Okay before I dive into this post I’ll readily admit that I love a good plan. That’s not to say that I can’t succumb to my free-spirited Gemini tendencies either. But, ask my friends and family–they’ll lament over the fact that I email them early in July to confirm holiday plans. They’ve deemed these moments ”planning attacks” and have come to ignore my endless lists and panic induced emails.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how strategic planning comes into play with writing a book. Take the example of urbanabox, a company I co-founded back in 1999 long before anyone was blogging. I’m happy to report that nearly ten years later the company is still alive and kicking up in Seattle. According to the Small Business Association over 50% of businesses fail within the first two years and 95% fail within the first five years. I can’t take credit for any current success the company may be experiencing, but I sold it well past the seven year mark and I’m convinced we beat the odds because of our ongoing strategic planning.
Can the process of writing and selling a book fit into a master plan? I’m hoping the answer will be yes. Feel free to chime in if you have a thought or experience on this one.
In the beginning when I was writing it was organic, unfiltered, without direction and certainly lacked any sort of plan. The need to create outweighed the structure and form which came later–after my initial purge. Now nearly two years later, the plot and pacing have been written and re-written. That initial creative burst has turned into a focused marketing plan complete with target audiences and statistics, a flashback to my days of business planning. It seems almost as if I’ve come full circle, finding the perfect blend of syntactic planning. Of course I’m not sure I’ve found my planning nirvana quite yet. I just drafted an email about Easter plans.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 7:52 am and is filed under Book Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Planning Attack”
Monday I was searching for sites related to Marketing and specifically example of strategic marketing plan and I found your site.