Business Musings: Expect Success

I’ve been doing a series on licensing for writers, which is subtitled “Rethinking the Writing Business.” Normally, I would put this particular blog as Part 8 of the series, but I’m afraid that would prevent a number of people from reading the post. And I think all writers need to read this blog post, whether they’ve read the previous licensing posts or not.
Initially, I got the idea for this post last year, when I was reading Emilio Estefan’s book, The Rhythm of Success. (Please note I use Amazon links, not for any particular political reason, but because I’m lazy.) You might know of Emilio Estefan as a member of Miami Sound Machine or Gloria Estefan’s husband. But he’s an international businessman whose work crosses a number of industries, from the restaurant industry to the hotel industry to the music industry to the television industry. He moved to the U.S. with no money and is now worth at least $500 million. (That number has remained the same since 2015, which tells me that the sites that compile celebrity net worth can’t penetrate all of his businesses to see exactly how much he’s worth. I’m not even bothering with a link. Google it yourself.)
His entire book, written in 2010, focuses on his personal life with an eye toward the attitudes that made him successful.
Those attitudes were the key. No matter who tried to stop him, he barreled forward, making sure that he achieved whatever goal he set his mind to.
For his entire life, he has expected success. Because he works toward it.
Hearing that, most people think: Well, that’s because he’s Emilio Estefan, not realizing that he was not always a rich and powerful man who had connections. The front part of his book deals with all the choices he made when he didn’t have connections—when making those choices was risky and difficult and quite scary.
I’ve been thinking a lot about him and his book since we started down this path on the licensing business. I’ve been blogging about licensing for weeks now, and what surprises me the most is the response from readers.
Most of them, either privately or in the comments, will make a statement like this: Well, I’m not famous enough yet… or…I’m not successful enough yet…or…no one knows my books yet… whenever they’re confronted with the idea of licensing something.
Some have told me that they don’t even want to learn this entire new field until they’re ready.
Which is, frankly, insane. Because when you take the story you’ve created (not the manuscript, not the idea, the story. See my blog post on this), and put it into a form that consumers can access, you have licensed that story. The form might be a YouTube video. The form might be a radio play, reproduced on your own website. The form might be an ebook that you’ve uploaded to the various ebook retailers.
The point is, once you’ve chosen that form, and figured out how to make that form public, you have signed some kind of license.
So you need to learn licensing right now. Along with copyright. (And here it is, longtime blog readers, that exhortation I make every time I mention copyright: Buy the damn Copyright Handbook and learn it. I have a short post on what you need to know, but the post is woefully inadequate. Learn this stuff.)
You have a lot of choice about what you’re going to do with that story. It doesn’t have to be a book. At dinner tonight, Dean and I were discussing the various ways a product can be licensed first. It doesn’t have to be a book first. And I brought up projects that existed before the disruption in the publishing industry, things that went in a different direction.
We’re watching one right now: Veronica Mars, Season 4. I backed the Kickstarter years ago. I’m a big Veronica Mars fan, and now that it’s streaming on Hulu, we’re both watching.
I was aware that Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars, was, in an earlier incarnation, a young adult novelist. Before the TV shows. He moved to TV, and when he created Veronica Mars, he could have gone back to books. But he didn’t. He created it as a TV show, partly because he’d get more eyeballs that way, and partly because he had connections in TV.
He hadn’t been that successful as a YA author, so he found a different way to tell stories. Then he ended up billed as the co-author of two Veronica Mars novels after the movie. I doubt he wrote them, although he definitely had a hand in the storyline, because it’s canon.
You have choices. And you can choose to market your story to whatever possible licensee you want—at any stage of your career. You don’t have to be George R.R. Martin to license your work to HBO. Nor do you need to be J.K. Rowling to have a pretty t-shirt made of your most popular character (even if that character is only popular with five readers).
You just have to try. And stop making excuses.
I’ve heard a thousand excuses, even before we started doing licensing. The excuses are always about why writers won’t try something.
Oh, a writer will tell me, I can’t write into the dark like you do, because I’m not as good a writer.
(Gee, I rarely respond to them, if you keep rewriting yourself to death, you’ll never be as good a writer as I am.)
