Business of Writing Mini-Series Day 3: Reading the Numbers, with Nadine Travers

Writer On The Road

English - January 11, 2017 01:00 - 41 minutes - 57.5 MB - ★★★★ - 5 ratings
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Previous Episode: Business of Writing Mini-Series Day 2: Positivity and Opportunity with Life Coach, Lisa Cherry Beaumont

Next Episode: The Business of Writing and Why Libraries are our Best Friends with Janine Kimberley

It’s time to put on our CEO hats and get serious about the business of writing. Nadine Travers chats with us today about how important it is to read the numbers of our businesses; knowing our costs, managing our time, collecting our invoices in one place, having a separate bank account for our business and making sound business decisions such as hiring the services of others based on the data. Alas, I didn’t kick too many goals during this this conversation but it’s never too late to start. As Nadine reminds me, information means power and it’s important that as business people we know where we need to focus our time. And if you’re like me and words like fixed costs, break even points and spread sheets send you running to the corner sucking your thumb then be assured Nadine makes it all sound easy. You can find out more about Nadine, her novels and French translations, and how to organise your finances here. (http://www.nadinetravers.com/)

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Writer on the Road is sponsored by Fit N Fifty Plus and you can visit Jennifer and her team here. (http://fitnfiftyplus.com.au/) Don’t forget to mention I sent you:)

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Duration [00:41:04]

Melinda: Welcome to another episode of Writer on the Road. Today we're going to Montreal in Quebec and I've got the beautiful Nadine Travers with me who writes paranormal and time travel stories. Welcome Nadine.

Nadine Travers: Hi, thanks, welcome and happy to be there.

Melinda: Happy to be there. Nadine has a beautiful accent and I believe she's bilingual, I believe you speak French and English Nadine.

Nadine Travers: Yes, true. My native language is French and my second language is English.

Melinda: My daughter and I love we love everything about France, my sister's over in France at the moment, I've got her to buy me some French Mills and Boons so I can come home and read them in French and now I've got my very own French speaker here. But the reason I'm bringing that up so very early in the podcast is because we're going to speak finances but me being me I actually want to talk about the French translation first, far more romantic than talking about behaving myself financially. Tell us about your French translations.

Nadine Travers: I am going to release in 2017 my time travel series in French. So I'm going to test the French market too, that would be pretty exciting to be there. The first book is already translated and I need to do some correction about it but I'm going to translate with, I use a Dragon to do my translation too so it's a fun process to do that. Second book is going to be all fully translated before Christmas. So after that's going to be only revision and I'm going to put that online for the French market and for people all around the world that speak only French. It's going to be good.

Nadine Travers: I was in the search during summer time for my break for my vacation time, if I was able to find expect for Amazon or Kobo have, I can have the French book about it, but more like a system like Draft2Digital but for the French market. I found one, which is the Immortal was it called, so they do the same process as Draft2Digital but for French book with other small market for the French one too.

Melinda: You translated it into French yourself?

Nadine Travers: Yes.

Melinda: Okay....

Writer on the Road is sponsored by Fit N Fifty Plus and you can visit Jennifer and her team here. Don’t forget to mention I sent you:)

Read Full Transcript

Duration [00:41:04]

Nadine Travers: Hi, thanks, welcome and happy to be there.

Melinda: Happy to be there. Nadine has a beautiful accent and I believe she's bilingual, I believe you speak French and English Nadine.

Nadine Travers: Yes, true. My native language is French and my second language is English.

Melinda: Okay now to even begin to unpack what Nadine has just said would take a while. Foreign translations for a start, now you have quite a few stories up there for sale, we've got Supernatural Intelligence Agency, we've got Scotland Lovers, Nadine's book have the most beautiful covers which is I guess what attracted me to them in the first place. Nadine how do you go about that or organizing a translation process from where to go. I notice you've got a blog post about it.

Nadine Travers: I was in the search during summer time for my break for my vacation time, if I was able to find expect for Amazon or Kobo have, I can have the French book about it, but more like a system like Draft2Digital but for the French market. I found one, which is the Immortal was it called, so they do the same process as Draft2Digital but for French book with other small market for the French one too.

Melinda: You translated it into French yourself?

Nadine Travers: Yes.

Melinda: Okay.

Nadine Travers: I used Dragon for that because it's easier.

Melinda: I know you keep saying you used Dragon and I know you've said that a few times now already in five minutes, I've got no idea what you're talking about.

Nadine Travers: It's what we call self-dictated. So you dictate what you need and your computer's going to type it for you.

Melinda: I understand, so it's just a dictation, that one that we talk about. Okay now I know the dictation that I get here in Australia it's not the professional model, we can't get it here in Australia and so anything that I, I tried talking into it when Joanna Penn talked about it, I thought I'm going to do that as well, that's a great idea. So I was in the bubble bath and I started dictating into this thing and the gobbledygook that came out the other side just cracked us up so we thought we'll never do that again. So you've obviously got a professional package.

Nadine Travers: Yes and I'm using the French one, so that's why, I'm reading my book, I'm reading my book and translating in French each time that I read it so that give me more, it's faster that way then just to type it.

