How to Navigate the Business of Writing and Publishing: Expert Advice from Jane Friedman 

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00]
Well, hello, Jane. I am so excited to have you on the podcast today so we can talk about the latest edition of your book. This is the first edition, and I’ve been recommending it for years, so I’m so excited to both celebrate the fact that the new edition is coming out and to talk with you about it.

Jane Friedman [0:20]
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:24]
Well, how could I not, especially knowing that this book is out? Seriously, I mean, it’s an absolute joy. I always give my guests the chance to tell us a little about themselves first, just in case there are people out there who don’t know who you are. And, is there anything you would like us to know about this latest edition of The Business of Being a Writer?

Jane Friedman [0:44]
I’ve spent about 25 years now in the writing and publishing industry—my whole work life, essentially, even going back to college. So, this book is really the culmination of all those years. I’m a full-time entrepreneur, freelance writer. I don’t work for a traditional publishing house, literary journal, or university. I really value being fully independent, and so I think that gives me a lot of understanding and empathy for what other writers might be going through, especially if they don’t have any institutional connections and they have to make a living. So, I make my living as a writer fully. I know the challenge of that, and this book, whether it’s the first edition or the second edition, is supposed to help writers understand the realities. I don’t sugarcoat anything, but I’m also fairly optimistic that you can make this work. The business side of it does not have to be this distasteful thing that doesn’t align with your vision or doesn’t work with your creative personality. I try to encourage in that book and in all my work, frankly, that business issues are also creative issues. Yes, it’s not about putting your nose in a spreadsheet for three hours a day. Absolutely.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:56]
And I think the more people can think about writing both as a creative art and as a business—especially if you want to publish for the public—the easier life gets because you begin to develop that vision around it. But some people are going to say, “But I want this to be my art! Don’t say that b-word!” And yet, I’m going to quote Amy Bernstein—she was at the San Francisco Writers Conference—and she said, “Writers really need to see this as a business.” Can you help us understand why we need to do that?

Jane Friedman [2:32]
Well, it all comes down to what your goals are. If you don’t have any goal beyond satisfying your own creative urge, if you don’t have any goals aside from having this work for yourself, you can more or less cast off any concerns about the business or about the market. But as soon as you start thinking about, “I would like readers for this work,” or “I would like a publisher, an agent to invest in me or in this work,” that’s when you have to start thinking about it as not just your creative output, but what is the value to other people? What is it going to mean to other readers? And how do you position that? How do you present that? How do you package it? I still think it’s a creative act. I still don’t think it’s a distasteful thing. And coming away from this book, I hope readers see that just like producing your book or your art isn’t a formula, the business isn’t a formula either. Right? That’s why it’s so challenging. This is why writing is challenging. This is why the business is challenging. It’s that there isn’t a formula. But I think it’s also empowering that you do not have to set this up in any particular way. There aren’t any rules that you have to follow. You can decide how this works.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [3:46]
And I think figuring out what works for you is the most important thing you can do. And I just finished interviewing Amelia Hruby. She runs the Off the Grid podcast, which is all about how you can leave social media without losing your followers, your readers, or your business. And so, she was talking about all these different creative ways that you can connect with your audience so that you can continue to do this in a sustainable way. And I think that speaks to your point—that you can do this through social media, you can do it off social media, you can do it in so many different ways. And the more you can find your own joy in the process, the more it’s going to feed not just your business of being a writer, but also your creativity itself. When you’re doing a second edition, what is the metric? Is it 10%? What’s the percentage that has to be different? Because I think you took a different approach. But what’s the percentage that has to be different?

Jane Friedman [4:43]
This is one of those publishing industry things where there’s no agreement or rule written in stone, but I would say it’s going to be somewhere between 10 and 30%.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [4:53]
That is good to know, because I had heard about 20%—for you to really have a legitimate second edition, it needs to have 20% more content, different content, changes in content. I believe I read in your introduction that there were times where you just changed entire paragraphs. I mean, there was a lot of rewriting that you did in this. And so, if someone has the first edition, what’s going to be new for them?