Oh, a writer will tell me, I need an agent to sell my work because I’m not as connected (or as business savvy or as famous) as you are. (Pick your excuse here, because there’s a lot of variations on that one.)
(Just an excuse not to learn business, I rarely respond to them. Another way to guarantee failure.)
Oh, a writer will tell me, I’m not going to be able to license anything now, because my work isn’t selling very well.
(Just an excuse not to try, I rarely respond to them. Another way to guarantee failure.)
Because, you see, those excuses piss me off. Can you tell? If Rob Thomas had made that excuse, he never would have created Veronica Mars. He wasn’t doing well as a young adult novelist. When he moved to TV, the first few seasons of Veronica Mars got terrible ratings and was only kept alive by fans. But the show keeps returning, because of the fans, and because he’s willing to try. Veronica Mars became the first fan-funded studio film via Kickstarter (there have been more since) with 90,000 fans raising $6 million in 2013.
As the excuses kept piling up, what kept going through my head was the entire point of Emilio Estefan’s book. In that book, he’s trying to get readers to believe in themselves enough to take big risks, as he did.
In the middle of a chapter titled “Expect Resistance and Prepare Yourself For It,” he writes that whenever you propose something new, be it a new song or a new kind of windshield wiper fluid, someone will try to discourage you or stand in your way. He writes,
Just so you don’t get easily discouraged or have the wrong kind of expectations, accept the fact that you will almost always encounter resistance of one kind or another. [The Rhythm of Success, Emilio Estefan, Celebra trade paper edition, 2011, p. 108]
Most people, when they encounter any kind of resistance, quit. That’s it. Writers, it seems to me, quit before they encounter resistance. Because writers have such large imaginations, they imagine the reasons for rejection and use those as an excuse not to even try.
Estefan deals with that in the book. He writes,
There are always going to be two forces at work: the internal and the external….The external forces are much harder to control, so let’s look first at you, the internal force. The place to begin is with self-assurance. Your belief in your great idea and your dreams has to be rock solid. [The Rhythm of Success, Emilio Estefan, Celebra trade paper edition, 2011, p. 108]
I quoted this when I was discussing the book last year, because this idea is so important. The only way you can have a career in a creative field is to believe in yourself—or to act like someone who believes in themselves. Don’t give up before you even try. Don’t wait until “the time is right,” because it will never be right. And don’t give up on something because no one expresses interest. Of course they’re not going to be interested in you. They know nothing about you, even if you’re “famous.” At that point, they don’t want something new from you. They want what you did before, only better. They’re not going to get that, and you shouldn’t try to give them that.
Estefan writes that his message is “don’t be negative or don’t allow others to be negative.”
The writers who’ve been telling me that they can’t do the licensing are being negative. Even the writers who say they’re excited about the licensing possibilities are saying they’re going to wait until their career is “ready” or until they “have the time” or until their “book takes off.” Well, that’s a forever wait.
Here’s one of the many things Estefan says about this:
Entrepreneurial people are game changers. We are people who feel an irrepressible need to develop new ideas. We need to create. We’re original. We’re innovative. Well, we’re swimming against the current when we start out, because so many times investors, or even just people we float our ideas by, think that the tried and true is the only way to go….The predictable often doesn’t work either, maybe for the obvious reason that it’s already on the market….If you treat being different as the positive force that it really is, then you can go places. [The Rhythm of Success, Emilio Estefan, Celebra trade paper edition, 2011, p. 109]
What this really boils down to is rejection. Writers expect rejection. We’re taught that it will happen. But business people get rejected too. It doesn’t matter how many times you get a “no” on an idea or a project that your proposing (be it a licensed product or something else). What matters is that one yes. Just one. That’s all you need.
But it might take years to get there.
Writers want it now. (Hell, everyone wants it now.) And they don’t want to work at it. For some reason, writers think writing one book is work. Writing one book is a beginning. Having a career is a series of failures or unrealized visions mixed with a handful of yes’s that end up becoming (from the outside) a string of successes.
The people whose names you know, the people who have long-term writing careers, the people who run a lot of businesses or succeed at something hard—those people are people who don’t take no for an answer.