Melinda: We're here today to talk to Nadine about finances, we're in the middle of our five day mini-series, we've exercised ourselves to death, we've been talking about mentoring and coaching and all sorts of things. Today we're going to get our finances straight. Nadine can you tell us a little about your background in finances and how that brought you to the writing world.

Nadine Travers: I've been in accounting for the last 25 years, still in accounting right now as my day job. I did different kind of general company to the services to the real estates, commercial real estates which I'm working right now since 15 years now and I write since I'm little, I was seven years old when I, me and my friend we have to move apart because I was moving another town and we loved Star Wars so we decided to create stories, romance stories with Star Wars character with ourselves. So that's how I started. I get back I was 16 years old, after that I have a story that's historical that I write at that time about it.

Melinda: Yeah and as we're talking if you had to talk us through why organizing our finances is so important as a writer, what kinds of things would you advise it?

Nadine Travers: A few things. You need to, the way I see it, the way I understand because I talk a few writers all the time is that we don't be account for the time with we doing so the planning for the next year and the book release and stuff like that, it's part of the process of the manager to do it, how many times is going to do to write that book, it's going to be three months, four months, so you're able to plan it in advance and so okay next year I'm going to plan for two books, three books, that's part of the manager.

But also you have all the side with somebody call expense, I prefer to call it investment because you invest it in your book by doing, hiring freelancer making book cover, editor, formatting or marketing as some, a lot of thing like this for your book. So those investment is more like to help to produce your book, so you produce a product which is your book and you have different kind of product because it can have an eBook, you can have a paper trade book, you can have the hardcover or you can have the [00:06:45] (unclear) book which is three or four kind different product but the way you write it is going to be write it for the four of them, you're not going to write only one but your cost is going to be reducing, your time is going to be reduced.

But you also, the biggest point is to put it to be, what we call break even meaning if you pay somebody to do your edit, your cover design, is going to have some investment for your book so to be able to break even that mean that your, all your investment be covered by your sales and now you're starting to do money about it. So some people see the money entering but they forgot all the investment that he did at the beginning about it. But he need to be able to break even to say now I'm starting to make money with my book so I can invest on the second one or the third one or the fourth one.

Melinda: Yeah. I think a lot of us forget, we see our little monthly royalty checks come in and I was just talking this morning saying my royalty for the Miner's Wife this month was something like $98 and I went wow, I'm not going to survive without a day job on $98 a month. So I guess what you're suggesting is that we have a reality check right at the beginning.

Nadine Travers: Yes, you need to, for my part if I do my experience I decide to formatting myself so I don't pay anybody to do that. So I think you need to sit down and to see who's I'm going to hire for freelancer, what I can do by myself or some people I say that they are trading some services between them. That could happen too but for that you need to know how many hours you're going to put that to be equal with the other person of it so that's why you need to know how much time you're willing to take so that services are to be resourceful. In that time you're not going to produce another book in the same time but you're going to invest in the book that you have right now.

So that depend on what you prepare to hire doing yourself or do some trading. I think that's the key. You need to know first what you want. I decide to do my formatting for, I'm going to release my ACI first book in [00:09:11] (unclear) next month, I'm working on that but I'm doing myself. Some peoples going to hire people because they don't know about, I have another friend, she's doing a cover design because she's using 3D graphics which is pretty gorgeous about it, so that depend how you be comfortable and what you able to pay for it or able to do for yourself.

Melinda: Yeah and I know everyone I listen to and everything that I read it says if we're going to be business people as indie authors then we have to keep good records. Now even with my podcast I'm all over the place, forget my writing, my looking at my desk and I'm going wow I don't even know where anything is, how I would I possibly know what's going in and going out. What tools do you suggest Nadine?

Nadine Travers: I will suggest, some people's going to put shoes box, going to put all the thing that you need. First all you need all to keep your records, invoicing, invoiced by internet if you use a PayPal, PayPal [00:10:17] (unclear) all the transaction, even though your bank account which, one of the first important when you do a business like this you need a separate bank account versus your personal one for government purposes to show them that you want, event though you're not incorporated or you're not a company legally you're a sole partnership in some way so you need a separate bank account to separate your personal finances versus your career finance.

That's the first step to be doing in the business type. So that way you're going to track all the transaction, put the invoices all together and now some government, I know that some people, I know in Canada is going to be three, it could go back for five years back. So I suggest to scan it and to put it somewhere like Dropbox, something like that to keep it, keep your record when you have it all done, finished, you scan it and you keep it pretty precious about it.

Melinda: I failed at number one everybody. I didn't even get off point number one Nadine. I've got my Tropical Writing Services business and I've got my ABN and I know you call it something different over there but it's my tax number. But my bank account is where all my money goes which is not a lot of it, you've made me sad.

Nadine Travers: It is, it's the first rule because you need to separate what is business and what is personal because if your government could go and check your book and they're going to see, usually they give you a year when you started to manage everything and to put everything together. After the second year they say that okay your second year great in your business it should be more serious so you should be having a bank account. It could be a check account, it's not something pretty exhaustive to do about it, I have a check account separate from my thing for my business as a writer and I have my personal account with my husband and my family's.