Jane Friedman [5:19]
So for the second edition, there are a couple of entirely new sections. One of them is devoted to platform. You know, it’s the topic that no one is entirely happy about being front and center, but I try to show that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing, once again. Right? I also open the book in a bit of a softer way with some mindset issues. Because the longer I’m in the business, the more that I recognize that a lot of long-term success comes down to mindset and how you’re going to overcome consistent setbacks, rejection, feelings of failure or insignificance—you name it. Those things don’t go away. Like, I’m 25 years in now, right? It doesn’t go away. So, you have to figure out your own solutions for being resilient through those setbacks. The book starts off very differently, so with the mindset and the platform. And then at the end of the book, there is a part on business mechanics that apply regardless of what industry you’re in, with a little bit of a slant, of course, for writers and publishing—things like, “Do you need an LLC? How would that benefit you? Tax considerations, legal issues, contracts, and so on.”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [6:34]
I think when you were looking at how to write this, one of the things that you had to examine was what information in the first edition might be—I don’t know if “obsolete” is the right word, but that’s the right word. Okay, we’ll go with “obsolete,” because so much changes in the industry. How did you think about, “Okay, I’ve learned that some information is going to be obsolete”? Obviously, you can’t control for all of that because this industry changes so much. What lens did you bring to the second edition so that you could have the foresight to say, “How can I create something that’s going to have the greatest level of longevity for my audience, so that if somebody picks this up five years from now, it’s still going to have content that’s relevant”?

Jane Friedman [7:19]
I really struggled with this, because especially if you go back to the first edition, you’re going to find all sorts of social media references and discussion about the magazine/media industry that really have zero relevance right now. And some of these things, there’s always going to be a new edition of this book, perhaps for as long as I have a career. There are already sections of the book I wish I could go back and modify because of new services and new tools. I can’t entirely future proof it. That said, there’s one big area I just put a big X through, and that’s the magazine section, the online media section, because it is a moving target. Unfortunately, I think the magazine industry is a dying one, or it’s transforming so much that I don’t think “magazine” is the right word to use for whatever opportunities exist. There was a lot more I would say on writing for short literary journals—that ecosystem, which is also so in flux. And I feel like if you want guidance in some of these areas, you’re much better off following things that are on Substack, for instance—people who are covering what it’s like at this moment on the ground for those industries.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [8:30]
Absolutely, because things are changing. I follow a few different Facebook groups where people are offering updates. I also follow different people on Substack and USA Today, for instance, they were accepting personal essays up until, I believe, a few weeks ago. So even places that are largely online now, what they’re accepting, what their rules are, all of that is changing so much because our world is changing so fast. So, I love that you were thinking about that. And I’m curious to know, the initial audience for The Business of Being a Writer were people who are in MFA programs, like they’re in educational institutions. They are learning the craft of writing, and now you’re teaching them the business of writing so that when they leave, they know how to create a viable career. I’m curious to know, once the book was out in the world, was that still your primary audience? And as you think about this edition, I know that’s a piece of your audience, but do you see that your audience is bigger or different than what you anticipated?

Jane Friedman [9:34]
I think it’s still pretty true to my expectations. When I first decided to do this book 10 years ago, I was very frustrated at hearing the same stories from writers, especially at the AWP conference. This is the big annual conference where people from the university community primarily gather—from MFAs and so on. I don’t come from an MFA program myself. I come from the BFA program, which has a lot of the same issues at play. It tore me up to hear people on panels continually say, “I wish someone had told me XYZ about the money, how much it would cost me to get this degree, how hard it would be to pay off the debt, or how the industry was changing and I wouldn’t be able to make money in such and such a way, or how few teaching jobs there are, or any number of things.” So, I’m still always trying to reach more of those people all of the time. But I do think even if you’re not an MFA student, certainly a big part of my audience consists of people who are outside of those institutions, and it’s obviously still helpful for those folks, regardless of where they’re at in their career. If they’re new to writing and publishing, I think this book is relevant.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [10:46]
Absolutely, and I have given it to many people who are not in MFA programs, though I have certainly given it to MFA graduates as well. It actually has been surprising to me, as a person who does not have an MFA, the number of MFA graduates who have come to me to learn about the business. I mean, obviously, I’ll say, “Well, Jane says,” because you know more than I do. But it’s been shocking to me that many of them didn’t get anything on it, and then they leave with a thesis, but they’re not even sure sometimes how to take it from something that has a lot of beautiful language into something that is going to be more marketable to an audience. So, I’m so glad that you’ve done this, and I love that you have shifted this to think about mindset first. And I also think it’s great that you have the whole section on platform, because we all have to think about it, regardless of what it looks like. But as you think about the mindset and your career, which spans 25 years, how has your mindset—or perhaps the way you approach the publishing industry—changed or not changed as your career has evolved?

