Writers as Solepreneurs: Why Finishing your Novel Opens the Best Door to a Rewarding Business

The "starving artist" is a myth that can be debunked by adopting a business-minded solepreneur approach. Unlike local services or freelancing, authorship requires minimal upfront capital, has zero marginal distribution costs, and builds a permanent asset base of intellectual property that scales infinitely.

Close to every perspective on writing's potential payoff offers a foreboding image, a starving artist whose lonely struggle entails finding time to write between low-status gigs. They bang away on their tragic laptop, amidst a pile of past due bills and rejection letters waiting desperately to be discovered. Only then, and rarely, will they succeed.

Today, we examine an actual path for would-be professional novelists and strip away the melodrama. The goal is to establish the business case for the author "solepreneur." Before you cringe at this coinage, reflect on how it applies perfectly to your path. Novelists succeed when they take a business-minded view. In filling every role from CEO to janitor (depending on the help you have), you're responsible for the gamut of small business tasks, not limited to resource allocation, promotion, and administration. From this perspective, crafting novels isn't a quixotic pursuit; it's a solid business model, and there is a pretty good chance of success, which is undoubtedly worth the investment. More specifically, writing (according to a proactive plan) is far superior to alternative solo ventures, having less risk and a higher ceiling on potential rewards.

Let's start spreading optimism by unpacking a hard fact. The widely cited Authors Guild 2023 Income Survey found an author's median annual income of $5,000, which rises to about $20,000 when they work full-time. That sounds pretty bad; indeed, it's close to the federal poverty wage. Some, when faced with this fact, pivot to the "money isn't everything" attitude. Let's be clear: it's fine to write for self-satisfaction, therapeutic release, or as a hobby. Writing's non-monetary rewards are immense, and Bardsy wholeheartedly supports you. That said, try not to use non-monetary rewards as an excuse. Successful solepreneurship calls for caring about your product and its bottom line impact. No shame, either; artists deserve to make a living.

Now for optimism. First, statistics teach we should turn medians into categories. So, the survey shows a large group of part-time authors earn less than $5,000; some work more, earning up to $20,000; a smaller number exceed that, earning up to $100,000; and, a tiny elite earn more. To paraphrase Dumb and Dumber, they're telling you there's a chance.

Quick plug: Bardsy's activities center on helping authors move up in this range. We focus on producing compelling novels, one after another. Further, each should have a recognizable genre, so it provides a satisfying experience to your readers. In our view, hitting the author jackpot isn't luck (though that helps); it's the result of steadily compounding intelligent effort, which means improving your craft by testing your work as you produce an ever-increasing portfolio. Over time, this effort, not poorly-developed text with AI covers, leads to a stable salary. Treating your efforts like a startup business provides added value.

Much of the startup literature, typified in Ries' The Lean Startup, applies to authors. For example, our Minimum Complete Story (MCS) draws inspiration from the widely-used Minimum Viable Product (MVP) idea. Of course, you've heard that most startups fail. Today's post examines novel writing's potential relative to alternative startup business models. We'll focus on risk and reward, going through three major categories: local services; freelancing; and, ecommerce, evaluating each according to initial capital, scalability, and residual asset creation, such as intellectual property. We'll talk about marketing and promotion another time. To preview, the author model decisively beats popular alternatives, providing you have the requisite aptitudes.

First, the old-school solepreneur route. Often, people stereotype this as a low-wage service, like a food cart peddler. However, this model fits skilled professionals, like dentists, too. The business case for authorship begins with low capital requirements. It's hard to imagine a model with lower upfront costs. It takes years of training to become a dentist, for example. Beyond that, a dental office requires a location, equipment, and the like. Setting up a restaurant isn't free, either. The tiniest food cart has a cost, plus most businesses need permits or licenses.

In addition, local businesses do not stack up well in terms of scalability. The dentist or cook can only serve so many before they need to expand, which usually takes the form of more workers and a larger footprint. Serving more is a positive, but it comes with increasing costs. Many businesses don't scale well even if they are successful. Imagine what celebrity chefs do besides cooking. On the other hand, a successful service business has asset value. Cooks and dentists alike can sell their existing customer base, which helps with retirement or if they give up celebrity and retreat to their private kitchen.

Creative professionals often turn to freelancing. It's very similar to the service business above; after all, dentists and cooks have similarly valuable skills. Freelancers tend to exchange time for money, where the value of the deliverable dictates how much money they make. Freelancing scales about as well as other businesses. The most successful consultant can only make more money by raising rates once they reach a limit on how many clients they can serve. The signal difference, in most cases, is the tradeoff between lower upfront expenses and asset accumulation. Income is tied directly to work; when the money stops when the work does. If there is any residual asset value, the business probably fits a different category.

Ecommerce promises nirvana, a business that avoids capital and scalability issues. Indeed, authorship mirrors ecommerce to that extent. To see the difference between authorship and the "lower" form of ecommerce, look to the creation of intellectual property (IP). Thus, you have resellers, like dropshippers, on one hand, while you have more creative products, often associated with Etsy, on the other. This comparison underlines the value of IP. Some dropshippers work hundred-hour weeks and make lots of money. However, they lack what the startup literature calls a moat because they lack IP. Thus, they're stuck, though some thrive, on a never-ending treadmill.

Worse, more successful ecommerce businesses attract vultures. Geography protects many businesses; cavities can't be filled by UPS, so far. So while the scalability is fantastic and capital costs are relatively low, the ability to get off of the treadmill by building an asset base is virtually non-existent. Increasing competition forces smaller margins because you don't own the product. Owning the product, like inventor or Etsy sellers, changes the game. That thought brings us to authorship.

To review, your first novel costs little to write past finding five to ten hours in a 168-hour week. Your "raw" materials are ideas and time; overhead as such is virtually non-existent. Next, the go-to-market cost is almost zero if you self-publish (though we recommend purchasing an effective cover design). Then, vital to the case, ebook and print-on-demand distribution brings your marginal cost to zero, making you the envy of other manufacturers. Moreover, negligible production and distribution costs translate to a level playing field. In other words, your product has no functional difference from that of the most famous authors. Your novels sit on the same theoretical shelf in the same way as Stephen King's or Colleen Hoover's.

Best of all, creating intellectual property turns most solepreneurs' treadmills into your ladder. As an author, you make things, creating value from what some would see as thin air. Despite zero marginal cost, your novel also provides an intimate experience carefully tailored to each reader (especially if you follow Bardsy's approach). At the extreme, a fixed amount of writing time yields infinite reward. A reasonable scenario would have you steadily build a portfolio that pays off for years.

It's vital not to forget fun. Unlike the thousandth lasagna or dental x-ray, every novel is a unique creation. Even then, your second book will be better than your first, a natural research and development process that happens by doing the work you enjoy. So, the author solepreneur enjoys a business model that is cheap and scalable while offering amazing potential. Perhaps you should thank the "daunting" odds for filtering out the less enlightened?