So that way that keep track, so I can list to grab my look I have this, this start to actually pass through, I have the invoices about it, it's easier to track because the way I see it for them, especially, not if you buying a course for writing, I'm pretty sure the government knows because it's your writing business, but if you buy some papers, ink, if you want to buy a laptop for your company and you put their personal, the government say this is a personal purchase because how they may know that is for business reading it. So if you put in your business related account now they're going to know okay this is for her business, that why she passed it through to her bank account for her business.

Melinda: Okay, so that's number one is a cross, what's number two? See if I can get it this time.

Nadine Travers: Sorry, number two is keep your things, the more closer that you get for your invoices. I know that Amazon provides some excel spreadsheets when you have your sales and your exchange because you're in Australia, I'm in Canada and the money is different so we have some exchange versus the U.S. and everything like this, so that became, you have to do it both ways because I do some freelancer for editors in U.S. so I pay much for that because I have my U.S. exchange regarding this depending on the money how the thing it is. That will be the same thing when have sales on Amazon U.S. I'm going to have the price in U.S. and they're going to convert it in my money to transfer it into my bank account. So that too could be tricky because both of them you need to account for because it's money more that you have, it's money more that you expense or you invest in your company.

So the thing is take out the spreadsheets over at Amazon. If you one in Kobo too, Kobo will send you an email each month for your royalties, Draft2Digital will also, I don't know for Smash Word because I don't use it but those kind of company going to give you spreadsheet for your month for the royalties and the rest keep all track of all your invoices, your investment, editor, book cover if you buy some paper because you need to print your book to put, to do your review or your correction manually, this become part of your business too. So that need tricky. That's all the cost, that's why it called investment.

But you have other cost too with fix costs. Fix cost which mean it's not related to your book but is related to your brand, meaning web design, web hosting, if you have a virtual assistant, if you have a PA, some bigger one, I don't have it but some do. If you using other services that's not related to produce a book or like your case in the podcast you have some cost that of investment for your podcast, it's they are for your podcast. But web design or web hosting is more like your brand, it's more like your name so that's something that usually is fixed or I think you can buy a package for one year, two years or three years. Some people going to pay each month, but that depends on how your thing it is, how you set it up your stuff.

I have a VA for my part, which I pay him two, each two months, so it's regularly a cost, that's why we call it fixed because we know every two months I'm going to have an invoice from him regarding this. That's how the thing is work. But it's for my promotion, it's for my brand, it's for my, it is related to my book but it's not really marketing for my book. Facebook ad for a book is for the book production cost. So that's two different things, we need to separate those two.

Usually fixed cost you're paying your mortgage, you have your apartment, you're renting part of it, part of it you're able to tuck in your business because you're doing your business inside of your house too. So some stuff there are fixed but already paid those thing because everybody's going to have to live somewhere, you paying your internet, you have your telephone, your cellphone whatever you're using. You have those already so that mean you can deduct it, but not all of it because you have to take personal part of it. But portion's going to be professional wise, yes you can do that. That is a fixed because it came back each month at the regular pace.

Melinda: Okay well I'm, my accountant has suggested some of that stuff and that's two crosses everybody. I really am going to get this stuff sorted out I promise and that's why I've got Nadine on here to help me. Number three?

Nadine Travers: Yeah. Number three I think that if you want to push a little bit further the breakeven point is the fun part because you know that you're going to cover all your investment that you did for the book. Now you're starting to make your real money, accounting wise. You already make money because you have royalties but you did investment about it. It's like you're putting money in the bank until you have in the interest to cover what you already put in the bank you're not really making money around it, so that's the same process.

So by doing that, when it's time to make money about it you can take that money and invest in a second book, you can take that money and pay your [00:18:27] (unclear) for the year, you can take money and help you buying material that you will need for you example your podcast and stuff like that and your microphone or your new computers or stuff like this. So that's all depend on what you want to do with your, what we call the break even. So the thing is to grow the fastest that we can to that breakeven point. I think that's one of the key about it.

Melinda: I know, look we all try very hard don't we everybody to I guess cover our expenses and in this day and age with all the things that you talked about earlier, we've got our eBooks, we've got our hardcover, oh sorry, our softcover print books and we've got our audiobooks and now we're talking foreign translations. I guess if we don't write them down things could get very confusing very quickly.

Nadine Travers: That is true because you got to have some investment for the audio book an example, you're going to have the narrator probably if you don't do it yourself to pay. But that is for, only for the audio book. But all the other costs, probably some modification for your cover but your basic of the cover is already done, it's already just an extra you're going to pay, it's not so much money about it.

So you know for the audio book your breakeven point is going to be closer to get that an eBook if is the first book you release because you're going to have the edit, you're going to have the cover to be done, you're going to have the formatting to be done, which you don't have to do in the ECX or audiobook about it. So some product break even's going to be the fastest, better, faster than an epub in some way because your investment's going to be less than the previous one you're going to do because usually people, the way I see it, they're going to release the eBook first, after that is going to be print on demand with Create Space or Light Source and after that they're going to jump in the audio book. In some...