Business Musings: Writer Finances Versus The Paycheck World

If the indie writers who made a lot of money in 2012-2014 had followed this advice, they’d still be writing and publishing. Sure, their incomes would still be down, along with their sales, but their careers would continue.

What happened to these writers?

Well, they will say that their sales went down to unsustainable levels. Those writers will say there’s no point in continuing now that they can’t make the same kind of money they made in 2013. Those writers will say that writing, as a profession, is impossible.

And it is, if you don’t understand money management.

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Business Musings: 2016 Disappointments

As I write this in early January, fourth quarter numbers for all big businesses are just starting to trickle in. The whining about 2016 has commenced, some of it justified, some of it not.

The numbers aren’t just in for the major publishers; the numbers are in for indie writers as well. And the writers who crunch numbers are having varied reactions, often depending on years of business expertise.

I have a hunch that when all of the numbers arrive toward the end of this month or so, we’ll find out that 2016 was truly a mixed bag….

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Business Musings: Things Indie Writers Learned in 2014

I’d love to say nothing, but that’s not true—if we’re discussing indie writers who have remained in the business for several years. There will always be new indie writers who know very little, and there will always be those with “experience” who turn a year or two worth of sales into a know-it-all platform. However, those indie writers who’ve been at this since the beginning […]

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The Business Rusch: Not A Real Survey

In the traditional news cycle, politicians, major organizations, and anyone with a PR brain dump stories into the week before Memorial Day (and sometimes the week after) in the hopes that no one will notice. Generally speaking, no one does notice because most of America is focused on the three-day weekend and the unofficial start of summer. Since this is a US-only holiday, the rest […]

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Another Mid-Week Business Update

A couple of weeks ago, I got excoriated by writers who didn’t agree with me about the whole PayPal thing being a business issue and not a censorship issue. In that post, I told writers to learn business and to fight something they disagree with on a business level. In last week’s surprise mid-week business update, I pointed out that Mark Coker of Smashwords–an excellent businessman–was doing […]

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A Couple Mid-Week Updates: A Business Post

As I prepare for this week’s blog, I feel the need to address a couple of things that I will not write about on Thursday. First, I got a lot of hate mail and vile comments last week for my blog post, all because I told people to learn business, understand the issues they’re complaining about, and then, if those issues matter to them, to […]

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The Business Rusch: The Holiday Surprise

The Business Rusch: The Holiday Surprise Kristine Kathryn Rusch  I’m starting this column on Boxing Day because I’m absolutely and utterly buried. December had a lot of real life bumps, including illness, spousal illness, more estate stuff, and some other business things that got in the way of writing. And you should realize: Usually nothing gets in the way of my writing, so these things […]

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