Crystal Blade Episode 10: Be a Dragon is now up at Vella. So now you know.

I’m working on a five year plan for Belaurient Press and what I want to do with my writing. I really do need to start thinking like a small business owner and not just a writer if I want to be successful and make any money, which means I need things like a five year plan.

I know, fascinating, but this is what it’s like to be an indie author. I need to come up with the money to start an LLC for Belaurient Press, which will help me at tax time, and I need to start buying ISBNs so that I can release the print versions of my books on IngramSpark, which gets them into more bookstores and libraries than Amazon. I can do that retroactively with the titles I already have as long as I make sure the IS versions aren’t distributed to Amazon.

I also really, really need to start releasing audiobooks. The nice thing about having done voiceover for various educational packages, plus producing a podcast for six years and those long-ago singing lessons is that I have a good voice for audiobooks and I know how to produce the audio files. But this will involve setting up a table in the closet (I need sound muffling) and bringing my laptop and microphone in there to start recording. It’s just a matter of doing it, but I have so much else to do in your average day that it keeps slipping my mind. Maybe if I turn it into an evening project, that might work better.

I’ll also have to kick the cats out of the bedroom which they won’t like. But they want to keep eating and have a roof over their heads so they’ll just have to put up with it.

Finally, I need to get the Patreon started. The roadblock with that is, I need to have something to give away to patrons, ideally a short story a month. Which requires—you guessed it—more time on my part. What would be really useful right now is to have someone who could help me schedule everything I need to do and maybe take over the social media promo stuff. If I could afford a virtial PA I’d hire one—I know a few who are absolutely amazing and who could really help me.

But I need money for that. Which means I need to sell more books. Which means … my career is a frigging vicious circle, isn’t it? Oy…