Category: podcast

Debbie Ridpath Ohi writes and illustrates books for young people. Her first picture book that she is writing and illustrating, Where Are My Books?, debuts from Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers in May 2015. She has illustrated two picture books by Michael Ian Black, as well as several Judy Blume reissue covers and books. She is currently working on three upcoming book projects. She has been involved in online communities since the very beginning of the internet, and regularly blogs and connects with others online.

In our chat, we discuss:

• How she took a huge risk in leaving her safe corporate job to pursue a creative career.
• Her path to becoming a full-time writer and illustrator.
• How she got the opportunity to illustrate the most recent Judy Blume reissues.
• How she deals with both positive and negative feedback.
• How she approaches social media, and why she finds it to be an essential part of her career.
• Her productivity tips and an in-depth look at her creative process.
• Why you should regularly move a little bit outside of your comfort zone in order to move your creative work and career forward.

Click ‘play’ above to listen to the podcast, or subscribe on iTunes, or download the MP3.

This podcast is part of the research for a book I am writing called Dabblers vs. Doers, which is about working through RISK as you develop your craft and build a meaningful body of work.

Here are some excerpts from our chat, where we dig into her journey:

Taking the Leap to a Creative Career

“Back in high school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, there were so many things I was interested in. I had my creative side which is writing, illustrating, and music. But of course, ‘No one can make a living in those fields,’ is what went through my head. I grew up in a lower middle income family, so it was assumed I would either go into medicine or law if my marks were high enough. I decided at the last minute to go into computer science because I always loved programming. In retrospect, it’s the creative aspect of programming that I really enjoyed. I graduated with majors in computer science and psychology.”

“I [became] a programmer analysts. I worked for a major financial institution, for the head office. I enjoyed working with people and the programming part, but I found as time went on, that I spent more time with meetings — I was on the management track — with less and less time programming, and I was less and less happy.”

“My husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, he saw how miserable I was, and he convinced me to quit so I could pursue my creative dreams. He said he would support me until is as able to find my creative source of income. In the beginning, I would take on odd jobs for whatever people would pay me for: freelance writing, I taught piano, flute, I worked part-time in a children’s bookstore, I worked part-time for the Toronto Public Library — anything related to things I was passionate about. I was earning far less money, but I was so much happier.”

I asked her about that moment when she and her husband discussed leaving the corporate world. That management track at a large company can be very compelling, and difficult to give up.

“I remember working more and more evenings and weekends, which is part of the management track, and not being happy. My husband saw me coming home sometimes totally exhausted and miserable. We talked about if this is really what I wanted to do the rest of my life. It was hard for him to convince me to quit — it’s a lot about risk, feeling secure in the job where I was earning good money. To leave it [I was worried about] looking like I couldn’t handle it because I just went to University of Toronto for a computer science degree. I was really worried about what people thought, how upset my parents would be, if this is something I would regret later. It was a hard decision. We had a lot of intense discussions, but alas he convinced me. I decided to work there a full two years to make absolutely sure this was the right decision, but then I quit. I have not regretted it a single time. I’m so glad I took that leap off the corporate cliff into the creative arts.”

I asked her about the time between that leap and feeling like she had a viable creative career. She said it was a long meandering path, and that it happened over the course of twenty years.

AN INTROVERT’S GUIDE TO BEING SOCIAL

“I never took my art as a potential career because I had no art training. Of course, everyone knows, you have to go to art school to be a professional artist. But I always loved to draw. I would post my comics wherever I could. This was before the internet — I have been trying to get published for so long that my first rejections were snail mail rejections, they came on paper, not email.”

“Then came along the world wide web, and it was like I was coming home! It was a way of me connecting with other people without having to spend all the money I did not have on travel. I would start to post my comics and illustrations online. I loved hearing how people felt about the comics.”

I asked her why she embraced the social aspects of the internet:

“It was incredibly welcoming to me because I am an introvert. I love the idea of this huge virtual room where you can have so many interesting conversations with people around the world. I felt like I was in a safe environment because I was home, I wasn’t out mingling with actual strangers. Because I’m an introvert, I wasn’t as intimidated.”

When Debbie was talking about the web, it was so enthusiastic that it seemed to clearly fuel her creative work, not take energy away from it. Her response:

“Oh it is hugely energizing. I’m not sure I would be where I am today if it wasn’t for sharing parts of myself online. I think it is really important, especially for writers and illustrators who are new to social media to realize that the internet is not just about promoting yourself. I have seen so many newly published authors and illustrators say, ‘Oh! I just had my picture book or novel come out. It’s time to use social media!’ And they start talking about their book, where to purchase it, etc. There is no one way to use social media, but I have found that I feel more connected with people when I take the leap, and share part of my personal self that might connect with other people. I get a real satisfaction out of that.”

THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT TO SUCCESS: “GET OUT THERE AND START MEETING PEOPLE.”

When I asked about her path to earning a living as a picture book writer & illustrator, she said: “I mentioned that after I [left my corporate career] that I took on odd jobs, kept working on my novels, I kept reading a ton, I researched the market a ton, I began blogging; I got an agent who began sending out two of my middle grade novels. Lots of rejections, I have so many rejections — I could wallpaper my whole house with them.”

“I used to believe that if I worked really hard on my craft, just kept sending things out, that my manuscript would eventually hit the right editor at the right time. While that happens for some people, that wasn’t happening for me. I realized: I have to get out and meet people. The introvert in me [rebelled.] I bet there are so many introverts out there who were in my position, getting rejections, who could feel they were on the edge, on the cusp of success. If I could talk to my younger self, I would say, get out and starting meeting people.”

“I started going to these SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conventions. I was so nervous about my first one because knew I wouldn’t know anybody, but I had so much fun!”

“Then in 2010, I decided to enter the SCBWI Manuscript Critique Program, and I had a middle grade novel with illustrations. I submitted to that, and of course was hoping that some editor was going to read the manuscript, and she’s not even going to be able to wait for the critique, she is going to call me up and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I love this so much! Here, I’m going to give you a contract right now!’ But no, that did not happen.

I did get a phone call, but it wasn’t from an editor who wanted my work, it was from the SCBWI office saying, ‘We can’t accept this because it has illustrations in it.’ It wasn’t there fault, it was my fault for not reading instructions, so they rejected it. I was so depressed because I paid for the critique. So then I thought, ‘I can’t even pay to be rejected.’

“So then my friend, my sister, and my husband convinced me to enter the portfolio showcase at the SCBWI LA conference in 2010. I said no at first, ‘I don’t have any art training, my art sucks, I’m not really a professional.’ But they convinced me and helped me put together my first portfolio and low and behold, I won two awards!”

“One of the people on the panel of judged was an editor at Simon & Schuster who asked if I would be interested in illustrating Michael Ian Black’s “I’m Bored.”

“That changed everything.”

“I freaked out, I couldn’t believe it. This happens to other people, not me. Because of that one amazing thing that happened, everything has changed because of that conference.”

EMBRACING RISK

“One thing I would tell my younger self is to not be afraid to take risks. Everyone has their own comfort area, whether it’s public speaking, trying something new, or putting yourself out there. I think it’s important that whatever you feel most insecure about that is keeping you from achieving your creative goals, that on a regular basis make an attempt to put your foot outside of that comfort area. This will make that comfort zone a little bit larger every time. Yes, you may fall flat on your face sometimes, but that is part of the learning process. Especially when you are in this industry, rejection, failure, or not succeeding is part of the business. If you are always afraid of failing because the risk seems too high for you, you will not make as much progress towards achieving your goals as you would have otherwise.”

“For me, one example is this podcast interview. I told you earlier, I am nervous about public speaking, but this is a chance to step out of my comfort zone, and I have to say, it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I thought.”

Thank you to Debbie for making the time to meet with me. You can find her online at:

• DebbieOhi.com
• Her upcoming book: Where Are My Books?
• Her other books.
• Twitter: @inkyelbows
• Facebook
• Instagram: @inkygirl

For more interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff on my book Dabblers vs. Doers, click here.

Thank you!
-Dan

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How does one go from being a painfully shy child who barely spoke five words per day in school, to being a well-known children’s book blogger, librarian and author? In today’s interview, I chat with Betsy Bird, Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library who also runs the blog A Fuse #8 Production on School Library Journal’s website. She is the author of Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature, Giant Dance Party, and Children’s Literature Gems: Choosing and Using them in your Libarary Career.

I am a huge fan of Betsy’s, and have profiled her several other times:

• How to Become a Superstar Blogger (2009)
• The Value of Blogging (2010)
• How Betsy Bird Got 4 Book Deals Because of Her Blog (2010)

We met years ago when I was working with School Library Journal. In today’s interview, we touch upon a number of topics about risk and developing a meaningful body of work. But one topic in particular really amazed me: her experience going from a painfully shy introvert as a child, to someone who shares so much of herself online, and even — unintentionally — courts controversy in the book world.

Click ‘play’ above to listen to the podcast, or subscribe on iTunes, or download the MP3.