More than that, they’re people who try new and innovative things.
So I’m spending the summer blogging about changing the writing business from a book-publishing business to a large licensing business. A lot of you are reading this series with great interest, but most of you see it as a down-the-road thing.
Only a handful of you are jumping in right now, with both feet, “ready” or not. To you all, I say kudos. You’re great and smart and are learning by doing. You’re taking risks.
You’re putting yourself in the position to succeed. And not just on a small scale. On a very large one.
The rest of you are giving up on yourselves and your work. I have to say this: giving up without trying is a hell of a lot easier than putting yourself out there.
You will fail because you have guaranteed failure because you’re not even trying.
You’re coming up with a lot of excuses, probably because the idea of taking a risk with something new, something without a prescribed path, scares the hell out of you.
I get that.
I also know that being scared is part of owning a business. There’s no guarantee of success. No guarantee of continued success. No guarantee that if you do A,B, and C, you’ll be as rich as Nora Roberts or as famous as Stephen King. So what?
Be your own writer. Be your own business owner. Be someone who tries, and eventually you will succeed.
Stop making excuses.
The only path to success is a path of risk-taking and failure. Instead of fearing that failure, learn from it. Try again. Try smarter. Eventually those risks will pay off. That failure will help you carve the path you need to walk. Failure will teach you how to be better and stronger, and prepare you for the difficulties of success.
Because there are a lot of difficult elements to success, things you can’t plan for until you’re there.
Most of you won’t get there, if your comments to me are any indication. Because you’re all searching for reasons not to try.
I’m going back to blogging about licensing specific stuff in the next post. If you’re having trouble seeing all the possibilities of licensing as something for your writing business, maybe you should print up this blog and reread it. Maybe you should pick up Estefan’s book and underline every paragraph toward the end of every chapter, where he explains the lessons he learned from his (usually negative) life experience. Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so afraid to try.
Maybe you should ask yourself what terrifies you the most about the possibility of success.
Expect success. And then work for it. Each and every day.
***
At the WMG Publishing Online Lectures, we’ve started a series on the things that hold writers back. From craft through business, the lecture series covers just about every roadblock we could think of. You can see those at Teachable.com.
We are also doing a lot of work on licensing and revamping our own business. Dean is chronicling it in a course we call Licensing Transition: A Year-Long Journey From IP To License, which you can join on Teachable.com.
Speaking of licensing, we will also have a representative from the Global Licensing Group which puts on the licensing expos around the world at our Business Master Class in October. There are only a few slots left. We cap the class at 50.
I, of course, will continue to deal with licensing on this site and on my Patreon page. I’m more in-depth on Patreon, because I do smaller blogs along the way. I will occasionally pause to look at the news or to see if there’s something else I should be examining. Or to take a wider view as I did here.
If you feel like supporting the blog on an on-going basis, then please head to my Patreon page.
If you liked this post, and want to show your one-time appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you go that route, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.
Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!
Click paypal.me/kristinekathrynrusch to go to PayPal.
“Business Musings: Expect Success,” copyright © 2019 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog © Can Stock Photo / andrewgenn.
[…] – Kris Rusch […]
I don’t know if you are familiar with the direct response marketer Dan Kennedy. The other day I was reading an old newsletter of his and found a lesson that clicks with the ideas in this series.
He mentions an advertisement that caught his eye:
ANY FOOL CAN MAKE SOAP. IT TAKES A CLEVER MAN TO SELL IT.
The comment was made about physical products, though he’s implying that the point goes for anything anyone sells.
Even to information sold as product.
Yes, even our stories.
It doesn’t take much fancy footwork to extend the metaphor to creative world-making.
Every product is soap, and when you’re selling soap, you better be thinking about who you’re selling it to and how you’re going to sell it to them.
As creatives we don’t like thinking about our work that way. You can bet our readers sure are, though.
Turn your thinking sideways and consider that readers are only one category of “buyer”… and written words are only one way to reach them.
Whole new landscapes open up.
Great series, loving this thread of reasoning.
