Nancy Cleary Of Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
By sandy.naidu | Category: Home Based BusinessWelcome back!
| My guest today is Nancy Cleary. Nancy’s company, Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, has published over 150 products and in the past 10 years has printed over a quarter of million books. Nancy has a special interest in publishing books written by moms. The company has won numerous business awards, in recognition of the contribution it has been making to the publishing world. Read and Be Inspired !!! | ||
| I understand you started your career as a graphic designer. How and why did you move from graphic designing to setting up a successful publishing house? | ||
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I was finalizing a beautiful 16-page product catalog for a big corporate client one morning in late November of 1998. Six-week-old MacKenzie was on my lap, her 15-month-old brother Wyatt was holding on to my chair, as I reviewed the catalog on my computer screen. That’s when it hit me. Flipping through the pages I realized-I had created the packaging for every single product in there from scratch, and for what? My name, my design company’s name, wasn’t in there anywhere! It would pay a few mortgage payments and end there while I helped my clients build their legacy. It was like an electric shock of pride, and pain. I had poured so much heart into the designs, and had juggled all that time with my family-spending more on the client than with the kids. In that moment I decided the next catalog I designed would be filled with OUR products. Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing was born in that nanosecond-so that all of my efforts would be building something bigger, for them. | |
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Now we have a catalog of over a hundred of our own products, all by moms just like me who sit at their computers with a baby on their lap and a toddler at their knee working hard to hang on to both their kids, and their career dreams. |
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| If you had to pick one big obstacle you faced in the initial days, what was that and how did you overcome that obstacle? |
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| Financing. Paying for print runs, postage, office supplies, personnel, and the costs of distribution can be mind-boggling. As a graphic designer I was paid, as a publisher I pay for everything! What I had to do was create two business models - one that financed the other. My consulting business provides an array of packaging services for authors and entrepreneurs plus an unbeatable level of expertise in publishing and promotion. Meanwhile in my “Random House for Moms” model, the cost of running an independent press outweigh the profit for now-but we’re leveraging technology, seizing changes in the industry, and making headway towards that elusive bestseller. Until then, I simply continue to take what I love to do and offer it in various ways to those who need it-breaking even financially, but raising brand equity exponentially. | ||
| What do you believe is your greatest business achievement so far? |
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| Branding myself with clarity. I knew who I wanted to work with (creative, energetic, positive moms), what I wanted to provide (an unparalleled publishing experience that included my passion for design which could elevate moms to the level of the multi-million dollar corporate suits I used to work for!), and I always had a clear vision for the future. I remember when I caught up to my journals-where I would brainstorm my future projects. For many years it was, “…someday I’ll create a line of keepsake boxes to hold women’s dreams, someday I’ll write a book from the publisher’s perspective to inspire writers, someday I’ll attract the most amazing writer whose book will change the world.” WellŠcheck off the first two, and the third comes out in November! Because I had created such a powerful magnet-by contributing to the community of moms for so many years, seeking out the pillars of the community and helping them so they could help others-I attracted the most amazing book pitch, ever. When I responded with unabashed fervor the author wrote back, “I have to tell you, I was beginning to despair that I would never find someone interested in a mom’s point of view.” I danced around my office for days. That author is Gina M. Bennett, mom of five and senior counterterrorism analyst for the US Intelligence Community. She wrote the first warning of Bin Laden in 1993 and had led analysis on the biggest, most widely discussed declassified documents since. Her book, “National Security Moms,” draws a powerful parallel between national security and parenting that encourages us all to get engaged and create a better future for our children. CNN correspondent Peter Bergen, author of “The Osama bin Laden I Know,” has endorsed the book wholeheartedly and we are preparing for a wild ride through its release this fall! | ||
| There are many moms who want to be authors. You probably get a lot of requests to publish a book. You obviously can’t pick every book request you get. Can you briefly tell us what some of your important selection criteria are to pick a book to publish? |
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| First I want to say there are many, many publishing options and the first step is to match the writer’s goals with the perfect option for them. This may be guiding them to a quickie do-it-yourself online option. Or it could be helping them create a fancy 30-page book proposal to get a literary agent and land a major publishing deal. Or it may be our transparent Imprint program which is a creative step above self-publishing underneath our umbrella.
Or it may be as a Wyatt-MacKenzie author-here’s what a great pitch to us includes: And, for any agent or publisher you pitch, it’s wise to get to know as much as you can about them. When writers pitch me beginning with, “Dear Sir,” I delete. When writers pitch my office companion by name, I am amused and impressed. |
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| Apart from publishing books, you also run a print magazine (for Moms In Business). You must be one busy lady. What is your number one stress relief tactic? |
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| We’re no longer doing the magazine monthly-to relieve that stress and still benefit from my effort for those years in the middle of the mompreneur boom I created four volumes of the “Best of” Mom’s Business Magazine. They still sell well on Amazon years later as many of the women I wrote about have since grown multi-million dollar well-known companies and we have their first Oprah green-room story! I’m still busy publishing 6-10 books a year, and 6-10 imprints a year-and my number one stress relief is journaling. If I didn’t journal, I think my head would explode. Sometimes it’s a purging of the frustrating moments, sometimes it’s sketching wildly creative marketing campaigns I could never afford. And while the action is cathartic, what’s left behind is a magical journey of seeds being planted days, weeks, months, yearsŠa decade before they sprout, seemingly out of nowhere until I look back and see their source. This process of self-validation, of pulling a journal off the shelf and realizing, “Wow, I did it,” gets me through the most stressful of days. | ||
| Which is your favorite book of all time? |
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| The book on my shelf that is the most tattered and torn is Christine Baldwin’s “Life’s Companion” - I use it often. It’s a tool in the previous stress relief exercise! When I am overwhelmed I grab my journal and this book and curl up with a view of the mountains, flip open a page at random, and find something there to meditate, and write, on. It’s my literary Magic 8-Ball. Next to this on the shelf is Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way,” and next to that Gail McMeekin’s “12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women.” I suppose as a publisher of books I should list the award-winning novels of our time, but these are the books I use, they have accompanied me and pushed me down this lonely entrepreneurial path. | ||
| Finally, your five keys to success? | ||
| 1. Patience - everything great takes time.
2. Plan & Build a Platform - think ahead, imagine the future so you can create it, contribute to the community so you can be part of it. This doesn’t take money, it takes creativity and energy. 3. Playing - make sure your work brings you joy and gets you so excited you dance around like a kid at times. 4. Publicity & Pitching - the greatest way to get publicity is to learn how to pitch. 5. The Pull of Positive Energy - you have the power to always react and engage positively, do it. |
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| To read more stories about women in the service based industry click Idea Home Based Service Business | ||
| Sites Of Interest | ||
| http://www.wymacpublishing.com/ | ||
| This interview was published on 15th February 2009 | ||
| Visit Nancy’s website to get more information about her self publishing book company business…. | ||
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