Jumpstart Your Memoir Business Success

By Denis Ledoux

JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR BUSINESS helps Memoir Professionals—people who teach, coach, edit, ghostwrite memoirs—to establish sound business practices so that they will be able to continue in this important work while reaping the financial and emotional rewards it offers.

Denis Ledoux's extensive experience with memoir work is featured throughout this book. A must-read for aspiring Memoir Professionals.

Becoming a memoir professional requires that you establish sound business practices. If you do so, you will continue in this important work for years to come and reap financial and emotional rewards. Many people who launch themselves in memoir work believe that a writing business is somehow different from other businesses. It is and it isn't.

Our work is, of course, extremely personal. Relationships are primary. But... relationships in some form or other are primary to every business!

In JUMPSTART YOUR MEMOIR BUSINESS, learn sound business practices and you will prosper. Ignore them and you will be saying: "Memoir work was loads of fun but you can't earn a living doing it." The choice is yours. I hope that you will choose, as I have, to prosper.

The book contains a coupon code for substantial savings on The Memoir Network's Memoir Professional Package. With this package as your guide, you will be well on your way to a fulfilling and profitable Memoir Practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Denis Ledoux
• Release date: Jan 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9780983093190

Denis Ledoux

YOU CAN LEARN TO WRITE FROM THE INSIDE OUTI believe in the power of telling our personal and family stories. These are our hero's journeys, and by telling them we honor ourselves and the people we have come from. An important early task for the writer is go inside and find the story that is worth telling. The story is not about "nice" words; it is about honest words, visceral words.LIFESTORIES FEED USStories have always played an important role in my life. I grew up in a three-generation home with paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. I heard tales of my extended family and their history recounted by the family storyteller, my grandmother Ledoux. These stories were a food for my soul. I could not get enough of them, and her gift to me was that she was a voluble, entertaining storyteller.I began writing as a short-story writer, drawing on family characters, settings, and stories for my fiction. In 1989, I won the Maine Fiction Award for Mountain Dance & Other Stories. My other titles include What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America (1988), and Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings (which I edited in 1990). In 1992, I published (and it is still in print) Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories; in 1996, The Photo Scribe / How to Tell the Stories Behind Your Photos; in 2009, The Consumer's Guide to Ghostwriting, in 2013, a memoir—We Were Not Spoiled. E-publication includes the books listed here in Smashwords as well as others.MAKING THE LEAP TO BECOMING A MEMOIR PROFESSIONALIt was a natural leap from my own family stories to helping others to record their stories in well-written accounts that apply all the techniques of fiction writing to autobiography, family reminiscence, and scrapbooking.In 1996, I was honored as Lifewriting Professional of the Year by the Association of Personal Historians.THE MEMOIR NETWORKToday, I continue to work as a writer, educator, teacher, autobiography co-author, memoir-writing coach, editor and publisher. I direct The Memoir Network, an international group of lifestory writing teachers who use my method and materials to lead the popular Turning Memories® and Photo Scribe® workshops and programs.My Memoir Network offers Memoir Professional Packages for individuals wishing to do what we call memoir work in their communities. [http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-professional-packages/] Please inquire if you are interested in becoming a Memoir Professional.BUILD YOUR MEMOIR-WRITING LIBRARYYou will find a number of my memoir-writing e-books on Smashwords. Begin to purchase them now so as to develop your memoir-writing library. These are the best memoir-writing books available anywhere at any price.BEYOND THE BOOKSIf you need more than these great books, give me call at 207-353-5454 for a free consultation to determine whether coaching, editing, or ghostwriting is a good fit for you. When you're ready, we can also do book production for you.Keep writing and stay in the memoir conversation.

Book preview

Jumpstart Your Memoir Business Success

Denis Ledoux

Copyright 2013 Denis Ledoux

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations.

Smashwords Edition

To the men and women who made a future for themselves through my Business Development Seminars and to all the readers of this book who are determined to make a financial success of their work.

May this memoir profession be as good to you as it has been to me.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Memoir Work is Not Different

Chapter 2: Income As Goal

Chapter 3: What Are You Earning?

Chapter 4: Keep Current List of Weekly Sales

Chapter 5: Follow Through

Chapter 6: Commit to Business Success

Chapter 7: Cross Sell for Profit

Appendix A: Accelerate Your Success

Appendix B: From The Lifewriting Professional

Lifewriting Resources

Memoir Professional Resources

About the Author

SPECIAL OFFER

Introduction

In a recent conversation at a party with an acquaintance I did not know well, he asked me how things were with my business. To tell the truth, he didn't quite remember what my business was. I did a catch up with him on the last 15 years. Part of it went this way: and then I realized I needed to learn about how a business works. How do you take an expertise—writing in my case—and parlay it into a formula that reliably produces regular, substantial, and predictable income? I spent the next five or six years learning how to recreate myself from a writer who is a freelancer into a writer who is a business man.

He looked at me and said enthusiastically, Running a business can be fun, can't it!

Yes, I answered, it really can. My Soleil Lifestory Network has been a passion and, in the process, it has taught me a lot about myself and the world.