Heritage Event Work Experience

Project Proposal

Business Feedback - Sydney

 Sydney had the following to say about my business and the way it runs:

"Do you like the idea?

The idea sounds great, definitely a business that stands out!

What do you think will be successful?

I can see this being successful as like I mentioned, it stands out and I don't really see many literature-based businesses in the area. It would be also useful for so many people as writing up ideas into fully produced stories.

What problems do you think they might encounter?

The problems you could encounter would be growth in interest since by having a primarily online presence, everyone starts out struggling to find their audience though you can most likely overcome this by pushing forward with your marketing literally everywhere on every platform.

Where do you think their biggest competition will come from?

I genuinely don't think there is many big competitions out there since it's a unique idea, though I guess other similar businesses who are more out there and experienced (within the business ground), could be a potential threat.

What do you like/dislike about the branding?

I really like the branding, it's straight forward and it links so well to the business name, even without the text, you could most likely guess the name in an instant. The green isn't too overpowering to look at and the white book fits nicely. The font also fits nicely as it has a playful and creative appearance to it.

My only nit-pick would be maybe the gradient of the green, could just be a solid green instead.

Any other feedback?

Can't think of anything else"

Like Rosie's feedback, the majority of the feedback is positive and lets me know that my business is headed in the right direction with the way that it's aiming to run. There are some points that I need to look at, however. Just as Rosie said, Sydney mentioned that the gradient for my logo looks a little off, and suggested that I make it a solid green instead. I played around with this idea at first and didn't like it, but I'll have to survey more people to see whether or not I can get a consensus on how it looks.

Additionally, Sydney mentioned that I may have trouble gaining a customer-base due to my entirely online presence. This is something I've thought about and is something I'm actively trying to avoid, as I need customers. As she said, I could just push my business hard on the marketing side of things, but this may end up being tacky. Therefore, I may have to consider some limited in-person marketing, perhaps partnering with the National Centre for Writing and getting some advertisement set up in their base of operations in Norwich (an idea I've played around with before in my Business Model Canvas). 

Business Feedback - Rosie

 Rosie had the following to say about my business plan

Do you like the idea?

Yes! I feel the business idea is unique and accessible to a lot of people due to the affordable pricing.

What do you think will be successful?

I feel the writing of people's ideas would be successful due to writing being time consuming and a lot of people struggling with getting their creative ideas across in a coherent and flowing story. I also think the finances of the business is well designed due to it being hard for you to make a big financial loss. (Low business costs)

What problems do you think they might encounter?

If a client wanted a very large story written that was time consuming and difficult? Do you have a limit for story length?

Or if they wanted to publish your work? Would this be classed as a ghost writer, or would you be given credit?

Where do you think their biggest competition will come from?

I'm not very educated on this area of the creative market but I don't think there would be much competition due to it being an original idea. Possibly from ghost writers?

What do you like/dislike about the branding?

I feel the branding is excellent and professional although it could be made more recognisable by simplifying it.

Any other feedback?

Great business idea that could be viable in the real world.

The majority of this feedback from Rosie is positive and leads me to believe that I am headed in the right direction with my business idea. However, there are a few things that I hadn't considered that Rosie has brought up. She mentioned difficulty and time for writing a very long story, which is something I had been worrying about - something easily solved by including a max length for my stories. She also often mentioned 'Ghost Writers' and the issues with having my work published by my clients. I had no idea what a Ghostwriter is until now, but now realise that it is surprisingly close to the way my business could run. Therefore, I may consider allowing my stories to be published with me as the Ghostwriter as long as there is some feasible way I could get credit in the end.

Additionally, Rosie mentioned that my branding 'could be made more recognisable by simplifying it'. This is a bit of feedback that overlaps with Sydney, who mentioned that the gradient of my logo looked off. I personally liked the gradient, but I'll have to get more opinions to see whether this is a common trend and something I should change.

