minimum of $24,000 per year in additional expenses for just those two things.  Will the expansion bring in $30,000 in its first year so that I can afford that change and make a profit? Or would I be hurting my business with the expansion by breaking even on the new office space and the new employee? Or would I lose money?

Be harsh here, because these decisions are the ones that will make or break your business.

2. The time cost of expansion.  I mentioned this above as well. Expansion takes time out of your business day. When you’re already pressed for time, such a change can be disastrous. Figure out your hourly wage.  Even self-employed people can break down their earnings into an hourly rate.  Once you have that, then factor in the time it will take you to establish the new office (say) or train the new employee(s) or learn the new technology.

Will the profit you make off the expansion be worth the money lost because your time is spent on the expansion and not earning like you have been doing?  In other words, can you afford to lose 10-30 hours per week of your time to establish this new side of your business? Can you make a profit on the expansion by doing so? Or can it wait?

3. If your math proves that expansion is worthwhile, are you better off making a slow expansion or a rapid one? Sometimes it’s better to lose a month of work time all at once and get the new part of the business up and running.  If you extend that month over a year (an hour here and an hour there), you might lose the advantage the expansion would bring or you might actually increase your costs in both time and money.  Again, it depends on the type of expansion you’re planning and the type of business you’re running.

Whether or not to expand your business is the second most important business decision you’ll ever make—right after deciding to own your own business in the first place.  Look at expansion as closely as you would look at leaping from your day job to working for yourself.  Use all the of the tools I mention in other parts of the guide as your blueprint for expansion. Because expansion is like starting a new business.  You’ll fundamentally change the business you’ve started and you might jeopardize it.

Plan carefully before you make the decision.

And here’s one other thought on the expansion.  If you’re at all in doubt, if thinking of expanding makes your stomach hurt, then don’t do it.  Your gut sense on this is as important as all of the number crunching, the facts, and the figures.

If you have made your business successful through hard work and perseverance, then your subconscious knows as much or more about that business than your conscious brain does.  Your gut is an informed gut, and if it’s worried that an expansion will fail, then maybe you’re missing something important in your very logical plans.

Never take a leap as important as expanding your business without being fully confident in your decision.  You must believe that your business will be more successful if it expands.  Not a little more.  A lot more.

Because an expansion will cost you more in time and energy than you will plan on. Any change does.  There will be unexpected results—good and bad—from that expansion.  You won’t be able to plan for everything.

You will have to know you’re making the right decision.

I know that moving into e-publishing is the right thing for me. But I’m not yet ready to commit to a path on how to achieve it.  I have more research to do, more numbers to crunch.  I have to decide if I need an employee or if I’m simply pushing myself too far too fast.

I have a lot of exploration to do before I commit to a path for my business expansion.  I’ve been around long enough to know that research and planning are the only things that will make this decision work.

In the meantime, I have a novel and several short stories to finish. I have some backlist that I will e-pub, slowly.  I have to finish the seemingly never-ending Freelancer’s Guide.

My business is thriving and I’m enjoying it. Even with the panic attacks. For once, I’m panicking about having too many opportunities rather than not enough.  And that’s a change from 20 years ago.  A good change.

One I can appreciate as I look toward the future of my industry, which seems brighter than ever before.

I also appreciate everyone who comes to my website each week to read the Freelancer’s Guide.  I love the e-mails and the comments. The interactions mean a lot and have helped shape the Guide.  I still have several weeks of work on this, so if you feel inclined—and if the Guide has helped you—please contribute a dollar or two to this wonderful experiment.  And thanks for all the help so far—both in ideas and in dollars.  I appreciate it all.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Expanding Your Business” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.