Stop Trying to Be What Your Audience Wants: Your author differences are what make you profitable


Beyond the Margins: Build a Profitable Author Business

Hello Authors,

Make your business decidely you.

It's easy for authors to feel like they should be what their audience wants them to be, without realizing that there’s an audience for who they already are. That is, one strong basis for creating a sustainable business is doubling down on, leaning into, your differences instead of sanding them away.

Building an author business is challenging, but when you approach it strategically, it can simply be an extension of you: your interests, your strengths, your values, and the way you want to work.

To help you see what I mean, here are a few articles from the archives. They show how this works in practice, how real authors have done it in their author businesses:

Free Virtual Power Hours - Designed To Be Worth Your Time

Take a moment and RSVP for one or more of our free monthly Zoom calls. It's one hour that combines a little bit of author business education and a lot of community support and brainstorming for your questions and challenges.

Each one is designed for you to make more money as an author and create/refine your author business model.

Ready to Build Your Author Business on Your Terms?

Our power hours are free for a reason: they're created to help you figure out what's actually possible when you stop doing what you think you should and start doing what works for you.

But if you've attended a few of them and you're thinking I'm ready to move beyond knowing what to do and actually start doing it, the Author's Business Accelerator is next.

This is 8 sessions of 1-on-1 intensive coaching with me—not templates, not group coaching, not "what every author does." We'll diagnose exactly what your viable income streams are, build systems that stick with your actual life and values, and create a business model that's unmistakably yours.

It's for published authors who are ready to play bigger and aren't interested in half-measures.

If this sounds like what you need right now: Book a discovery call and let's talk about whether we're a fit. No obligations, no pressure. Just sincere conversation about your business, where you want to go, and whether 1-on-1 coaching makes sense for where you are.

All the best,

Sharon

Sharon Woodhouse, owner, Conspire Creative

Unsubscribe

Beyond the Margins: Author Entrepreneurship Beyond the Page

Beyond the Margins is a twice-monthly newsletter helping authors create enterprises they love around their books, expertise, and experience. It combines 25+ years of indie publishing and author coaching into practical business insights, strategic guidance, and a community of author entrepreneurs.

Read more from Beyond the Margins: Author Entrepreneurship Beyond the Page

Beyond the Margins: Build a Profitable Author Business Dear Authors, We run businesses. But when we spend day after day working in them, we can lose sight of the obvious opportunities for improvement — like staring at the same draft for the umpteenth time and no longer seeing what needs fixing. We’re halfway through the year, which makes this a good time to step back and look at your business with fresh eyes and ask, “how does my business actually make a profit?” Below are a few picks from...

Beyond the Margins: Build a Profitable Author Business Authors, We want to share a bit about what's been capturing our attention recently at Conspire Creative: writing and being an author in the era of AI and algorithms. It’s easy to feel as though AI will leave no place for us in the market. But I don’t see it that way. In a world with AI writing and AI “creativity,” human creativity only stands out more. Only humans can express their unique personalities, curate experiences others seek, and...

Beyond the Margins: Build a Profitable Author Business Hello everyone, this is Kristoffer. You don’t know me yet, but I met Sharon over a year ago and, as a fellow Chicagoan, I’ve had the pleasure of working with her ever since. For the last few months, that’s meant helping assemble these newsletter editions. Now, I am excited to introduce myself as Conspire Creative’s new newsletter writer! I look forward to continuing to help Sharon guide authors toward building their own sustainable...