This podcast is part of the research for a book I am writing called Dabblers vs. Doers, which is about working through RISK as you develop your craft and build a meaningful body of work.

We spoke in the in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — otherwise known as the big New York City Public Library, the one with the lions in front of it. She took me into an abandoned wing, and we sat down and spoke in a room that is no longer open to the public, and served as the New York Public Library’s very first children’s room when it opened back in 1911. Here is a brief tour:

Betsy and I:

The famous lions out front:

The employee-only hallway that leads to the old children’s room:

Details from the old children’s room — original shelving and lamps that look to be, if not original, at least very old!

Fun fact: this library also contains the original Winnie the Pooh and friends, displayed in a public area:

Here are some excerpts from our chat, where we dig into her journey:

“I would have killed to be an extroverted child. I was the introverted introvert. I was the shyest creature you have ever met in your life. I was the kid who never raised her hand in class. Even now, if you watch me in a meeting, you will never see me raise my hand or bring up a point. It’s automatic: sit there and don’t draw attention to yourself. I was invisible through most of my school years. It took me a long time to become social, someone who enjoyed people.”

I asked her about a quote I read where she said she would say less than five words per day in school as a child; her response:
“Five words would have been impressive! My goal was to be invisible, because if you were invisible, people didn’t bother you. Children were wild animals, and had to be avoided, so I did not talk.”

“My dad recently remarked to my mom, “At what point did she get ambition?’ Because I didn’t seem to have any beyond a job that brings a paycheck. That was something I struggled with, a children’s librarian has to perform — that is a performing job. You have to do storytimes constantly. You have to talk to strangers at a desk constantly. Yes, you are talking about children’s books, but they are strangers, they could say anything. Many people do view the captive reference librarian as a free therapist. My mother always said, ‘You should have a social work degree along side your MLIS just because of the people you have to deal with at a public library desk.'”

“Children’s librarianship really changed all of that. I had to do storytimes constantly throughout the day, I had to go into schools and talk to strangers and get them on board with the summer reading plan, and talk to teachers. All sorts of things that were forcing me out of my introverted life. In New York City, if you are forced out of your introverted life, by association with the city, you get ambition because you are in the right place for it. If I started this blog in Minnesota, would it have been noticed? I don’t know the answer to that. I can sit down for lunch with School Librarian Journal, I can go to publishers previews.”

What is so intriguing to me is not just that she shares so much of herself and her opinions via the blog, social media and her own books, but that in doing so, it sometimes invites not just social situations, but controversy:

“That’s when you know you’ve made it, when you get in trouble with a bunch of folks.”

“There are different types of controversy, I have found. I have been lucky, I will criticize something and what people will take from it is usually not a criticism of me, they will take something I am saying and try to correct it. That is wonderful, I love that. Once in awhile, it will get personal, but I don’t post those comments. I don’t mind posting comments that take me to task on certain things.”

“I have encountered people where it has been awkward because I have given them bad reviews. If I give a critical review, and I’m in New York City, I probably know the editor, I definitely know the publicity team, I probably know the author and illustrator, and if I don’t, I will be seated next to them at a dinner at some point. Thats where this gets really weird. I am a critic – and I consider myself a critic, because if I am not a critic then I am a cheerleader, or a promotional wing of the publisher. There are many blogs who refuse to do anything critical, and they are fine and wonderful but to my mind, they are cheerleaders, and may as well be working for the publishers. I like to be critical once in awhile because it keeps me honest. Otherwise, I may as well be getting a paycheck from these publishers. The downside is that I am going to meet these people at some point, and it is going to b awkward.”

“I once critically reviewed a very very very popular picture book. I pointed out some things I had a problem with. You would have thought that I had shot the author’s puppy dog the way that these people were piling on me. It was really strange for me. If you read the comments, they just spiral into madness. You just have to be ready for controversy.”

“My natural inclination is to be liked, and mostly the blog fulfilled that need, it sets off those endorphins. I write a review about a book I really like, then I get a Tweet back from the author saying, ‘This is awesome!’, and they are Tweeting it to their followers, and I get that happy feeling of, ‘Oh, I’ve made a person happy, and maybe more people are happy too. Everyone is happy happy happy happy.’ That is what a lot of people use blogging for. If you review a book, it makes you happy, it makes the publisher happy, it makes the editor happy at ALA, you get invited to the fancy dinners because, ‘Oh! You are the reviewer who liked this book so much, come to this dinner, the author really appreciated it.’ You get to sit down with the big-wigs and talk about future books and things like that. It’s so alluring. But if you are going to be a reviewer, you have to say when things are bad. I criticize myself, I don’t do it enough. For awhile, with every review, I tried to say one critical thing. I have not done that as consistently as I should, but I still think it’s important. Because otherwise it is all sunshine and rainbows, cupcakes, sparkles and unicorns, and that’s fine, but every book could be better. It’s hard for me – I want to be liked, I want that validation.”

