If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.

Authors, you may remember me telling you a couple of years ago about what happened to publishing expert Jane Friedman. The short version is that she discovered a number of books on her subject matter (writing craft and business) bearing her name, on sale on major outlets, which were not written by her and were apparently AI-generated frauds. The outlets initially refused to remove the titles because Jane couldn’t prove she had trademark rights to her name.

You can read more about what happened to Jane here.

I don’t mind telling you this scared the be-Grendel out of me regarding my own books for authors. (Random Beowulf reference, where my lit nerds at?) Something like this can not only undermine an author’s work, but their reputation and career with mass-produced fakes of questionable quality.

Jane Friedman, by dint of being Jane motherforking Friedman, took to social media and had enough of a platform and reputation, one that far exceeds mine, to garner international media attention that ultimately got her books taken down from these sites. I knew I did not have that reach or influence, and that if this happened to me my recourses would be few.

Unless I claimed trademark rights on my name.

DIY versus ROI

Literature abounds with trademark shenanigans, with one author some years ago infamously claiming trademark rights on the word cocky, and one high-profile recent case where an author claimed trademark rights on the title of her book (which is also embroiled in controversy about its origins).

I would never have filed a trademark claim if my name were more common, because I wouldn’t want to hamstring the publication efforts of other authors with the same name. For example, I have no intention of claiming trademark rights on Phoebe Fox, my pen name, because I know of at least two other Phoebe Fox authors, and one well-known actor. But I figured the chances were pretty good I’m the only Tiffany Yates Martin author.

But it didn’t take too much browsing on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website to quickly feel overwhelmed by all the arcana of choosing the exact right classification for my trademark and the many seemingly complicated steps, on top of the USPTO’s strong exhortations to hire legal representation to help you navigate it.

I decided to do just that, turning to an online legal service as a way to hopefully keep my legal costs down, with their flat-priced package for the application.

I won’t go into the whole saga of getting a trademark—author Teri Case offers a more detailed summation of it in a recent post for Jane Friedman—but FYI it’s an often years-long process, much of which involves waiting for the USPTO to review your application and subsequent steps.

It’s the subsequent steps where I started to rethink my approach. There tends to be a bit of back-and-forth with USPTO during the process where the applicant needs to respond to questions and provide further data and evidence of their claim for their mark, especially in my case, since when I applied I did not yet have the mark fully in use, according to the parameters for a trademark, until my second book for authors was released in late 2024, The Intuitive Author.

I don’t want to get into all the complexities of this process, but let me cut to the quick: I wound up incurring vastly more legal fees throughout the process with each subsequent step, still unwilling to try to wade through the process on my own.

Until I saw a post from Teri on her social media proudly showing off her new certificate of trademark. I commented that I was doing the same, and we began a dialogue where I learned she had navigated the whole process on her own. A former executive assistant, she had faith in her ability to figure out the legalese and somewhat confusing instructions on the USPTO site.

I told her of my experience and the fees that were racking up, and she was stunned at how much I had paid already, and that I was facing yet another step incurring another invoice. We compared notes and she simplified and clarified what the trademark office was asking for.

Her experience and her own confidence in herself gave me confidence of my own, and I removed my legal representation and decided to take over the rest of the process.

Friends, it was laughably simple. By that point all the USPTO needed was proof that I had the mark in use in commerce, which I provided in the form of pictures, web page screenshots, and other readily accessible documentation. It took all of about 15 minutes, and saved me several hundred dollars.

What Should You Pay For?

This post isn’t about how to get your own trademark, although if you’re interested Teri has posted a straightforward and helpful account of her experience on Jane Friedman’s blog here. (And Jane wrote about her own experience here.)

It’s about operating the business side of your creative career.

As with any business, you have to balance your expenditures against your income. That’s a challenging prospect in a business like ours where your writing income may be variable and uncertain.

If you are seeking publication and to sell your work at any level, regardless of which publishing path you pursue you may want or need a number of services to efficiently create a professional product and run your business, with their attendant overhead operating costs: editors and/or coaches, classes and workshops, possibly designers and formatters, audio engineers, marketing and PR help, legal services, perhaps bookkeeping or tax services or software, etc.

As with any business, you have to balance your expenditures against your income. That’s a challenging prospect in a business like ours where your writing income may be variable and uncertain.

Most of us are what entrepreneur Paul Jarvis calls A Company of One: not only the product’s inventor, creator, and manufacturer, but at least to some degree, regardless of your publishing path, the publicity and marketing team, the accountant, the CEO, CTO, COO, and also our own venture capitalist.

But as with any business, trying to do every bit of it ourselves may keep us from being as effective at any of them as we need to be to succeed.

I’ve written about determining what you may need versus what you want and whether an expenditure makes sense for your business, and how to carefully vet anyone you hire.

My decision to hire a legal service to help me with the trademark application process, though, was partly made out of overwhelm and fear. I let the scary-looking verbiage and the strong recommendations of USPTO convince me it wasn’t something I’d be able to handle on my own. But like Teri, I suspect that I probably could have navigated it if I had been more confident and more willing to spend the time making sure I understood it.

