RWA National Conference had a beautiful sunny day for opening day today. Great article in the WSJ today on Eloisa James who will be speaking at the conference. They discussed some of the challenges in balancing two careers- in her case between academic and best-selling romance writer. They also touched on family versus career challenges including her year spent living in Paris, which spawned a new book. Sounds like she is handling all of her challenges fabulously.

I find challenges a daily juggling act (which sometimes lead to reduced blog posts in exchange for, hopefully, great things).

Breaking my longer than intended silence to announce that shortly I will be posting some exciting news. I can at least say that while I have been delinquent in keeping up this blog, I have at least been productive.

Besides my writing life, I am now nearing the end of the first year of my MBA program. It might seem odd for a writer to be going to business school. However, I strongly believe writers should have a solid grounding in good business practices. After all, writing is a business if you intend to make a profit. If you don’t, then you are writing as a hobby, which is also fine in and of itself. But, if your goal is to be widely read, to be known and respected as a writer plus earn a living then you must take the path of professional writer rather than that of the hobbyist.

As a business person, you need to watch many aspects of your business at once. First, profits. Have you set the right price (high enough to cover your variable costs like office supplies as well as your fixed costs, if any, such as rent)? Is your price low enough that a sufficient number of people will pay that price? Your profit essentially is the volume times the price you sell at minus your costs (variable and fixed). Remember- your time is a variable cost. You have to include a salary for yourself to be considered a working professional. If you are giving away your books or charging so little that you’re losing money then you have violated the first rule of business- to make a profit. No company exists for long while losing money. Often I hear writers (and even some readers) tell me- what I (or the writer) really need(s) is readers. The old idea of “build it and they will come”. For writers this translates to “if I give enough away, people will start paying me one day.” Think about this though- have you ever received a give-away that when you didn’t get the item for free you wanted so much that you finally started paying for it? How about most Internet content? When a web site (like say the New York Times) converted to a pay model, did you start paying? Or were you annoyed that now you had to pay so you stopped visiting the site?

“Hey,” you say, “I got a free spoonful of ice cream the other day then I bought a whole cone. That’s free switched to pay.” Actually, you just got a sample, not free product. I agree free samples can encourage purchases. Many products are sold with this approach. Even Amazon allows you to sample books before buying.

I’ve thought a lot about the psychology of the “free to pay” concept. I believe the reason people refuse to pay for things they’ve gotten for free in the past is that they’ve been taught the item has no value. After all, it’s free, right? If it was worth something, the company would charge for it. With capitalism, an item is worth whatever someone will pay for it. Free = worthless in our minds. That doesn’t mean no one wants the item. Think of how you feel on being handed a free pen or free bookmark or balloon for your kid. Right at that moment, you say, “Cool! What a nice ______.” Five minutes later the balloon is popped, the pen broken, the bookmark lost and you don’t give it a further thought. Why should you? You didn’t pay for it anyway.

I believe writers should re-evaluate their approach of giving away their work in hopes that someday they will be paid for it. Free samples, yes. Occasional small free give-aways in combination with a larger size purchase, yes. But not totally free all the time. The only exception to this is if you have electronic works on a web/blog or in print with enough traffic to earn good money from advertising (the favorite tech company model.) Even then, this strategy is risky and often doesn’t work as illustrated by the many failed tech companies.