Virtual Author’s Assistant: A High Demand Niche

If you work from home as a freelancer or virtual assistant, no doubt it’s been pounded into your head that you need to have a niche, or a target market. You need to define a group of people (NOT the population at large!) for whom you want to work or who need your specialized skills.

Recently I was introduced to Jan B. King, a publishing strategist and a publisher-turned-coach with over 30 years in the publishing industry.  She created a training program, VirtualAuthorsAssistants.com, especially for VAs who want to work with authors in the publishing field because this is a very high demand industry.

I love to read and this program really piqued my interest because to me, it’s very original and not a niche I ever realized existed. I always figured authors had their editors and publishing staff to do this stuff but not every author has those resources at their disposal.

Jan cordially granted me an interview about the specifics of her training program and some details about the publishing field. Here is Part 1 of our interview:

1. You’ve made your career in the book publishing industry. How did you transition from working in an office to working from home? Was it easy to do?

Yes and no.  In the physical sense, it was really easy.  I had an eight-year-old at home and being able to get him off to school and pick him up in the afternoon was just wonderful.  I live in Los Angeles, and I had a relatively short commute, about 30 minutes each way, but that saved me an hour a day at least, so I loved that part, too.

The toughest part was missing the co-workers who were long-time friends.  I had to make a real effort to get out and see them and stay connected because I couldn’t just walk into their offices any more.  I think if you don’t have work to do that you love it would be easy to be distracted, but for me the problem was working too many hours since the work was always right there.

2. What are some of the everyday tasks that are commonly performed on an author’s behalf?

When I left the corporate world and started consulting with authors and authors who were becoming their own publishers, they kept asking me for information on how to do the same things over and over.  I finally started noting them and I realized there were 24 things I was asked for most often.  These vary according to where the aspiring author or author is in the process of developing a book.

When the aspiring author is creating a manuscript, they typically ask for help in organizing their material or making sure it is all available in electronic form, in getting permissions to use quotes or statistics that were developed by others and in fact-checking or doing research.

When authors decide to publish their own books, they typically ask for help in getting the ISBN (International Standard Book Number), finding a cover designer, finding a printer, getting testimonials for the back cover and filing the copyright.

Then, for as long as an author wants a book to sell, he or she needs help in book marketing.  Authors typically ask for help in setting up their Amazon pages, doing virtual book tours, doing social networking, getting books out for review and more.

What is amazing these days is that all of these tasks can be done online or by telephone, so the job is perfect for someone working from home.  And you don’t need to be anywhere near the author geographically to do them.

3. Why did you create your course on how to become a Virtual Author’s Assistant?

When I was consulting with authors on their strategies as well as these specific services, I realized that although they were asking me for information on how to do these tasks, what they really wanted was for someone else to do it for them.  The learning curve for authors who are only going to do these things once is high and they are usually full-time busy themselves.

At the same time, I had started working part-time with a VA myself in my own business and I realized how capable she was of doing just about anything involving a phone and a computer.  In fact, she already had author clients – but she was handling customer service activities and correspondence for them rather than doing the specific publishing-related services.  It just seemed like such a natural fit for her to be able to offer more services and ones that were particularly valuable for these specific clients.

I started teaching her and then a few other VA’s how to do these things and then I started getting calls from other VA’s asking if I would work with them.  The training was just a natural next step in helping more people work with authors.  It has been great for me because I work with about 100 authors a year as a publishing strategist, and now I have people to refer authors to so I no longer have to do all the explanation I used to with the authors.  I absolutely love training and coaching VA’s because they love to learn and they are usually obsessive about details and getting things right.

4. What are the benefits to hiring a Virtual Author’s Assistant rather than a “regular” virtual assistant?

For authors, working with a virtual author’s assistant is like having the perfect collaborator for your book.  They get someone who understands the process of writing, publishing and marketing a book from A to Z, which most authors don’t.  And the VAA comes (because of our course) with two additional benefits – a referral network of editors, indexers, copywriters, book designers and more, plus they have access to publishing experts so any time the author has a new challenge, we help the VAA find the answer.

So not only does the author get all the benefits of working with a VA – great work ethic, administrative skills and the flexibility of having expertise just when the client needs it – but they also have these specialized skills and connections just for authors, aspiring authors and publishers.

Oddly enough, there is no “author school” – no place where writers can learn the skills they need to know to write a book, let alone publish or market it.  The way I learned publishing, and everyone else in the publishing industry learned publishing, is by working with more senior people, usually in a publishing company.  It is hard to describe how valuable these services are to authors, but even more how valuable the perspective of a VAA is – someone who knows the process and knows the author isn’t leaving something out that would be critical to success.

5. In general, what pay range can an Author’s Assistant command?

We ask our VAA’s this from time to time and we have heard a wide range – from $30 to $80 an hour.  One of the full-time VAA’s has reported making over $100K a year working with authors, and I don’t doubt it.  The amount charged varies by experience, geographic location and the type of services provided.  Authors tend to be willing to pay more for book marketing services, especially the newer online book marketing services like virtual book tours, Amazon campaigns and social networking.

A typical VAA will have between 4 and 7 author clients, depending on how much work they want to take on.

The demand for these services is already high and growing fast.  Even with the economic challenges, there are a record number of people becoming authors.  Up until about 2005, about 150,000 new trade (bookstore-type) books would be published every year.  That number started to grow and it has recently been announced by the people who keep those stats that over just the past 12 months, the number of new trade books has grown to 500,000 – way beyond predictions.

And here is what is especially significant – over half of that number were books published by their authors.  We couldn’t train enough author’s assistants to meet demand if wanted to!

Jan provided SO  much information about the Virtual Author’s Assistant niche that I decided to break the interview into two parts. If this niche appeals to you, check out Part 2 tomorrow and Jan’s website, VirtualAuthorsAssistants.com