Stop Begging. Start Building.
This is mostly for indie authors since I've been exposed to a lot of distress signals on social media lately, but I think it can apply to anyone entering the entrepreneurial space. I've been meaning to talk about this for a while.
Imagine, if you will, a Black-owned wine bar. At the initial planning stages, the owners envisioned four income streams:
Regular business (on site food and beverage consumption)
The Wine Shop (one transaction, in and out)
Event buyouts (occasional, holiday)
Membership Program (recurring monthly dues)
Now let's look at the four types of guests:
Casual diners:
A casual diner walks into your restaurant because they're hungry and you're open. Oh, and look, there's a burger on the menu. Casual diners love burgers, so that's a good way to hook them. Would you happen to have a beer to go with my burger?
Why yes, of course. We keep one or two on the menu just in case someone drifts into this wine bar and orders beer.
Casual diners can go either way. If the stars align, they'll also buy a bottle from the wine shop or bring a friend on their next visit. Maybe they'll become a regular. Or maybe they'll decide, in spite of how good everything is, you just aren't their cup of tea and you never see them again.
Supporters:
Every now and then someone will come in to announce they showed up to support a Black-owned business. Maybe they like wine, maybe they don't. Maybe the business will see them again, maybe they won't. The owners understand that supporters don't keep the lights on.
This doesn't mean supporters act in bad faith, it's that they aren't necessarily there to establish a connection with you and your product. To them, you're part of a larger initiative or cause. Supporters, more than anything, are loyal to their ideals, and once they've satisfied their obligation with you they'll bounce to the next one. They're keeping a running tally of all the local Black businesses they've supported this month. For them, this is gamified community work.
(Note: If you're reading this as a constant self-proclaimed "supporter" and I've offended you, allow me to go a step further and rescind what little diplomacy I offered in the previous paragraph. The truth is, I distrust you, your motivations, the hand you use to pat yourself on the back and your back. This entire post is about reducing anyone's dependency on you.)
Regulars:
Regulars make everyone's job easier. They don't require any onboarding because they're familiar with the menu and already know what they want. They view the staff as human beings and know them by name. In most bar environments, regulars conduct the vibe more than any other guest.
But there's still no hard predictability with them. Do you know exactly what day they'll show up? Can you predict how much they'll spend? Does "regular" mean once per month, per week, twice a month? Do you have their contact information?
I'll stop here to mention some required reading. First an essay titled “1,000 True Fans” by Kevin Kelly. Kelly states if you build your business around attracting and retaining 1,000 fans who each spend $100 with you per year, that's $100k in yearly income. Not casual customers, not supporters but FANS.
This idea is expanded on in Johnny B. Truant's The Artisan Author. In summary, write good books, find readers who love them, connect with them as human beings and charge fair prices.
What I'm getting at: When developing your strategy, it may benefit you to proof your business against unpredictability. When you have predictable revenue driven by fans, all other forms become supplemental.
Members:
Wine Members pay monthly dues and have their locker replenished every month with a bottle based on palate notes and membership level. This is base-level predictable revenue, but there are compounding effects.
The member has to come on site to get their bottle. They may decide to stick around for dinner and try some new wines, which increases their spend. Also, the members are on a group chat, so one might text the others to see if anyone will drop by and five or six will say yes. Now there are multiple members at the bar pouring wine for each other, eating dinner and buying new bottles, thereby increasing the evening's average sale and boosting the staff's take home pay.
My point isn't that members are better than any other guest, it's that the owners embedded a feature into their business strategy that allows them to predict a stream of earnings, regardless of the behavior of guests overall. Community is unpredictable, so they created their own community.
My exposure to Kelly's article, Truant's book and that wine bar (it's real) changed how I approach writing and publishing. I'm seeing authors post screenshots of their KDP dashboard where they earned less than a dollar in one month from multiple Kindle Unlimited titles. I'm seeing authors not understand why similar books are being read and theirs aren't. I'm seeing authors promote themselves not with confidence or excitement about their output but with conspiracy theories, charges of unfairness, professional jealousy and pleas for support.
Couldn't be me.
I've loved writing my whole life, so it wouldn't be wise to allow failure to take root, much less use it as a marketing tactic. I need to maintain the purity and joy of writing, and do it for my own creative fulfillment and personal achievement, so I'm not bitter when I don't meet someone else's metric for success. At a time when the average American can barely read a stop sign, I'm not under the illusion I'll get rich and famous by writing books. I can, however, inoculate myself against the impacts of unpredictability by polishing my output and focusing on my target audience.
Take none of the above as prescriptive, I'm merely inspired. Use what you like to seed brilliance and discard the rest. More importantly, have fun, get in the booth and make a plan.