My 80-20 rule for my writing/publishing business, also known as applying the Pareto Principle to independent book publishing

All right, it's been a beat, but here I am, back at it!

I hope to write these publishing articles a bit more often moving forward (you know, more often than once every sixteen months or so 😂), but the writing and the family as always come first.

But we are moving ever closer to the Great Big Relaunch and so maybe/hopefully I'll be able to document my progress on the business side more in the future. You know, since I will be working more on the business side in general in the future.

But I digress.

Today's topic is my personal 80-20 rule!

First, the background: One thing I learned during my time as an engineer and particularly while getting my black belt in Lean Six Sigma back when I was a young, fresh twenty-something was the Pareto Principle.

Essentially, the Pareto Principle says that roughly 80% of the results comes from 20% of the (potential) causes. (I am paraphrasing here, tap the link above to learn more.)

I've decided to apply this hard to my writing business.

Secondly, here's how I've interpreted the Pareto Principle in terms of my marketing activities for my books.

In general (see details below—including an exception!), my goal for all marketing activities that I choose to do are to learn and apply the fundamentals such that I get each marketing activity to about 80% of what it could be. According to the Pareto Principle, this should take roughly 20% of the time it would take me to get things to that full 100%.¹

Before we go into how I'm doing this, let's investigate why I'm doing it.

Why I'm applying the Pareto Principle to the business side of being an independent author:

1. I adore learning new things. (And in fact, my #1 CliftonStrengths is Learner.²) As such, I've almost never met a potential book marketing tactic that I'm not willing to try.
2. I'm a self-identified multipotentialite.³ I love writing my stories and crafting epic traditional fantasy and urban fantasy worlds and creating characters that I love (or love to hate, lol), but if you tied me to my desk and told me I must only write for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, that would go well for no one. I need to work (and do!) lots of different things to make my brain happy. 
3. I'm an Enneagram Type 1. There are a few different names for this Enneagram type, but let's go with "The Perfectionist" for the purpose of this article. That means I naturally want to do everything as well as I can. In other words, I have a natural urge to take things well beyond that 80% the Pareto Principle mentions, all the way to the 100% level.

Looking at above, you might notice that #1 and #2 work nicely in concert. I love learning all the things and my multipotentialite-ness means that I like having at least a few different projects going at once (vs binging on a single project till it's done then shifting to the next one). Oh and Achiever is my third highest CliftonStrength, and let me tell you, it loves getting all the things done too!

That #3 above, however, actively works against the first two. My Type One Enneagram brain goes "Let's get this completely, 100% right no matter how long it takes. And let's do that for everything. 😍"

But then my CliftonStrengths #1 Learner steps in and goes "Okay, cool, we've learned a bunch about this topic. I'm kind of bored now. Can we learn something new?"⁴ And my multipotentialite brain goes "Yes! Let's add another project to the list to work on! There's no such thing as too many projects!”

And then nothing gets done since I'm working just a little on eight different projects and I refuse to stop working on them till they're 100% complete.

So, enter the Pareto Principle we talked about above.

Again, for me, this means: For any task that does not bring me joy or energy on its own, I only learn that first 20% that gets me 80% of the result.¹

Why I think this will work for me in general

1. I get to please my #1 Learner by learning the first 20% of all the things. Yay!
2. I get to please my multipotentialite brain by only working on the first 20% of a given task and then moving on to the next task. For whatever reason, my brain desires to be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. So let's embrace this solopreneur life of me doing (or outsourcing) everything for my business and do all the things! To that 20% level.
3. I get to please my #3 Achiever by getting lots of things done!
4. If a task brings me joy or energy, I still get to go to 100% and please my Type One Enneagram brain.⁵

Why I think this strategy will work well for me in particular

1. Instead of working against my brain and trying to force my square peg of a brain into a round hole, I'm working with it.
2. With my particular blend of CliftonStrengths and Enneagram Type (see discussion below), I think this 20% effort to get 80% of the results is likely more like 50% effort to get 90% of the results.
3. This strategy may be further confirmed by my Author Ecosystems type (RIP, this author style framework is now defunct, but I still like it). I don't have the sources now (and they may no longer exist; again, this framework is now gone, at least as of March 2026⁶), but once upon a time, I seem to remember the Author Ecosystems people claiming Forests (what I think I am, at least partially, though the test said I was a Grasslands) love to skill stack. Which could be seen as Forests loving being a jack-of-all-trades and being able to do everything to some degree. Which is exactly what I'm talking about wanting to do by nature.⁷ 

Here's how I see this 80-20 strategy working in real life

1. My #1 Learner means that I'm constantly taking in information about the craft and business side of writing because doing so brings me joy and I can't help myself. (And why should I if it brings me joy? Provided I don't spend 8,000 hours a week on it, which believe me, is a balance I can struggle with, lol.)
2. Once my #1 Learner has insisted that I Learn all the things, my #2 Intellection (also CliftonStrengths) takes over. In the background, my brain chews and chews and chews. In other words, I can't help thinking and digesting all I've Learned and this happens in the background without me assigning time to it. I can't help but do it.
3. From there, my #5 Strategic (also CliftonStrengths) steps in, taking what I've Learned and what I've Intellected/thought about and developing a strategy that is likely around 95% correct. Again, this is pretty much happening in the background whether I want it to or not.