I admit that I feel stuck here. I get that I’m licensing a story, character, world, etc. What I seem to have a real lack of imagination about is what would I license them for? I understand books, audiobooks, movies, series, graphic novels (other obvious story forms). But beyond mugs, t-shirts, artwork, etc. is a mystery to me. I see what JK Rowling has done and am in awe. I just can’t seem to make the leap to what my stories/series could become, as much as I love them and love living in them.
I am playing along. It’s been a crazy summer of overwhelm (in a good way), but next week I’ve got time slotted out on the calendar for the first step of gathering together an inventory of everything I’ve written and making some sort of sense as to what all is there. I’ve got a decent sized catalog, although nowhere near what you’ve got, but I’ve been busy over the last ten years. I’m hoping that once I’ve got that going ideas will come. Or perhaps you’re going to circle back around that topic again.
I’ll be dealing with what’s possible in the next blog. But you will have to use your imagination in a slightly different way.
While getting my first novel published was both comedically inept and sanctioned by the gods (it must have been to succeed anyway), when it came time to get it into a bookstore, I created my own when none of the existing stores would take it. I self-publish because I’m well aware that my books would never be accepted by the industry as it exists today. Hasn’t made for any degree of success yet, probably never will, but I’m getting my stories out there, even if I can count my sales in dozens. Self-confidence I have, but it’s other people’s confidence that I need.
I occassionally drop in and read a number of your posts at once. Really appreciate the effort you (and Dean) are doing to ‘edutain’ all of us artists/writers.
Read the ‘Rythm of success’ after an earlier tip in one of your blogs. Nice book, but a lot of repeating phrases. Guess that’s how it works though. Repeat and learn.
As to licensing… I was still stuck in the legacy and IP-issues. I am Dutch so had to check out some issues with Dutch taxes. I now keep a five-year ledger which clearly states the (estimated) value of my artworks and writings based on my average sales of the past five years. This average is acceptable to the ‘Dutch IRS’ in case I pass away and my children need to proof the value of their inheritance. How to preserve the collection is another issue. Found this interesting article titled ‘What should an artist save?’ (LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/t-magazine/artist-archives.html), maybe of interest to other readers of your blog too.
To stay in control of Licensing, and IP, any administrative way of keeping up the records will be better than doing nothing at all. I have all of my artworks and stories of the past five years listed in an Excel-file. (Still working on the sketches and earlier artworks). Unsold stories and artworks are listed at costprice, as such being a part of the average value. All works get their unique ID, easy to retrieve data on numbers of sold books, sold artworks and their usage in all kinds of media i.e. licensing (which, by the way, is different for artworks. Especially as nowadays artists – and their heirs! – retain the right to receive a part of the selling price once a buyer resells the artwork).
Looking forward to the next blogs on the Licensing issue!
Wow. This hits me right where it counts.
You see, I’m debating taking the risk of commissioning covers for one of my old books and the sequel I just finished.
Your post is making me reassess that risk – I had been thinking of postponing those covers to January when I know whether my new translating and editing offers help cover the cost. And yet… those books won’t even start earning until I change the cover and publish the sequel. Maybe I should just jump in and take that risk.
I’ve been interested in licensing for several years, since I’m also a photographer and designer and have several friends who license their art. A couple of years ago I took the Lila Rogers “Make Art That Sells” class (https://lillarogers.com) and learned a lot there, plus more in the Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/makeartthatsells/). There are several art licensing groups on Facebook that I used to follow, so your readers may want to search for “licensing” in the Facebook search box and see if there are any currently active groups that they can join. The Graphic Artists Guild puts out a book that has some licensing info as well (https://graphicartistsguild.org/product/the-graphic-artists-guild-handbook-pricing-ethical-guidelines/). I’ve really enjoyed this series and am looking forward to following your ongoing adventures…and since my husband is a fan of Dean’s Cold Poker Gang series I have to say I’m looking forward to seeing what you end up doing with that particular bit of IP!
Yes, there are a lot of obstacles…but that’s true in any business. I think two of the most valuable traits anyone can have are perseverance and believing in ourselves.