Thank you to Betsy for making the time to meet with me. You can find her online at:

• Her blog: A Fuse #8 Production
• BetsyBirdBooks.com
• Twitter: @FuseEight

For more interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff on my book Dabblers vs. Doers, click here.

Thank you!
-Dan

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For the past six years, Andrea Lekberg has run The Artist Baker, a boutique bakery & cafe in Morristown, New Jersey. She graduated from The Art Institute of Chicago and The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, and has worked at a long list of notable bakeries and restaurants. She is also – of course – an artist, who is currently working on a project about her Native American heritage.

I got to know Andrea when she offered to host a series of meetups I helped run with my friend Scott McDowell. I was always impressed by her wisdom, and how she balanced running a business, with growing as an artist and building not just a body of meaningful work, but a community of collaborators.

Click ‘play’ above to listen to the podcast, or subscribe on iTunes, or download the MP3.

This podcast is part of the research for a book I am writing called Dabblers vs. Doers, which is about working through RISK as you develop your craft and build a meaningful body of work.

Here are some key insights that Andrea shared with me…

On Taking the Next Step

“It’s not that I was tired of working for people, but I was not looking forward to working for another chef or another owner. I felt that I kept finding myself in similar circumstances, so I wasn’t growing. I talked to a friend who told me, ‘if you are managing businesses, you are already doing all the work, caring about the business, caring about the people, worrying about numbers; but the benefit is you own it. It is easier to problem solve because you don’t have an owner. As a middle manager, you always have to answer to the boss. Even though you are problem solving, it is not really your final word, so you are caught.’ What he said was,’you are already there, just take the next step.'”

“There are different ways to grow professionally. I could have gone and worked for a hotel, and ran hundreds of people. Like go work in Las Vegas, and do pastries at a hotel where they are open around the clock, and you have a hundred people working — that would have been a big challenge. But it wasn’t a challenge I was looking for. I was looking for something more personal and more about my growth.”

The Value of Taking the Time to Plan

She spent a year working on her business plan and working out her finances. “It was very helpful writing the business plan, because I was able to see how I could go from selling two cups of coffee a day, to grow from there.”

“One thing I know about making a plan is that you can always change it.”

“I spent a year writing the business plan and looking around at property, and I learned so much. I almost got two pieces of property, and felt like I met every asshole Charleston. I learned so much about leases. I signed a lease on one property, and the person was just using it to get another person to sign the lease. I was used, but I didn’t know. Another time, I almost signed on a property, and the lease was a triple net, which means you are responsible for everything below the roof. Before I signed the lease, I had an inspection done, which I was paying for. I found all these problems, so I didn’t sign the lease. It was interesting learning about what could happen — what you are responsible for.”

“I was looking around, and even though everybody was telling me how great the area was, how business was growing, I was not seeing any other businesses come into that area, and I was actually seeing businesses close. If you go by just walking around the street, and see what business are there, that really tells you everything about the town. That is the best thing to do. Ask yourself: what is not here, and why isn’t it here. You start asking all of these questions.”

I asked her why people skip such a foundational concept such as observation and asking questions, and she mentioned that sometimes people are just so driven by their concept, that they are essentially blinded to any other context or factors that can affect it.

When personal circumstances opened an opportunity to open her bakery in an unexpected place: Morristown, New Jersey, she put boundaries to help reduce the risk:

• “I’ll give myself through the summer to find a space.”
• “I wanted to find a landlord who would work with me and was excited about the project.”

These limits helped her focus, and find a place to open The Artist Baker.

Preparing for Success

Her theory of how you sign a lease always astounded me: “People would sign a year lease, and I thought they weren’t preparing themselves for success. They were first looking for a way out. Sign the longest lease they will give you. You can always get out of it, if you are smart about it. When you setup a business with lawyers, everybody is protected. It is key to have lawyers and contracts.”

“When I was first looking for financing for the business, I had a lot of people who would say ‘Oh, I’ll give you $1,000 or $5,000′ – these small numbers for a business – and they would want a small percentage of the business. I had a lawyer who said, “DON’T TAKE THEIR MONEY. If it is that small, they shouldn’t ask you for a piece of the business.’ She was an eye opener about the value of getting a bigger amount from one or two people, than having all these people who are involved in your business.”

