18.40: How To Make Money From Your Hobby (with special guest Sandra Tayler!)

Writing Excuses

Or, The Business of the End of Schlock Mercenary

How did Howard start making money from his hobby of drawing and writing comics? How did he self-publish? We have a special guest on this episode! Sandra Tayler—Howard’s wife, the editor and publisher for Schlock Mercenary, and a published author—talks about starting their business. We dive into uncertainty, quality of life, and “manic optimism.” We learn about how to use pre-ordering, PayPal, and Kickstarter. Howard also shares about his experience with long covid, how to generate multiple income streams, and what comes next.

Homework:

Make a plan for how to monetize one aspect of your work. Start thinking like Sandra! This could be submitting a short story for publication or making a plan to submit your novel or making a plan for a paid newsletter. It doesn't have to be something you do today or tomorrow, but start thinking about what you can be doing to make this creative work part of your future income.

Prepare for our next Deep Dive with Host Erin Roberts (starting next week)! Read Erin’s short stories: Wolfy Things, Sour Milk Girls, Snake Season. Note: these stories involve some darker themes. All of these short stories are available for free online and also have audio versions available.

Thing of the Week:

Fluent Pet buttons - go to fluent.pet and use code "elsiewant" for a discount!

Liner Notes:

Sandra Tayler, who also offers one-on-one creative business consulting

Creative Community Classes

"Risk Assessment"—tthe Schlock Mercenary bonus story that Sandra wrote

The Alchemy of Creativity, Writing Excuses episode with Sandra

Credits: Your hosts for this episode were Mary Robinette Kowal, DongWon Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Tayler. It was produced by Emma Reynolds, recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson.

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