Now, my guess is that with my particular blend of CliftonStrengths (that #1 Learner + #2 Intellection + #5 Strategic), I can likely get beyond that 80% of the results even with 20% of the (conscious, assigned) effort just because I'm going to work on it constantly in the background anyway.

Further, with my Enneagram Type being the Perfectionist, I likely can't help going beyond that 80% result/20% effort. I do try to rein in my Perfectionist brain, but there's only so much I can do! lol.⁸

Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—I do have the caveat of getting to go to 100% on any task that brings me joy or energy, thus satisfying my Enneagram Type One brain.

(Though again, I do have to be careful with this since 100% does not exist. And yes, I do say this mostly as a reminder to myself. 😂)

For me, this means I get to go 100% effort on my writing since writing, creating, and crafting the best books I can is my passion.

Example time

This framework also means I get to go 100% effort on writing and creating my author newsletters. I love writing my newsletters!

But here's where that 80-20 rule also steps in. While I get to go 100% on the writing and creating of my newsletters, I do not "get" to go 100% on the optimization side of newsletters, on things like trying to optimize my headlines to increase open rates or optimize my wording to increase click rates or work on finding just the right thing to give to my readers so they click more.

These things do not bring me joy and with the 80-20 rule I get to skip them! Yay!⁷

One last note: As a multipotentialite, I also have a lot of things to juggle in my daily life (spouse! kid! dog! writing! roller derby! exercise so I don't (hopefully, knock wood!) get injured playing roller derby! eating healthy! reading for fun! sleep! relaxing?) and thus do not have as much time as I would like for writing and for the business of writing. Which means I don't have as much time as I would like for the business side since writing always comes first. Thus, shortening the amount of time I spend on a given must-do task on the business side is even more important.

You know, if I'm ever going to relaunch these books.

The epic list of side notes and digressions

1. Is this a correct application of the Pareto Principle? Who knows. But I'm not allowed to dig deeper since that would be going deeper than that first 20% effort. 😉
2. Personality tests like this aren't always the most evidence-based, lol. Follow them, listen to them, learn from them as much or as little you like. All I can say is that for me, personality tests help me assess my natural strengths and weakness. Or at least I think they do! lol
3. I don't love this definition of "multipotentiality" from Wikipedia. It makes it sound like (I think) I'm a genius at everything! lol. I view "multipotentiality" more as a natural tendency to want to learn and become competent at many different things versus a natural tendency to want to become an expert in one thing or to dive super deep in one thing.
4. Except writing. For whatever reason, my #1 Learner and multipotentialite brain is good working on books for practically ever. Well, as long as I keep it to about 20 hours a week, mix in the occasional fun short story or novelette set in a different world from my The Eversfield Academy Vampire Hunters books, and accept that at least some days I'll feel a little restless even with those guardrails in place.
5. Reminder to my perfectionist brain: This is probably more like 90% or 95%. 100% perfect doesn't exist, remember? Remember, brain! 😂
6. The Author Ecosystems author style framework was initially created by Monica Leonelle and Russell Nohelty in concert. Since creating it, they've split up to pursue their individual author-related businesses. As of March 2026, they're both active on Substack. Check out Monica Leonelle on Substack and Russell Nohelty on Substack. I've followed both for years. Together or apart, they have interesting thoughts on the world of independent publishing.
7. I seem to remember that now defunct Author Ecosystems framework asserting that Deserts are the Optimizers. In other words, as someone who is not a Desert, I maybe shouldn't waste my time and energy optimizing things. Or at least I should consider not doing so. I may write on this separately later, but I also think not bothering with Optimization is 100% correct for where I'm at with my writing/books business currently. I'm looking for big, huge wins, ones that can take me from essentially nothing to something. A 1% or 2% gain (or loss!) isn't going to make or break my business at this point. I'll take those small wins when I can get them, but I need to spend my time (ideally) searching for and finding those big wins.
8. This is also why I need an official framework like this. If left to my own devices, I will try to get things 100% perfect no matter what and then my #1 Learner will be sad that it's not Learning more and my #3 Achiever will be sad that it's not Achieving more, and I will get restless and annoyed. Ask me how I know. 😝