1st Turning Point

Posted By Ann Charles on April 22, 2009

by Ann Charles
© copyright 2009 Ann Charles

Any sane, reasonable person would wonder why two authors who should be writing set up a site to share promotional and marketing tips and strategies. Jacquie Rogers has her story, and here’s mine:

It Started with a Wakeup Slap…(of sorts)

Back in the spring of 2007, I was sitting on the sidelines, waiting for my agent to land me a contract. Then I heard a well-known, published author explain that your agent is your teammate, and that you should both work toward your publication and career goals. I realized then and there that I wasn’t doing my part.

So, while on pregnancy leave after having my second child, I took an online marketing class for authors.  This class covered all kinds of ways to promote me, the author, along with my book(s). It reminded me of a workshop given by Gerri Russell, which I’d attended a year prior.  In it, she’d talked about ways of gaining name recognition, even if you’re unpublished. I knew at this point that I’d have to stop being passive about this writing career I’d dreamed about for years.  I was going to have to break out of my shell and start taking more risks-risks more personal than just a rejection letter.

Baby Steps

Life didn’t suddenly change overnight.

I made the decision to “become” Ann Charles, I wrote out some goals about where I wanted “Ann” to be by year end, and then I started with the one thing I knew how to do-write.  I wrote an article on time management, which was something I was very familiar with at that moment as I balanced a two-year-old and a newborn and prepared to go back to my full-time, day job.  When I was finished writing the article, I sent a proposal for it to my local RWA chapter’s newsletter editor.  She was an angel and accepted it.  Through my online class, I had hooked up with a career coach-another author with whom I’d exchanged goals and ideas each week.  Lucky for me, my career coach turned out to be the newsletter editor for the Phoenix RWA’s chapter, The Desert Rose.  She offered to publish my article, too, and took it one step further.  She asked me to write a little something else.  This gave me the confidence to approach another newsletter editor-this time, for a mystery-based author group newsletter.  She accepted the time-management article as well, and a month later, asked me to write another article on another subject.  Even though I knew nothing about the topic and was terrified of sounding like an idiot to the 200+ subscribers, I said, “I’ll do it!” And I did.  This article led to another, and that led to a regular column.

The point of this meandering tale is that one small article opened one door after another for me.  You don’t have to start with a big bang.  Start out small, deliver quality writing, and climb the ladder one rung at a time.

Throughout this time, I continued to read and learn as much as I could about marketing and self-promotion.

Build It and They Will Come

Skip ahead two years, two websites, two manuscripts, and a bunch of workshops and articles later . . . While talking to a writing buddy, she suggested that I share with other unpublished authors (like her) some of the promotion information I’d been gobbling up for the past year.  She suggested a workshop; I thought about it for all of about five seconds.  The idea was a winner, especially since it included hooking up with Jacquie Rogers, another writer buddy, to deliver this workshop.

I contacted Jacquie, pitched the idea to her, and she signed on to the deal.  Then we pitched the workshop to our local RWA chapter and they gave us a workshop slot. Hurray! I went to bed that night daydreaming about what we’d cover in the workshop.  While awake in the middle of the night (which I often was thanks to a teething baby), the idea hit me to develop an interactive website on the subject of promotion for other unpublished authors.

The next day, I mentioned the website idea to Jacquie, knowing I’d need her help to pull it off.  We decided to think about it.  A week later, I sat down with the intentions of trying to come up with twenty topics on the subject, figuring if I could come up with twenty, the website was a good idea to pursue.  I stopped writing after 110 topics because it was almost midnight and my hand was getting tired.  I got together with Jacquie, showed her my topics list, talked about it some more, and we both agreed to go for it.

1st Turning Point Was Born

So, now you understand how this website came about.

Why was I so focused on unpublished authors from the start?  Well, because I am one of them, of course; but also, because I had grown tired of sitting in the nosebleed seats, eavesdropping on forums and groups in which published authors spouted their wisdom on how to promote one published book after another.  I had no published books.  I was just a no-name, but I still needed to learn the ropes and somehow get my name out there so that when my first book came out, I’d have an audience already established.

Many published authors disagree with the idea that the unpublished need to get their names “out there” early.  They are firm believers that you need to land that book contract first.  They can say that because they are already published.  But those of us still waiting for the call are seeing things a little differently these days.  The competition continues to grow, the open slots for new authors continue to go the way of the Dodo, and the hoops you have to jump through just to get your manuscript read require the patience of Adrian Monk’s shrink.

With the mission to help other authors (unpublished and published) teach, learn, and share all about promotion, I present to you, 1^st Turning Point.

Categories: Ann Charles, Miscellaneous, Name Recognition
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