Being Author & Change Maker: the hardest parts...

5 lessons from my journey so far and my biggest challenge ahead.

Not fitting in

It's hard to be a changemaker in a world that values conformity. Breaking the mould meant accepting very early on that people in the publishing world didn’t quite understand what I was trying to do. Why would kids need a book on equal pay? “That’s not exactly a theme for children, is it? We don’t specialize in this.” Well, of course no one specializes in something that hasn’t been done before. 

Given I was (and still am) doing all this alongside a demanding day job, I had to pick my battles: keep trying to convince people or self-publish. Pragmatic as always, I decided to just get on with it and find a way to bring it to life on my own. I’m glad I did. I could allow myself all the freedom to make it exactly as I wanted. Using art work quality, watercolour illustrations was a must. Un-economical and unaffordable in today’s profit maximizing world. But hey, I don’t do cheap. And after all, I grew up with Beatrix Potter. There are standards to be upheld! 

Answering the “wrong” question again and again

“How did you have time to write books?”, people asked me over and over. What an odd question! I didn’t write books because I had too much time on my hands. I wrote books because I want to create an equal and sustainable future. Yet people didn't seem to ask why I wrote them. Only how I found time. So my standard answer became: I don’t do Netflix.

Actually, it’s not about having time, it’s about making time. Before the books, all my time had been dedicated to my job. I always loved my job in finance (and still do), but I basically didn’t have a life. It was time to re-claim my nights and weekends. Low and behold, I wrote not one, but 5 books that year: Women and Risk (2018) and the drafts of the entire Smart Way To Start series. How did I NOT have time for this before, was the real question I asked myself. Today I still work day and night, but I enjoy it because I get to shape an equal future for girls far and wide, and I can support the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals, too.

It’s not just writing

Writing about ethics and money in playful rhymes was challenging enough. Self publishing was a whole new level of challenge. Finding the right illustrator (it took 5 months). Creating the main character. Defining her whole world. Sketches. Lots of sketches. Who are her parents. Who are her friends? Why does she have a birdie? Reminding my illustrator not to forget the birdie on every page. (We laughed a lot about that). Deciding on a colour palette. Choosing fonts. Purchasing all fonts licenses. Deciding on layout. Nights and weekends revising texts. Again. Selecting the size of the book (I got it wrong the first time round. Costly mistake). Deciding on paper quality. Choosing a cover. Choosing the title (that was hard, especially knowing it needed to be a series). Foiling for title? Yes, definitely! Wait, amazon print-on-demand can’t do foiling. Have to print myself. Chose printer. New layout. Back to drawing board. Print books. Transport books (Used DHL. Bad idea. Learnt the hard way you need to pallet ship. Another costly mistake). Finding a mistake after printing. Every author’s nightmare. Founding company. Positioning. Branding. Website. Social media. Keep communicating.

Start entire production process again with second book. Then third book. Then secret chapter of book 3. Then fourth book. Finally finding names for all the characters. Creating Marty's World. Writing all the background stories for the characters. Then fifth book (I need to save the world - I must write book on the SDGs!). Build web shop. Design client experience. Set up distribution and logistics. Accounting. Comms plan. A/B test social media campaigns. Blogs. Lots of blogs. Writing tips for financial parenting. Building Marty’s World. The hardest part? No one can tell you whether you’re doing it right. You just have to trust your intuition (and pray).

Creating vs Selling

Yes, I’ve been busy these past two years. And I have a great team supporting me. Why have I not actually spent more time selling my books? Simply because I have a day job, too. Even hiring digital marketing professionals did not make sales a walk in the park. It’s very easy to raise awareness. It’s very hard to drive conversion. And yes, there are days where I feel like a lousy business woman. I guess that's how you learn to fail fast and keep going. It will all work out (I hope). Note to self: must hire sales manager. (Hmm, how many books do I need to sell to afford the salary?)

Importantly, it isn’t just a product, it’s Advocacy. I came to realize that other people can’t tell my story. It’s me who needs to tell it. So I had to accept it will just go slower than I would like it to. I am the bottleneck.

Recreating from scratch

If I’d have known what I was getting myself into, I probably wouldn’t have done translations. A naive “yes” took me down a very stoney path. Translating rhymes was harder than the original creations. Not only because it has been tremendously time consuming to translate 5 books into French and 4 books into German (over 9 months of work with two dedicated translators, and we are not yet finished). But also because once you have the new texts, the length of each sentence needs to fit the original book layout - and that becomes a juggling act. Not to mention all the texts within the illustrations themselves, that needed to be changed too. It is an entire re-creation.

I struggled most with accepting that the musicality of the rhymes is very different in other languages. Being a perfectionist makes it hard to compromise. Especially in French. It just has a completely different feel to it. Amen. In German, it took us endless hours of work and numerous video calls to try to make it sound friendly and joyful. I'm learning to love the translations - but I will always remain partial to the originals.

Letting go...

The biggest challenge is what lies ahead: considering creating an animated series. It would be so exciting to see Marty come to life in 3d and influence the future of many more girls and boys around the world - but it also means letting go. Letting someone else create a whole new digital world around your IP. A world you can no longer control. Does it scare me? Yes. But as a successful entrepreneur once told me: being an entrepreneur means jumping off the cliff, and building your wings on the way down. I feel like Indiana Jones taking a step into what feels like a void... let’s see what pathway will open up ahead of me. There is still much work to do, to bring money ethics, equality and sustainability to children all over the world. And driving change always requires a leap of faith.

What will come next? Where will we go? All I can say is I really don’t know... What I do know is that we will do more. And Marty’s adventures continue, for sure! 

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With infinite thanks to my illustrator, my digital marketing team, my communications manager, my assistant and my translators! 

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