I don’t regret the initial expenditure: I am grateful that the company I used waded through the daunting process of filing my application. But after talking to Teri, I wish I’d taken over the remainder of the process sooner—I’d have saved myself significant money with minimal time and effort outlay.

Terry spent $350 and has her trademark claim. I spent more than a thousand and I’m still waiting.

A little more diligence and research would have told me that my initial outlay with the legal company was not a complete package. It would also have shown me how relatively straightforward the rest of the process was and that I could have done more of it on my own.

What to Consider Before You Spend

Before you start shelling out dollars for expensive services, consider whether each one is the best use of your money and time at this point. For instance, with some sample edits I return a “no bid” to authors whose manuscript may be early enough in the process that I don’t feel an edit is the best use of their resources or will allow us to dig in as deeply as we might, and I offer a number of suggestions for them to consider to help develop and polish their story further before spending money on a professional edit.

But at the right point, a good, thorough developmental edit can be among the greatest learning experiences for your craft knowledge and your own editing skill—which may also help make this expense one you need to incur less in the future. I’ve worked with many authors on several titles who then took all the skills they honed during the process, including how to see their own writing more objectively, and use me less and less. This is right and good and as it should be. 😊 

Among the other key questions I suggest considering, ask yourself, Is this a skill that will be valuable for you to have in your toolbox? For me, for example, audiobook engineering is not, so for the audio versions of my books I happily hire the talented and immeasurably knowledgeable and experienced Tony DiPiazza, who guides me through every step of recording and handles the heavy lifting of making the books sound professional and polished.

Basic video editing is a skill I can use, though, for my recorded classes and other projects, so I took the time to learn that and made the investment in good software for it. That will save me money going forward.

Ask yourself whether you could hire out part of the process, and perhaps do part on your own to decrease your outlay, as I finally wound up doing with my trademark application.

For instance, some authors I work with choose a single-pass dev edit instead of multiple passes, or a less extensive—and less expensive—overview edit if they feel that big-picture feedback is enough for them to tackle needed revisions on their own.

Since I’ve recently begun offering a variety of consultation packages, some authors choose a first-chapters critique or a story consultation, which cost hundreds, rather than the thousands of a full developmental edit, and can offer them enough input and springboard to work through story issues on their own and with the help of trusted critique partners and beta readers. (Editing, as I often say, is a key skill authors must master, a major part of the writing process—even if you seek out a professional editor for deeper development and honing.)

Carefully consider every dollar you spend on your business. Carefully vet every single person and service you hire. There’s a thriving industry built up around authors, who have become the target customer for these services. Among those offering them are experienced, reputable, deeply knowledgeable experts who will help you level up your writing and your writing career. And also among them are those who may not have the level of skill or experience required to make those expenditures worthwhile. You are also the quality-control department of your business, and it is fully up to you to ensure that you are paying for good services and getting what you pay for.

(See my free downloadable Get It Edited guide for detailed info on finding and vetting editors and coaches.)

Consider what you actually need. I have been approached by authors who want to hire me as the second or third editor for their manuscript. One author recently asked about hiring me to help her incorporate another editor’s edits. These may be redundant or unnecessary costs you incur—often because a myth has arisen in the industry that certain processes must always be hired out to an expert, that authors can’t navigate them on their own. That’s not true.

Hiring multiple professionals to help you with your writing and editing might be one way to sharpen your craft skills, but it may also be an extraneous outlay of money, and one that prevents you from doing the hard, often dirty, but utterly necessary work of trial and error, failure after failure, until you master the skills that are at the core of this career. There’s no shortcut through that, and no one can do it for you.

Read More: “What Makes a Successful Creative Life?”

#

It’s important to remember that as extensive as our business may become, for the vast majority of writers it is unlikely to earn you a living wage. That’s a dreadfully stark statement, and I’m leaving it even though I don’t intend it to discourage anyone from pursuing this as a career.

But our ROI is not always measured in dollars. My audiobook versions of my craft books are not significant moneymakers for me, but it’s important to me to have them for accessibility to all readers, so the expense is worth it to me.

Writing careers have many rewards, and some are monetary, but for most authors, riches, wealth, and fame are not likely to be among them. That makes it especially important to consider how much money we want to spend on them.

We have to make deliberate, considered choices that balance business and financial realities with our creative goals, know what we can and perhaps should tackle ourselves and what to hire support for—and clearly define what is worth it to us.

Over to you, authors. How do you decide what services you may want to hire out for? How do you determine which services and people you want to entrust with your investment and your career goals? Do you keep books and records on your creative career like the business that it is—profits and losses, expenses, income, etc.? (If not, I highly encourage it.) And when you hire something done, do you consider it an investment that will pay off monetarily, or are there other values driving your choices?

If you’d like to receive my blog in your in-box each week, click here.