Jane Friedman [14:27]
It’s a harsh truth. I think there’s maybe even a Buddhist parable that’s comparable, but with someone playing the violin. The other thing that reminds me of that story is when I was in traditional publishing, I did a book with a guy named Bill O’Hanlon. He was a psychotherapist, so his book was really about mindset issues. The title was Write is a Verb. It’s probably still floating around out of print, with used copies. He talked about the four motivations that might keep you going: blessed, blissed, pissed, and dissed. The reason I remember that is because, at the time, with this idealistic vision I had, I thought, “Oh, you shouldn’t be motivated by anger or, you know, some of the more negative emotions.” But his book really opened me up to the fact that if there is that professor in your life, or whomever, an authority figure who says you can’t do this, it’s actually a pretty healthy reaction to say, “I’m going to show you, and I’m going to do it anyway.”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:30]
Exactly. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that the whole goal is then to say, “Okay, well, how are you going to do it?” If you’re going to take this on, how do you do this? And that’s where books like yours come into play because they give you some guidance on the things that you need to think about, one of which is mindset. I 100% agree with you that mindset is a huge piece of writing. I would say, as a writing coach, 50% of what I do is helping people with their mindset, maybe even 65%, and then there’s another portion that is the writing. And obviously, the writing matters—if you’re listening, of course it does. But if you don’t have the right mindset, it can derail everything, because it affects your motivation, it affects your capacity for creativity, all these things. So, what are some things around mindset that you are inviting people to consider? And then I’m going to take it a little personal, if that’s okay.

Jane Friedman [16:28]
I would say one of the books that influenced me—and I quote it in that book—is The Art of Possibility, by Benjamin and Rosamund Zander. Fascinating people, by the way. That’s a great book to go read. I quote that book at least a couple of times because I think often people will look at the frameworks they’re operating in, especially right now in the publishing industry. You hear a lot of negative messages about how hard it is. Agents won’t take books unless they follow certain rules, or you’ll never get published if X, Y, or Z happens. So many people telling you it won’t happen, it can’t happen, or the industry is only interested in cookie-cutter sorts of stories, or people with these certain types of platforms, or you have to be on TikTok. I’ve been in the industry long enough now that I’ve heard all these messages, and I’ve seen them change. I’ve seen people chase the new metric or the new thing that you need to get published.

So, The Art of Possibility is about thinking, well, these things exist. You’re probably not going to get rid of them. I don’t think you’re going to become an activist and get rid of them. But what if you somehow change the framework of how you’re approaching this? If you change your perspective, rather than seeing it as, “I can’t do this because X, Y, or Z,” how do you say, “If this is the way things are, I will do this in response”? Like finding your positive way through that. I don’t mean to be a Pollyanna about this at all. I’m very much a realist, and I don’t mean to suggest people go around deluded about how the industry works. But for example, you mentioned a colleague who is talking about how you can sustain a business without being on social media. How can you be a successful writer without social media?

And so, obviously, right now, I think we hear a lot of messages about how you must be doing X online to succeed. That is not, in fact, true. You can be very successful as a writer and a published author without doing a lot of these things that are the so-called “musts.” Throughout the book, I try to emphasize that there are no requirements. There’s only what is going to serve your existing or current goals. And you have to, of course, keep reevaluating that because your goals shift, your career advances, and the market moves.

