Mission Statement
Go to any conference, talk to any working authors, or watch any “how-to-become-a-successful-author” videos and you’ll hear a lot of the same refrains. Get writing partners and/or a critique group. Up your craft—take any learning opportunities you can and put your work out there for feedback. When you’ve written the damned thing you’re writing, get beta readers. Get editors—there’s all kinds! If you’re aiming for traditional publishing, find agents, get a query letter and/or a pitch, do a synopsis. If you’re indie publishing, learn to navigate the self-publishing platforms and get a cover, a blurb, ads. And for both—figure out your marketing.
Do you have an author platform? What kind of social media presence do you have? What are your plans for marketing?
For an introvert suffering from imposter syndrome embarking on much-sweated-over and much-love/hated creative projects, the idea of doing all that interacting and feedbacking and perfecting AND THEN having to do marketing is . . . exhausting. Sometimes demoralizing. Certainly daunting. We can barely hype ourselves up enough to not delete the entire draft—how the hell are we gonna sell strangers on picking up our book? It’s enough to send us back to our introverts’ caves where we can talk to our imaginary friends and write. Alone.
But magic happens when you find your people. You might not be able to see the jewel you’re writing because you’re stuck in the swamp of actually writing it. But your people will see that jewel, make sure it’s polished and shiny, and pass it around, telling everyone they know, “Hey! Look at this amazing, precious, awesome thing my friend has made! Isn’t it amazing?!”
What if marketing is just finding more of those people? Novel concept. It blew our minds.
What if we take the magic we have in our writing and critique group and harness it to create a marketing collective? To support each other throughout the process, from first draft to launch? What if we take all that amazing hype energy and package that? For each other and for others? And what if, when we do that, we find more of our people along the way? And what if we can help others find their people too?
We formed this collective to expand on what it means to “market” ourselves. We are going to be our authentic, funny, weird-and-wonderful selves. We have an incredible, diverse skill set. We are self-published authors and writers pursuing traditional publication. We are editors (looking at you S.C. and Kaitlin). We are teachers and speakers. We are storytellers. We are artists. We are partners, to each other and with local PNW organizations, and we’re looking to build even more bridges in our community. We are stronger together.
So here it is. Our mission. Ready?