People often ask us, “When do you sleep?” and “How do you do it?”. They see all the incredible things happening at SparkPoint Studio – from PR to social media to book launches to the books we now publish that are winning awards and being adapted to the big screen – and they want to know how we do it all.
It hasn’t been easy being a disruptor in a very traditional industry. SparkPoint Studio has seen incredible growth (more than 1000% in the last 5 years) and had a great year in 2015 fueled by the hard work of each of our divisions. Not only are we helping authors and publishers with publicity, marketing, branding and social media through our industry-leading BookSparks division, we now also publish more than 230 authors through two incredible publishing divisions – SparkPress and She Writes Press led by Brooke Warner, who is passionate and a disruptor in her own right. We have sold film and TV deals and foreign rights for authors in multiple countries, welcomed a new community of female authors (30,000 strong from around the globe and founded by Kamy Wicoff who had the foresight to create a welcoming place for women writers to develop their craft) and we even put on an incredible writing workshop with Elizabeth Gilbert.
When we write it all out like that, we also wonder, how did we do it? Here’s how, and more important, why:
#1 Passion. We do what we love and love what we do. When you are passionate about something, other people take notice and can’t help but respond. I know I love what I do and so does this team. From our fantastic forward thinking and tireless publisher, Brooke Warner, to our incredibly savvy publicists to our social team, editors, art director, designers, admin and more, we all simply love what we do. We are fueled by passion for this business and for the amazing people we work with.
#2 Teamwork. We work side by side, in person and sometimes virtually, with an INCREDIBLE team of super creative, talented, energetic, passionate, and amazing people.
#3 Village. We have incredible support systems. Our authors are extremely supportive of each other’s successes and readily offer advice, feedback and tough love. Our vendors and partners are stellar. Agents, editors, publishing houses, past clients – they are all a joy to work with. We, as mostly women, try to support one another personally and professionally.
#4 Resilience. Again, it’s not easy. Publishing is very traditional and set in its ways. Being an author is a difficult path, we as a company are still a start-up and working in uncharted territories at times, but our imprints are making huge inroads in an elitist industry. There are bumps along the way, but our authors keep going and keep us going and help contribute daily to the growth of our presses. We don’t always get it right, but we are a team that’s committed to listening to our authors, being transparent and righting our wrongs.
We are proud of the following (very small) snapshot of our 2015 successes. A special thank you to all of our authors: All your hard work is paying off. You are part of a movement that is changing the face of publishing and we hope you will celebrate with us for all the hard work in 2015!
It is so exciting to be a part of such a forward-thinking endeavour with so many talented women. We’re revolutionizing things! Thank you, SparkPoint, BookSparks, and She Writes Press!
Wow! Impressive indeed. Thanks for doing what you do so well for my novel How to Grow an Addict. Your team is superb.