Then, the other mindset issue, I think, pertains to failure and rejection, which are always hard. I don’t care who you are, it’s going to be hard no matter what. And I don’t think there’s really a way through that other than finding the things that work for you to move through it. It’s not about the fact that it happened; it’s about what you do next and how you get to the other side, or decide what steps you’ll take, rather than shutting down.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [19:15]
Yeah, and I mean rejection. It hurts everyone’s heart. It just does. It’s kind of the nature of the beast. But one thing that I see people doing that I think intensifies the hurt is they put all their hopes into one thing and one outcome. And when that one outcome doesn’t happen, it hurts more because there are no other possibilities. So, I see that with people who think, “I’m going to quit my job, and I’m going to go write this book, and then I’m going to make a million dollars,” or whatever. You know, it’s going to be quickly picked up. Everyone has this dream, and man, what would life be like if it actually happened? Oh, my goodness. But what I often tell people is having multiple things that you’re working on can be helpful.

There’s actually even a group on Facebook that celebrates rejections, and you know, the whole reframe is, “Oh, you were rejected! How amazing that you showed up.” And the more rejections you have, that’s more proof that you are showing up, that you are pursuing your dream. I was told early on that if you get to 100 rejections, your life is going to change. Not that you’ll suddenly make a million dollars, but you will have learned enough that you’ll have more successes going forward. That will not mean there’s no rejections, but it’s different. And when I first heard that, I was like, “Oh my gosh, no, that’s too hard. I don’t even want to hear it,” and it was absolutely true.

So, I think you quote Ta-Nehisi Coates. He had an article where he talked about how part of success is lasting longer than everyone else. One part is going to be you’ve learned more, and the other part is that there are fewer people who have the same level of skills. So, you know, thinking about that longevity and these different ways that we can reframe is so helpful.

Jane Friedman [21:03]
Yeah, I think he talks in that passage, and I quote, about how it’s so easy to get kind of battered and beat up by the systems, which is, you know, 110% true. There’s this kind of unfortunate natural selection process that happens, weeding out the people who aren’t willing to keep going or aren’t willing to take the lumps. And this isn’t about, “If you suffer enough, you will succeed.” There are some people who don’t reach success. There are a lot of different reasons for that, though, and sometimes it’s because something you referenced earlier—people get stuck on a single project. I’ve seen people get stuck on a single project for more than 20 years. I see them coming back to the same conference with the same project, and it’s like there’s a point at which that project isn’t teaching you anything further, and it’s time to move on to something else that you’re interested in. Assuming you want a career as a writer, and I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, I think you’ve got more than one book in you, or more than one project, or other things to say beyond that. Let’s move on. You can always go back to that thing in the drawer if the time is right.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [22:07]
Yeah, considering the sunk cost fallacy around a project, whether it’s going to be successful, is really important. And, I think about what Ariel Curry said when I interviewed her, and she works for Sourcebooks. She said, you know, if you are a hungry writer—because that’s the book she was working on—you’re going to keep working on your writing regardless of whether this book was successful. If it wasn’t, write another. If that’s not successful, write another. And sometimes it’s the fourth book or the fifth book that’s actually successful. I think one of the things I see on social media a lot that I have a problem with is immediate success. Someone actually sent this to me: it was how to write a best-selling book in a weekend—the five steps—and they said it very genuinely and very lovingly. “I think you could learn something from this.” It’s like, I think I have learned that this is a scam. And that, you know, while there may have been a couple of outliers who probably had a thousand things going on for them that go beyond your example, for most people, these quick-fix, five-step “this is how you become viral or successful” things, I think they set writers up for failure.

