An Entrepreneurial Failure

According to the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School, two-thirds of all startups fail. Another statistic cited is that 90% of startups fail within five years. Publishing companies are not only not immune to this, they probably start and fail faster than other types of businesses.

Why?

Well, for a number of possible reasons, but the two most common are:

-the publisher doesn’t anticipate the startup costs and can’t afford to keep it going.

-the publisher doesn’t have all the skills and knowledge necessary.

I and my partner have fallen victim. We thought we had all the skills necessary to publish the works of other authors and we were almost right. I am an experience Indie-author. I’ve self published forty books. I’m also (if I do say so myself) a pretty good editor.

My partner has been traditionally published for years and considers herself a good editor and graphic artist. She also has an extensive network among the writing community.

We figured with those skills, what could possibly go wrong?

Marketing.

That is where we went wrong. My partner was certain she could get a marketing person to join our team, but she was turned down by those she approached. Without that…