How to Start Offering Author Services
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If you’ve been wondering how to turn your love of books into your job, you’re in the right place! Offering author services is a great way to create a bookish career for yourself.
What Are Author Services?
Author services are just like they sound: services to support authors. There are many types of services you can offer, including (but certainly not limited to):
Social media management
Newsletter management
Book launch graphics
Inbox management and other admin support
ARC team management
People that offer these services typically call themselves an author PA, or a personal assistant for authors.
PA vs. VA: What’s the Difference?
Before I dive into how to start offering these services, let me answer a common question: Aren’t these virtual assistance services, not personal assistance services?
Technically, yes. In most other industries, this position would be called a VA, or a virtual assistant. However, in the author world, people use the title PA or personal assistant. This doesn’t mean your work will be in person — most PAs still work virtually.
How to Start Offering Author Services
Let’s dive in to how you can actually start offering these services.
Step 1: DECIDE ON YOUR OFFERINGS
If your background is in marketing, you may want to offer social media or newsletter management. If you have design experience, maybe you want to offer custom launch graphics. Or maybe you’re just the queen of organization and want to handle admin tasks or ARC team management. Choose what service(s) you’ll offer based on your skills and interests.
Don’t overthink this too much — you can always add or remove services later on.
Want to offer something you don’t have experience in yet?
You can do that, but I recommend doing a couple of things first:
Learn as much about it as possible. Want to be a social media manager but don’t have a ton of experience? Learn more about social media marketing. I highly recommend this program from Shelby Leigh to get you started (affiliate link). Whatever area you want to go into, you can find free or paid support to help you learn more about it.
Offer to take your first client on for free or for a discount. I know this is controversial advice, but I still recommend it. When I was first starting out, I took on a couple of clients for free social media management. I limited it to two months so I could get some practice, learn more about offering those services, and get testimonials. Then, I offered a paid plan for them to continue — and they both did! I’m not saying to work for free or for a discount for months and months. Definitely not. Just for a very limited time so you can get some experience and results under your belt. The referrals I then got from those clients brought in several thousand dollars in the months following that free work. Definitely worth it.
STEP 2: NAME YOUR BUSINESS
Now you need to name your business. If you already have a Bookstagram or BookTube channel, you can keep that name and just add an offer of author services. For example, my Bookstagram is Marin Reads A Lot, so I could name the services part of my brand Author Services from Marin Reads A Lot. If you have an established presence online within a bookish niche, this is what I recommend doing.
Otherwise, you can create a brand from scratch and name it whatever you’d like. Before you decide on a name, check its availability as a domain name and on social media. You can even run a trademark search to make sure no one else owns the name. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t advise you on this, but you can learn more about this from The Boutique Lawyer (affiliate link).
STEP 3: SET UP YOUR WEBSITE
Do you technically need a website? Some would say no. And, sure, you could start offering services without one. But in my opinion, it is a need. It will help you stand out, look professional, and land more clients. Plus, you’ll be able to charge higher rates when you show up as a business, rather than as someone with a side hustle or hobby.
I highly recommend the website platform Squarespace, as it has everything you need: A site builder, email campaigns, checkout software, invoicing, and more. You don’t even need to start from scratch, because you can find amazing templates from brands like Big Cat Creative (affiliate link — use code MARIN10 for 10% off).
Something I see often that I don’t recommend is having your site on Canva. Canva is wonderful for many things, but I don’t think it’s great for websites.
STEP 4: GET LEGALLY LEGIT
Again, I’m not a lawyer (although I thought I would be — took the LSAT and everything — but that’s another story for another time) so I can’t advise you on these things, but I can tell you that you definitely want to set up things like your Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Terms of Purchase, and contracts before you start marketing and taking money for services. Trust me. Ask me how I know. Actually, don’t. 😂
I got all of my legal stuff from The Boutique Lawyer (affiliate link), who has templates for all of this. Use code MARINREADS for 10% off.
STEP 5: SET UP YOUR PRICING & PACKAGES
The number one mistake I see author PAs making is pricing too low. I know that a lot of indie authors have lower budgets, but that does not mean you should work for $10 per hour. (Remember, when you’re working for yourself as a freelancer or business owner, you’ll have more expenses and taxes than if you were a W2 employee.)
You can offer services at an hourly rate (I would recommend no lower than $25/hr) or by creating packages. With your packages, you’ll want to estimate how long the work in the package will take you so you can use your hourly rate to price the packages. For example, let’s say you're offering packages but you want to earn about $30/hr. If one of your packages involves about 10 hours of work per week, you’ll take 10 hours x $30/hr = $300 per week.
You can always raise your prices later, so don’t be afraid to price a little lower in the beginning so you can get some experience and testimonials. It doesn’t look good later on to lower your prices because you weren’t able to find enough work.
STEP 6: MARKET YOUR SERVICES
Now it’s time to book some clients! Market your services regularly so you can find new clients. Here are a few things you can do:
Join Facebook Groups (this is a great one)
Share your services on social media (especially in a pinned post on Instagram)
Blog about your niche and pitch services in those posts (and share those blogs on Pinterest)
I hope this helps you with getting your author services business started! Check out my template shop for templates that will help you run and promote your business. New packs are added every Tuesday.