Jane Friedman [23:23]
Oh, absolutely. Another thing I’ve learned over my career is that there’s no such thing as an overnight success. Most so-called overnight successes have all sorts of things going on in the background that you don’t know, didn’t pay attention to. A million different things are going on. This is also true of people with platforms, where they may have a really significant platform that is working for them, that’s not apparent to you on social media or on their website, or in the numbers—the quantified numbers. I think that’s like the relationships and networks that people have that can contribute to their success. And it leaves you wondering, if you don’t know about them, how did that happen? And of course, part of my work is in trying to lift the curtain on all this and make it clear how success happens. And it’s often in a million different ways. Of course, it’s not just one way, and it’s not in a weekend.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [24:16]
No, it is never in a weekend. And there isn’t a magic formula. And even when you have reached a certain level of success, there is no mountaintop. And even if you are, we’ll say, closer to what some people might perceive as a mountaintop, you can still have setbacks. And so, I’m curious, if we’re getting real here, what’s the setback that you faced in the last little bit that surprised you or made you go, “Oh yeah, I’m in the trenches too?”

Jane Friedman [24:44]
Well, you know, just doing the second edition was a setback because I missed my deadline two, if not three, times. It was just a very challenging project. It was easier to write it the first time. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily a big setback, but I couldn’t wait for it to be done. I think another setback I had was—this is much earlier in my career—when I thought I was going to teach full time at the university level, teach writing, and do other, like, writing-adjacent activities, publish books, and so on. But I ended up taking a job at a literary journal at the University of Virginia. And, you know, part of the reason I did it was just attraction to the status and the prestige of this publication. And for those who don’t know, I’m based in Cincinnati.

At that point, I had lived my whole adult life in Cincinnati. I’m from Indiana. I’m very Midwestern in nature and perspective, and so I wasn’t really prepared for what I was walking into. From one perspective, it was a big mistake—a big career mistake. You know, I was interested in the work, but I didn’t really honestly evaluate the fit. And certainly, my gut was telling me that the fit wasn’t great, but surely, we could work through it. Well, spoiler alert: we did not work through it. I had to quit before I got fired. And so, that’s really what launched me on my current path, where I’m a full-time writer. I’m independent of any organization or business. I had to be shoved off the cliff. Ultimately, I can’t argue with where I’m at now. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but it was a huge mistake at that time, given what I was thinking would happen as a result.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [26:26]
Oh, those times we don’t listen to our guts. I have had plenty of those in my life, and I’m always like, “Oh yeah, my gut was right.” We all do that. And I think one thing that can happen when we don’t listen to our guts is we can get into shame spirals or negative thinking, right? And so, there’s just the negative perceptions that people can have about the publishing industry or being combative from the beginning, like, “Oh, this industry is against me, and I’m fighting against it.” But then there are these things that happen, just like they happened to you. How are you combating negative thoughts, you know, when you think about that? Or even just now, you have a setback or something happens—like, what’s your go-to to reframe?

Jane Friedman [27:09]
I mean, the first thing I always do if things seem to be going off the rails or I’m not feeling very good about my work, is actually to focus on the work. Almost every single time I’m feeling like there’s a setback or something that’s going on, it has to do with external factors. So, here’s a really specific example related to this book and marketing and promoting this book: I mentioned the AWP conference, this big conference of writers and MFA people and all the rest of it. And this is a conference I’ve been going to for a very long time, very consistently for a while. My first year attending was 1998, and then when I went in 2012, I pitched two panels. Got both panels accepted. There are still people today who actually come back to me and say, “I still remember that panel. It was so interesting and impactful because it was looking at digital media and the transformation of literary culture because of digital media.” Anyway, all of that is backstory to me proposing two panels for this year’s AWP and getting both rejected. And I was like, “This is supposed to be my big year at AWP, where I come out with my second edition, and they’re not willing to put me on a panel.” And I was, you know, not that it was personal, it wasn’t. And then I was on a panel proposal, I think, yeah, for a third one that also didn’t get picked up. So, I was thinking, “Okay, what now? What do I still go? You know, it was certainly a low point.” And I wrote a newsletter about this rejection to my audience, and I said, “I fear I’m becoming a fossil. I’ve been in the industry for so long that you feel like, ‘Am I losing importance at this point? Am I just someone no one listens to anymore?’” But in any event, the good outcome, or the reframe, let’s say, is for those who don’t know, you can pay AWP to put on your panel. You don’t actually have to pay that much to get an entire stage to yourself for 75 minutes. So that’s what I did. I paid AWP for my panel. I got my panelists, and we’re going to do what I wanted to do anyway. And because I earn pretty good money, it’s not like a hardship, and I think it’s going to be worth every cent.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [29:24]
It’s going to be worth every cent and so much more to everyone who goes to that because you are talking about one of the most important things that writers need to think about, which is, where does your income come from, and how much of it comes from your books?

