Please welcome Jordyn Kross to This Writer’s Life…
Disaster Survival for Authors
Words matter for authors. When I say “disaster”, your mind might conjure the tornado that swept Dorothy away in The Wizard of Oz, or perhaps news images from recent hurricanes. But not all disasters are newsworthy or can be fixed with insurance settlement. Some can happen in very small, everyday kinds of ways, and they can derail your author career if you aren’t prepared.
I get up very early every morning to write with a group of bleary-eyed but determined authors. We coax words from our laptops and build our books one misplaced comma at a time. But the other morning, one of my friends experienced a caffeinated disaster—her entire cup of sweet, creamy coffee spilled across her laptop. It’s dead. Never coming back. I think all writers would agree that is a disaster.
The first concern was obviously her data. Fortunately, she had a plan for that, and all her data was saved to “the cloud.” The cloud is actually just space on a server in some data center attached to the internet. Files are updated once you save your changes. She probably lost a few hours of work. Still disastrous, but there are methods for enabling “autosave” options to limit the loss of current edits depending on the software application. Her recovery involved having her old laptop refurbed to use until she can purchase new hardware.
Plan. Prevent. Recover.
You’ve likely read social media posts about other authors experiencing disasters with their publishing efforts. The industry is rife with the potential for catastrophe from unscrupulous vendors, difficult distribution platforms, or legal and financial mistakes. Occasionally, the disasters are relatively minor. Consider my friend Erin who, in the midst of publishing her first romance, made the wise decision to order a proof copy of her paperback. A seemingly low-risk task cascaded into a comedy of errors when her book arrived and contained not only her story within the cover, but another, unrelated tale. Or is that tail, since it was a horse book? Either way, her prudent plan to make sure the printer did their job correctly prevented a disaster that might have occurred if she had ordered several copies right before leaving for a book signing. Recovery was as simple as contacting the printer and requesting a second—corrected—proof.
Plan. Prevent. Recover.
Writers are susceptible to all the challenges of real life too. Sick kids, broken dishwashers, and delayed flights don’t care if we have deadlines. In fact, I often suspect they know we’re between a late edit and a preorder deadline when they decide now is the time to fail. But besides being creators, we are business people. And every business I’ve ever worked for has had a disaster recovery plan that at least covered their computers, data, and network. The smart ones had business continuity plans with standard operating procedures, or fire drills, or key-man insurance on their CEO depending on what was most critical for them to continue to operate in the face of disaster.
The best business continuity plans are created by the person who knows the business intimately. You know your writer business better than anyone else. You know what the most important assets are to protect. And you know what the biggest risks to your business are.
Start small. Write down the five most critical components for your business. It might include:
- your data
- you
- your distribution accounts if you’re indie published
- your reputation with readers
- your daycare provider
Identify the risks to your business related those components. Create a plan to protect them. Invest time or money or both to prevent the risks from being realized. Define what you would do to recover if a disaster impacted the critical parts of your business.
Congratulations! You have the beginnings of a business continuity plan.
Jordyn Kross is an unapologetically naughty romance author by night. By day she works in the computer industry developing processes to improve efficiency, prevent disasters, or, occasionally, cause them when testing software. She thrives on a diet of chocolate and developers’ tears. You can find her at jordynkross.com
For more information on the forthcoming Author Survival Guide, go to www.redreines.com where you will find Jordyn and her writing partners offering sage advice on everything from POV to poisons you can use in a mystery.