Business Feedback - Hannah Sole

 Feedback

I asked one of the Creative Writing teachers for feedback regarding how my business runs and whether or not it would be financially viable. I asked a list of 5 questions for her to answer, these questions being the following:

• Could my business reasonably make a profit?
• Would many people be interested in purchasing my services?
• Would this business model overwork me/be realistic?
• Would the business be expensive to maintain/run?
• Is my business obsolete? (in the sense of many other businesses doing the same thing)

After asking these questions, I received the following feedback from Hannah:

"This does sound interesting. There are a couple of businesses that do versions of this with children’s books, though these personalisations tend to be minor (eg using a child’s name in a story), so this sounds a bit different to that. You might want to target specific gifting markets (Christmas, Valentines, anniversaries, kids’ birthdays) to broaden your customer base, with maybe a range of options for customers. Eg, do they want a standard short story with a few details changed to make it relate to specific people / places / events, or a bespoke story from scratch. You could have a sliding scale of prices for this.

 

Make sure you set realistic prices for the market and for your time. Freelance writing rates tend not to be a large amount, but this is normally non fiction, so it’s difficult to get a direct comparison. You might want to look at freelance artists to see what their standard commission rates are for bespoke pieces.

 

Is this intended to be print or e-book? This will have an impact on your costs. Prints are more expensive per copy when you don’t have a large run of them, so personalised prints would be more costly.

 

Something else to consider is audio versions of your short stories as well, which might involve additional costs if you need a voice-over actor to do an audio reading. There are programmes that can convert text to a podcast for free, so that might be worth looking at too.

 

This is a good way to build a portfolio up and to think about short story publishing in general. Print publishing deals for short stories are notoriously difficult to get, so if this is your favourite type of text to write, this is a nice way forward!"

From this feedback, I can infer that my business is filling in a niche that isn't commonly touched upon by businesses; most bespoke writing services are aimed towards children rather than young adults, which gives my business a unique area to look at. She also suggested a business model where I have different 'options' such as a story following a formula with minor personalisations or a completely bespoke story. These are good ideas that I hadn't thought of beyond just obtaining a brief from my client, and is something I am going to consider for my business (mostly as something I'd put on the layout of the website).

Hannah also wanted to make sure that I set my prices to a reasonable range, which is something I was already considering (around the £10-20 range depending on the wishes of my customer). She also asked whether or not my business would use prints, which could impact the costs of producing the stories as it would be more expensive. I hadn't entirely thought of this mostly due to having been set on E-Books from day one of setting up the enterprise idea. 

Another bit of feedback was something I had considered before I even sent the email; audiobooks. She considered whether or not I could do audiobooks for my business as well, mentioning that they may incur additional costs. I hadn't thought of these additional costs, although there are some that I can avoid (such as voicing the stories myself), but I cannot avoid having to purchase things like a good quality microphone or access to an audio-editing software.

All in all, this feedback confirmed that I was going the right way to take my business forward and that there were a few missed opportunities regarding my business that I could take if I noticed them. Additionally, this feedback enlightened me to a few areas where I may end up needing to pay additional costs (primarily the audiobooks), which could impact how I price my services if it ends up being a recurring cost.

BBC Radio Norfolk Interviews

 Below is a link to an interview done with BBC Radio Norfolk regarding how I helped out with the heritage events throughout the college alongside the rest of the members of the course. This interview demonstrates communication skills and my ability to remain calm under pressure whilst being interviewed. (the section with my interview begins after 1 hour)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0bqhgfs 

Story Jungle Brief Financial Breakdown

NOTE: This has been updated on the 22nd of March to include updated information for the Revenue Streams, as I believe the old examples were not applicable (the old revenue streams were identical to the income section, which was incorrect). This has been updated.

Business Plan - Story Jungle

Business Model Canvas - Story Jungle

Unit 1 Task 10 - Cultural Policy

 Cultural Policy

As a small business owner in the UK, there's plenty of cultural policies that could impact the way I run my business and the potential routes I have when it comes to obtaining customers, resources and so on. I've talked about some of these policies for Unit 1 Task 9, but I now will be going into detail about what policies could impact my business.

Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

As I mentioned in Task 9, The DCMS is a department in the UK government that is aiming to help creative businesses and enterprises like mine by investing in them and giving them help where needed. Due to my business falling into the creative sector, it's obvious that the Department will have some impact on how my business runs and what opportunities I have for my business. After some research into cultural policies within the UK, I've actually found that the DCMS hasn't done anywhere near as much for creative writers as they have for businesses focusing on things like theatre or dancing. These sectors of the creative industries have provisions to aid them, such as dance classes for little cost. Writers, on the other hand, have no official training schemes and do not have creative writing courses as guaranteed courses within universities. The main support writers are given by the DCMS is through the additional traffic that's brought to England by their attempts to drive tourism and bring people to see English heritage, but this only really helps writers who have some form of face-to-face interaction with their customers, as I can interact with clients from anywhere across the world, making bringing more customers in from other countries physically pointless.

Impacts of Brexit

Unlike some other businesses, which have faced large impacts due to Brexit, my business is unlikely to face too much interference. Since my business is a low-resource requiring enterprise operating mainly online, I don't have to worry about any additional costs or regulations incurred by shipping resources or finished stories across to/from members of the EU. Seeing as my products are digital stories, most likely saved in PDF format, I can instantly send the finished product to my client through email without having to worry about shipping it over, leaving Brexit having very little impact on how my business can operate. Brexit does mean I might have some trouble travelling to different countries, which could hamper some things such as going to foreign places to obtain inspiration for my stories, this isn't a guarantee and is something I can get around anyway. Therefore, I don't see Brexit having too much of an impact on how my business would run.

Impacts of Covid

Similarly to Brexit, Covid is unlikely to have many major negative impacts on my business. As a primarily online functioning business, people being isolated or ending up in a lockdown is a non-issue for me, as I can continue to operate from my home with ease. Additionally, all the resources I need are already in my home: a computer, writing software and some books to help stimulate my imagination. As long as I can contact my clients through email, which is unlikely to be impacted by Covid, I should have little issue.

As a side-note, I actually think that Covid could have a positive impact on the way my business runs. Things have become so much more dreary and depressing nowadays, with people being stuck inside and forced to isolate from their loved ones. It's times like this where people will want escapism more than ever. Combine that with more people being stuck with nothing to do, and I can imagine having more traffic driven to my business due to a combination of desired escapism from the state of the world and boredom from being stuck inside isolating/in lockdown.

Unit 1 Task 10 - Legislation and the Creative Industries

 Legislation and the Creative Industries

As mentioned back in Task 5, there's a lot of different legislation that can have impact on both businesses as a whole and businesses within the creative industries. However, I've found that quite a few of these pieces of legislation I've gone over have little to no impact on the way my business will operate.

Intellectual Property

As my business is focused around writing original pieces of writing, they will be pieces of intellectual property of my own creation. This will therefore protect me from having my work stolen or copied by other writers. However, there's a slight snag in the form of the ideas not coming directly from me. While I can add my own twists and unique touch to the brief given, the general idea of the story comes from my clients. I feel the best way to sort this out is to give my clients permission to keep, share and show others the work I produce as long as I'm credited fairly for actually writing it. This allows me to continue to hold my writings as my own IP while not acting as if I came up with the ideas myself.

Copyright

Just like above, my original pieces of written work will fall under copyright due to being pieces of written work written originally by me. However, I'll have to ensure that my clients have some form of involvement with the copyright as well, due to their ideas being the base for my stories. Having my clients use and share the stories (without claiming it as their own actual writing) is fine, seeing as it is their creativity that came up with the ideas and settings for the stories I write.

Trademarks

I don't believe I'll be able to hold trademarks for the pieces of writing I produce, as they'll fall under the regular forms of intellectual property and copyright. However, I could potentially register a trademark for the branding of my business, the name of my business and any potential slogans I decide on for the business. Trademarking these aspects of my business will give my enterprise a more personal identity, preventing others from taking my logo and business name for their own.