Jane Friedman [29:41]
So spoiler alert: my book is about 1% of my income, which, you know, for some people, it might beg the question, “Why are you spending time on that book?” But for many people, in nonfiction anyway, the book is a business card. It helps bring people to you that might not ordinarily discover you. It’s really important for the library market and for getting the message out to people who use libraries and for a million other reasons.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [30:06]
And what I often tell people who are working on nonfiction books, and also too, if you’re working on a memoir or anything else, think about what are the doors you want to open. And sometimes the book is one of those mediums that allows you to open certain doors which can lead to income? Yes, yes. Well, as we wrap up, I often ask people, “How do you nurture your resilience?” And I get a lot of people who say things like, “I walk in nature,” which is amazing—everybody, I do it too, and I think it’s an important piece of maintaining your health. But I’m curious to know, what’s one way that you nurture your resilience that would surprise people, or that people just wouldn’t think about?

Jane Friedman [30:46]:
Well, you know that I don’t walk in nature. Some days, I don’t leave my house, and that’s a good day. I think I have really strong boundaries about when my workday ends and begins. That might vary a little bit from week to week or month to month or depending on what projects I’ve got on my plate, but generally speaking, when I leave my office at five or six p.m., I do not let work concerns enter my head again unless it’s an emergency. So, I don’t have email on my phone. I don’t look at social media on my phone, because that’s—for me—it’s really all work-related. I’m not reading work-related publications, catching up on that sort of thing, nada. And then in the morning, when I get up, no phone, no social media, no email. I do reading that’s really just for me, that has no career effects. And usually, there’s, you know, some kind of like workout time, maybe like going to the gym with my husband, and then the workday starts after that. So, I keep it really tightly confined. I think that for me, that’s always been key, at least while I’ve been operating my own business.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:01]:
And I think that’s so important, because when we are doing something that’s a passion, it can be so easy for the passion to take over your life, and then you actually have no life. You know, that is something I am always trying to navigate myself. But having those strong boundaries allows you to recharge. And when you recharge and you slow your brain down, that actually makes you more efficient during the times when you are actually working. I mean, do you feel like that is—that’s the general experience of people, but is that your experience?

Jane Friedman [32:33]:
It makes me much more effective when I’m at my desk. So, for people who’ve known me a while, it’s probably obvious that work is my life—like that is my overriding passion. This is what defines so much of me. But I do still have the “me, me” that just needs to unwind and enjoy myself and not be thinking about my business or the business of writing and publishing.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:55]:
Well, if people want to get a copy of the second edition of The Business of Being a Writer or they want to connect with you, if they don’t know how— which, I know many people will already know how— but how can they do this?

Jane Friedman [33:06]:
The best place is my website. That’s janefriedman.com. That’s where you’re going to see the book, learn about my newsletters, classes, speaking. All of the stuff is on that site.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [33:17]:
If you missed that, it will also be in the show notes, along with a few things that you have done so that people can get a taste of your work, which I have to say is brilliant. I’ve been following you for years. I feel so grateful to know you in many ways, and I’m super excited about this book. I mean that genuinely, and I’m excited to be able to recommend that to people, because the more you know about how things work, the more resilient you’re going to be as a writer, because you can have your own agency, and you can make choices for yourself based on what’s best for you, and in that way, knowledge is power.

Jane Friedman [33:44]:
Exactly right. Thank you, Lisa.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [33:48]:
Well, thank you so much, Jane. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Jane Friedman [33:51]:
Likewise.