“Believing in even the possibility of a happy ending is a very powerful thing.” –Snow White/Mary Margaret Blanchard, Once Upon A Time
I know you meant this blog as a kick in the ass to some people but I think it’s giving me an anxiety attack. I am interested in licensing but I don’t know if my brain can cram one more thing in there right now. As an Indy minnow (I think I’m a step above prawn now) I have so much on my plate with my writing business and day job that this might break the camel’s back (if I may messily mix my metaphors.)
As a business owner I am still working on the marketing learning curve which takes a chunk of time for my 4 series. I am writing every day, another chunk of time. I am working with a narrator for audio books for one of the series. I am formatting books for print in another series. I am trying to get more exercise into my life and get very anxious at time away from all of this. My day job is fortunately part time, but there’s another chunk of time. And on top of it all, my apple tree put out a bumper crop this year and I need to spend time picking and processing. (Life…there’s always something!)
So when I say – maybe down the road – it’s for my own sanity.
I very much appreciate all the work you do and information you share. This post just made me a little crazier than normal.
Thanks, Kris. For me, it’s not a question of fear. It’s a question of how to license my work in a meaningful way.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this series, and licensing in general, and so far I have two takeaways: keep a list of your properties, and try new paths like the Beatles turning to gaming in order to hook a new generation.
I don’t want Hope Sze stethoscopes that break as soon as you stick them in your ears, or anything else that people will buy and throw away, creating mountains of trash. I understand that as a marketing ploy, but as an environmentalist, disposable advertising hurts my heart.
I would much rather create a movie or video game that doesn’t take up space, that people can enjoy in a group and interact with, creating a different experience from a book or short story.
I’ve experimented with this myself this year, turning The Most Unfeeling Doctor in the World into an Ottawa Fringe one woman show that won Best of Fest. It took a ton of work, but opened up new doors creatively, making me write more visually and incorporate music. Afterward, one man told me, “It’s one of the top ten things ever I’ve seen on stage, in my life.”
I’ll also advocate for causes I believe in. Part of the proceeds for the next Hope Sze novel, Graveyard Shift, will go to charity. And this morning, I realized that our dog Roxy, who has become a part of the series, could one day become the face for rescue animals and foster dogs. I’d love that!
So I’d encourage people to think beyond disposable goods and material things for their work. We can create new worlds on the page and in real life.
Thanks for this.
What a great post. Thank you.
Yes! I agree. Stop writing and readers won’t find your stories. 🙂
I love these licensing posts. I got the spreadsheets almost sorted and looking forward to the next few posts.
I will cheerfully admit that I seem to be missing some key point, since you and Dean seem very excited about licensing for everyone. If I understand correctly, everything that puts your product in front of customers is a variant of licensing (Youtube video, T-shirt with character image, ebook, throw pillows, toothpaste flavors…etc) Given the semi-infinite licensing options and the limited hours in the day, how should the options be prioritized for ROI? (Return On Investment). Things that don’t cost money still cost time (like creating the Youtube video).
If I use the time instead to write another book, I have enough experience to roughly predict the benefits from the effort in terms of income, increased readership, knock-on sales and so on. Everything else is the Great Unknown. Granted, the way to learn what other options would yield benefits is to try them out myself or to persuade someone in the market for licenses to pay me. If I do not know enough even to sort out the top 100 valuable ideas, it will be difficult to persuade others the license has value for them. After all, I know my IP better than they do.
It may not be fear holding people back, but paralysis caused by too much choice. How would you advise narrowing the options down to a manageable size?
That’s next week’s blog (already available on Patreon). And several other blogs beyond.
I am fascinated by this whole topic and hugely interested in learning about it, but honestly, I have chronic health issues that mean I am doing well to even get much writing done. I often don’t have the energy to also do publishing, and my usable time is less than I’d like. I’m not afraid to try so much as have no clue how to start, knowing right off that I could maybe devote an hour or two a month to learning it. There are weeks when the only thing I can fit in besides the day job that serves my survival needs is writing a few poems a day. I’m just wondering if you have any advice for those of us with more want to than can do.
Next week’s post. And I have a book on writing with chronic illness (also available free here, although the posts are out of order). That gives some time management advice.
Thank you! I’ll go look for that.