Talent and Location Releases

These two aspects of legislation have no impact on my business whatsoever, due to their relation to the film industry specifically rather than the creative industry as a whole. My writing business will not need to fill out any kind of location or talent release, therefore making these two bits of legislation unrelated to my business at all.

Filming and Performing in Public

Similarly to above, the bits of legislation regarding filming and performing in public have no importance for my enterprise for two reasons. First of all, my business is focused entirely on writing creative fiction, giving me no reason to need to film or perform anything in a public setting. Additionally, my business is going to mostly have an online presence rather than any in-person meetings, making most laws and regulations regarding public places unimportant for the running of my enterprise.

Child Labour Laws

Again, due to my business having no involvement with the film industry, I've got no need to hire a child for my work. While some of my clients may be minors, they will not be in any way 'employed' by me, and I therefore have no need to worry about breaking child labour laws. Additionally, I don't need to consider getting a performance license for a child for the same reasons - I have no reason to employ a child for my writing enterprise.

Public Liability Insurance

The final piece of legislation that has no bearing on my business is Public Liability Insurance. Once again, as my enterprise is going to mostly have an online presence rather than a public face-to-face operation, I'm very unlikely to injure someone in public due to the running of my business. Therefore, I've got no need to obtain Public Liability Insurance for my business.

GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation actually has quite a lot of impact on my enterprise, due to it mostly being an online business. Seeing as most of the traffic for my business is going to come through my website, it's likely that I'll be liable for processing the data of the clients who come through the website to obtain my services. Therefore, I'll have to ensure that I record the process of how I obtain and manage their data in a reasonable, non-harmful way so that I can show accountability. Alongside all this, I'll have to follow the regulations for how I actually manage the data I receive from my customers - one of my values for my business is making my clients feel comfortable, which will be hard to do if they feel concerned about what is happening to their personal data. Therefore, I'd have to ensure I don't use their data for any nefarious means and not infringe on their privacy.

The Competition Act & The Enterprise Act

These two acts also have some impact on my business, due to its nature as a business, but not quite as much as the GDPR or Copyright laws. Seeing as my business is a business, there's the definite possibility of my business engaging in illegitimate mergers or using its position to fix prices and freeze competition - all of which would go against these two acts. In order to follow these acts to the letter, I simply have to avoid making any kind of shady deals and take full responsibility for the state of my business. If I end up in such a state where I might need to make a shady merger, I should have enough responsibility to either give up on the business or look for more legitimate means. Additionally, I have no intention of forming any kind of cartels or unfairly affecting my competition, as I've not got much direct competition in the local area anyway. With all this in mind, these two acts will certainly have an impact on how I run my business, but no more than most regular laws will have an impact - I've got no intention to break the law.

5 Takeaways for the Writing Industry

 What I've Learnt about my Creative Industry - Writing

1. Norwich is one of the first UNESCO Cities of Literature, making it a great place to set up a business focused on writing, due to the many resources available in the local area and the amount of people there who love writing.
2. There are very few people within the local area who focus on doing specifically creative writing, instead mostly doing either workshops to help people write or offering proof-reading services alongside editing services.
3. The writing industry doesn't cost much to get involved in, unlike other subsidiaries of the creative industries like painting or sculpting. The only resources required are a computer, access to a writing software and imagination.
4. Having qualifications that relate to writing can help significantly with getting clients, as people will be more inclined to believe that you have the skill they need to write what they desire. Things like good English GCSEs or perhaps going to university for a creative writing course would be good examples of qualifications to show off to clients.
5. The work could get stressful in this industry, as I may end up getting piled up with clients and struggling with having to write detailed, intricate stories for multiple people within strict deadlines. This could call for having more employees, but generally shows how the work can be stressful if lots of people began to ask for commissions at once.