Making a Living *CREATIVE BOOK AWARDS 2024 HIGHLY COMMENDED*: How to Craft Your Business

This is an excellent reference for anyone who is thinking of setting up a creative business. Taking the next step - from hobby to making money from your craft - is a big decision. This book helps you to determine why you want to set up a business, what is the best approach, who are your target customers, and more - covering the legal and accounting sides of running a small business too.I liked this book as it is up to date (unlike some of the other "how to set up a business" books out there!), takes on board the role of e-commerce, is targetted at setting up a creative business, and uses real-life craftspeople to illustrate how and why they are in business - helping you to decide the best path for you, based on your motivations, skills and aims.There's also an online set of tools that go with the book - I haven't explored them as I think you have to sign up, but they sounded useful.My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC. All opinions my own.

‘Making a Living: How to Craft Your Business’ is a comprehensive and practical guide to starting a creative business. Although it’s ‘never been easier’ to start a craft business, it is also quite a complicated journey that takes a lot of planning and knowledge about what you are actually letting yourself in for. I took that journey a few years ago and opened an online marketplace shop selling handcrafted jewellery. Oh, how I would have loved this book as a helping hand to guide me on that journey. I bought some books and had information overload from blogs, online resources as well as more ‘official’ sources of information and I managed OK (ish). I like to keep up-to-date with rules, regulations and what-not so I thought it might be worth a read. It was. I highly recommend it for people starting out, and those who may need some guidance. It can be very daunting starting a small craft business. It’s not so simple. There are many different tasks and it can be overwhelming.This book seems to cover everything, including: business plans, forecasting, research, social media, business names, brand building, registering a business name, managing accounts and tax, legal requirements, customer service, growing your business, even wellbeing and resilience. There is also an ‘Annexe’ guide to becoming more environmentally conscious. Like I already said, it’s very comprehensive. There are a number of ‘Exercises’ throughout the book that encourage readers to think seriously before starting a business. There’s a lot of guidance from successful entrepreneurs, as well as useful links and advice from those who have navigated through this path and created successful businesses. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend to anyone thinking of starting a crafting business.I received a temporary e-ARC of ‘Making a Living’ written by Sophie Rochester from Netgalley in return for my honest review.