Being the owner of a publishing business can sometimes feel like when you were a kid, riding in your parents’ car towards some never-to-be-reached summer vacation destination. As your butt is melting to the plastic seats in the family’s ‘57 Plymouth, you crank down the window and whine, "Are we having fun, yet?"

The business of publishing is a lot like that family vacation. Miles and miles of work, punctuated by moments of (what passes for) fun. Working closely with authors, designing book jackets, editing a well written manuscript and attending book signings are the fun side of the business. But when was the last time you actually did any of those things? As a publishing company grows, it gets harder and harder for you to actually take the time to enjoy the pleasures that originally attracted you to the business. Dealing with returns by the caseload, straightening out B. Dalton invoices, working through computer inventory screw-ups, wrangling with printers and making payroll becomes a dominating part of your every day life.

Who ever said success was fun? Success in publishing means a lot of work. And the more successful you are, the further you will be pulled away from those things that got you into the business. Success means finding new ways of funding the company’s growth, success means setting up new computer systems to integrate record keeping and accounting, success means trimming royalties and discounts to obtain higher operating margins, ect., etc… As a publishing company grows it becomes essential to hire people to do many of the tasks like editing and designing books that were once done by the founder. Building a successful publishing company requires you to learn new skills – like managing people, monitoring cash flow, negotiating contracts and business planning. I have found that few publishers were business majors in school. More likely they majored in English, psychology, journalism, engineering or even political science. I think it is fair to say that for most publishers, the skills required to run a financially successful and well managed publishing corporation were not acquired in school. None the less, they are essential to your long term success – and survival.

Lacking the necessary business skills can result in a lot of crisis management that can really take the fun out of publishing. This is why I have found that companies that are partnerships based on two people with very different skill sets are often more successful than companies built upon the shoulders of one person. The best partnerships seem to be between two people, each employing very different skills. In publishing companies that usually means an editorial person and a salesman. If both partners are focused on making books – and no one is out selling books – the enterprise will collapse. If both people want to focus on marketing – and no one wants to deal with those pesky authors – the enterprise will collapse. The best division of labor seems to have, what is often referred to as – "one inside guy, and one outside guy". Remember, that you also need someone who is watching the cash register as well. You do not have to be in publishing for long to find out that billing and collections are just as important as developing books and selling them.

Publishing really becomes fun when you start making serious money. With profits you can start to attract better authors, commission better cover art, use more pro-active marketing (versus reactive marketing) and you can control your own fate. I have found that many people get into publishing because they are on a mission, without any thought as to how they are going to stay in the publishing business.

Here are five easy steps to follow towards helping you stay in the publishing business and keep it fun – because you are making money and good books:

Don’t go it alone if you do not have to. Whether your partner is your spouse, your friend or even a hired hand, make sure there is always someone doing the jobs that you do not like to do, or do poorly.

Don’t confuse your product with commerce. Fall in love with making your company successful, do not fall in love with the product (books). That may mean lower royalties than the author wants, that may mean giving less discounts to distributors and lower commissions to reps – and that might mean looking outside of the bookstore market for customers. You have an obligation to yourself and your authors to succeed.

Keep good records from the start. Tracking where your income comes from, what you are spending money on and how much is left over seems deceptively simple…but few start-up publishers seem to learn this lesson until they are required to learn it later. Good record keeping gives you peace of mind – and keeps you in the black – and that makes everyone happy.

Don’t follow the beaten sales path. If you follow all of the rules in publishing and distribute your books the way everyone else does, you will probably go out of business. The economics of selling books though the usual channels are against you. Find ways to sell books outside of the boundaries of the "trade". You will probably sell more books and make more money.

Stay out of debt. Once a publisher starts borrowing it seems that they can never stop. It is not easy to build a publishing company without borrowing money. But if you can do it through a combination of vendor financing and cash flow – do it. The economics of book publishing can make it impossible for a publisher to ever repay large long-term loans. Small lines-of-credit and short term project loans are permissible, but long-term debt can sink even the most productive publisher. If you have to grow slower to live off of cash flow, I would recommend it. It is tempting to publish every great manuscript that comes across your desk – but you can’t. And if you cannot afford to publish new books out of the profits from past works – you should pass.

These five tips cannot guarantee publishing nirvana, but they can go along way towards making your company more prosperous, secure…and fun. Publishing is a time honored and rewarding profession. The business does not have to be any more risky than any other. It is made more hazardous by the uninitiated, who violate one or all of the five steps above.