Authors. Have you told your readers the story of how your career unfolded to become a writer yet? The foundation story for any brand is key and the same is true for book authors because it offers a chance to connect and showcase who you are as a writer. In becoming a book marketer and book coach, I realised everything I’ve done was leading me here. And now I love this role where I get to listen to others tell their stories! Talking to authors, it’s clear that many of us take a meandering path through life and more than one career, however, sometimes, the themes aren’t so clear. That can happen because you’re too close to it. Here’s my story of how I got back to books:
childhood reads to my first proper job
As a child I loved books. Especially Nancy Drew mysteries… and as I grew into a moody teenager, I enjoyed Agatha Christie murders and even Stephen King’s most gruesome horror stories. Thankfully I had a moral upbringing, so instead of turning into a cunning criminal (I did alway admire their planning skills - Ocean’s Eleven, anyone?) I did my work experience at a children’s day nursery then went off to Germany to be an Au Pair as my first job. It was quite the extreme, caring for small people after my years as a selfish teenager!
After spending a year learning the language and coping with domestic chores, I realised my brain needed stretching further. But I still didn’t know what to do. I simply needed to earn a salary to afford somewhere to live. So I applied for a Combined Studies degree course at De Montfort University in Leicester, taking on three core subjects: Marketing, German and Psychology. Their approach suited me because you could decide later which to major in. Once I secured a third year placement job in industry, working in Marketing Communications, it soon became apparent that Marketing would offer me a salaried job at the end of the course. Going from a student budget to a regular wage was high on my list of requirements because I didn’t have a fall back plan.
After graduating, I was lucky to find a job with one of the major telecoms companies - Marconi - who ran a comprehensive post-graduate management training programme. Spending two years in Coventry was life-changing, not least as I met my husband there.
Chapters of transformation
While working full-time, I went to night school at Warwickshire University to study creative writing and publishing - because I had an idea that I wanted to work in publishing or become an author one day. But unfortunately Marconi lost one of their biggest clients - teaching me a key lesson in business resilience - and I was made redundant from their marketing team. I had to make a quick decision to apply for another job to pay my mortgage.
The flowing marketing and hospitality events budgets of the 1990’s had started to dry up and it was hard to find a role near where I lived. A small software firm in Oxfordshire hired me as a Marketing Executive and there, I learned all about lead generation, campaign planning, PR and case studies as prime sales and marketing assets. Learning to manage on a tight budget and create a follow up process with assets that worked to support sales conversations has stood me in good stead ever since. My boss, the Marketing Manager, and the Sales Director worked really closely to ensure we had data to work out how many leads we needed each month to reach our sales volumes. Too many marketers focus on designing the product or raising awareness but they overlook the join-up between the touchpoints, connections and conversations needed to persuade interested people to actually buy.
This is so true too for authors. They write a book, worry about the cover design, go through the production and publishing process and then start their marketing afterwards. When actually you could be thinking about your marketing while you're still writing. Raising awareness about the book is important but first you need to identify your audience and how you're most likely to reach them. Unless you’re doing in-person events and building awesome relationships with bookshops and distributors, you won’t have any tangible ways to influence who actually buys the book.
From marketing back to Books
However, there was another stop on my career journey before I got back to my love of books and writing. I moved from Oxfordshire to be in Bristol, where my mum and my boyfriend had both re-located to, and the first marketing job I found was with Lloyds Banking Group. The team I worked with were focused on helping small businesses and I loved the pace of the work and the people in the team. I learned a huge amount about the highs and lows of running a small business and my absolute favourite days were out training with our relationship managers, shadowing them as they worked to solve financial challenges for the local businesses they were supporting. In my very last role at Lloyds, I was responsible for working with an agency to write case studies with our Commercial clients to prove how Lloyds had made a difference to their business.
Very quickly after starting as a freelance marketer, I found that writing blogs and case studies were strengths of mine and I frequently rang clients to get their feedback to participate in the blog articles. It was only a small step from there to launch my business, The Case Study Practice which focuses on celebrating business success stories.
Writing case studies led me to work for Bristol-based professional self-publishing firm, SilverWood Books. They’re one of my favourite success stories because I’ve written 27 case studies, celebrating a fantastic group of authors who launched their books into a crowded marketplace. During the pandemic of 2020 SilverWood was growing and I was hired into the team to build a book writing circle with masterclasses for authors to learn more about their craft. The late and well-respected author Marcus Sedgwick even presented an online class for us about how to develop great book characters. And we built a caring community of authors who have each others' best interests at heart.
Since working with SilverWood, I’ve helped dozens of authors to develop their book marketing plans and get going with building their author brand. Once I started the Book Writing Club (now called Creative Cafe) working with novice writers, I found that I could lend my energy to help them shape their stories. I’ve helped authors turn their memoirs into fiction and business owners start their non-fiction books.
Whether your book fits a classic genre or not, you’d be very welcome to come and talk to me about what you’d like to achieve. My favourite part of this work is listening to your story and helping you figure out what and how you want to share it in the world. Thinking ahead will help you when you get stuck. That's why I recommend figuring out your underlying themes and values before you finish the writing. Some authors are planners, some are pantsers. Yet all hit the same highs and lows along the way. Which reminds me of that fantastic little tale by Dr Seuss, “Oh The Places You’ll Go!” (Credit to coach Adam Brooks for sharing that with me in the early part of my business journey - thank you sir.)