Cue the chuckle, the moan and groan, the despair.

But wait!

Hello author friends,

Since my book with the Profitable Author title came out a month ago, more than one person has suggested to me that profitable author is an oxymoron. Har. Har.

Yes, that’s hilarious. Let me have a quick chuckle then get back to moaning, groaning, and despairing with you…

It’s so oxymoronic I wrote a 500-page book on the topic just to twist the knife in further.

Haha. Just kidding. I’m used to the skepticism and cynicism and the haters and the snooty literary gatekeepers too and happily take on the task of convincing authors that there is a way. And it’s entrepreneurship. Or entrepreneurial. Or, at a bare minimum, applying a few business tricks here and there to keep oneself in the game of being an author and living the dream.

Prepare your next groan

First, you—everyone—anyone—can be a profitable author from your next batch of author income. Whether that $1,250 or $320 or $140 or $38.59 in Kindle page-read royalties.

Declare your profit rate. Start with 5%.
Multiply your income by 5% (that’s .05).
There is your profit! Set it aside.
The remaining 95% can be alloted to other buckets like marketing, paying off your start-up debts, caching for your tax bill, and giving yourself a paycheck.
You are profitable! [Groan.]

It really is that simple. By next week, you can be a profitable author.

This sounds farcical. It’s not. It’s the first step. The next several steps involve continuing to always set aside a percentage of all author income for profit and managing the other 95% equally strategically.

You are now remaining and living as a profitable author. And you now have an excellent foundation for growing an author business. You have started to think in a critical way for a sustainable enterprise.

(Learn the details of implementing a Profit First business in the book by Mike Michalowicz.)

And another…

Not only that, your day job income is author income. [Eye roll.]

One, it’s a batch of income that you can skim for a profit. [Such a profitable author!]

Two, it’s a legitimate source of support as you build the author life of your dreams.

This is a holistic and realistic approach to building an author business: Starting where you are with the resources you have and building from there.

Not joking

But now that I have your attention and I have you started on the path…

Being a profitable author does not rest on sleight-of-hand linguistic and accounting tricks.

But getting yourself oriented with immediate profit (Steps 1-5 above) and comfortably supported with your day job author income are important steps in committing to an income-generating, sustainable author enterprise and seeing your activities and your income in a new light.

Next: Begin learning, experimenting with, and practicing business one step, one day at a time.