Andrea listed all the people she hired and staff she brought on board to open the shop. When I asked her why she didn’t just open up the shop with zero staff, taking on the role of baking herself, and serving herself, she said this, “If you have a business so small that you are doing everything, then you don’t have time to think about growing it. You can’t grow. You are always behind and overwhelmed. We started out so that we could hopefully succeed.”

Compartmentalizing What You Can Control

“I opened this business just after my stepfather died; I was in such a different place. I wasn’t trying to control things as much. Had I opened it earlier, I would have been so frustrated. But I was ready now, everything was just problem solving. I slept great the whole time we were opening up the business, and the reason was because it was so awful. I knew the next day would be a whole new set of problems, but I couldn’t do anything about it now. Besides, the problems are never what you thought they would be, they come out of the blue, so you couldn’t even prepare yourself mentally for dealing with the problems of the next day.”

“I had no idea it was going to be like this.”

She said that the best marketing for her business has always ben word of mouth. People coming, then coming back and bringing others. It took a year for the bakery to be financially viable on its own. “I originally thought it would mostly be a pastry shop, but now mostly what we do is lunch. Our business has shifted. There was a point where we had a lot of staff, people were working, the restaurant was full, everything was moving like this nice machine, and I remember thinking: ‘I had no idea it was going to be like this.’ I had no idea it would be more of a restaurant.”

Dealing With Other People’s Expecations

“Every day, people have [their own] expectations. You get new customers coming into the shop, and let’s just say they heard from somebody that it was good. So they have their ideas of a good bakery, maybe one they went to in Vermont, and they come in, and they want it to be like that experience. It’s always funny with new people, to try to help them understand what we are doing. It’s definitely a business, but it’s also a creative place. We do a lot of stuff that I know most shops don’t ever get a chance to do. This is to push the staff to do things they aren’t used to doing. When you talk about expectations, you are trying to fulfill customer expectations, but also your own expectations, and I don’t feel like we are just food service.”

“I just want to be good at being me. That is what good artists are, they are good at being themselves. That is the role of the bakery is to be good at what it is. Not be what other people want it to be.”

Thank you to Andrea for making the time to meet with me. You can find her in at http://theartistbaker.com.

For more interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff on my book Dabblers vs. Doers, click here.

Thank you!
-Dan

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Today I’m speaking with Rachel Fershleiser, who describes herself this way, “I’m someone who gets really psyched about books on the internet, and I help others do it too.” I am so inspired by not just the scope of Rachel’s work over the years, but how much she is an enthusiastic champion for others.

In this interview, Rachel talks to me about:

• How her career has been driven by enthusiasm, not blindly pursuing job titles
• The role that volunteering for organizations and championing others has played in her life
• How she collaborated with others to organize hundreds of live events
• The story behind crafting a “feisty” voice online, and where her boundaries are
• When she knew the time was right for a big career move
• The value of embracing individual connections that are meaningful, not ‘going viral’

Some background: Rachel Fershleiser works on Tumblr’s outreach team, specializing in publishing, nonprofit, and cultural organizations. Previously she was the community manager at Bookish and the director of public programs at Housing Works Bookstore Café, where she now serves on the board of directors. She is also the co-creator of Six-Word Memoirs and co-editor of the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning and three other books.

Her Kickstarter campaign for Stock Tips: A Zine about Soup earned 13 times its initial funding goal. She also runs The Reblog Book Club which is Tumblr’s Official Book Club.

Click ‘play’ above to listen to the podcast, or subscribe on iTunes, or download the MP3.

This podcast is part of the research for a book I am writing called Dabblers vs. Doers, which is about working through RISK as you develop your craft and build a meaningful body of work.

Here are some key insights that Rachel shared with me…

When Pigeonholed in Jobs She Didn’t Love, She Said, “Let’s Recalibrate”

“I did PR for broadway shows, I didn’t necessarily want to do PR, or even knew what PR was. I wanted to make people excited about theater.”

“Then, when I was unemployed, all I wanted to do was read books. But I wasn’t one of these people who wanted to work in publishing my whole life. When I went to look for publishing jobs, I was applying for editorial assistant. They were like, ‘Oh, you have PR experience.’ I went in for an editorial job, and was offered a PR job.”

“So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll make people really excited about books!'”

But PR isn’t all about enthusiasm, you are given books to work with, not all of them you are genuinely excited about. Rachel continues…

“I quit my job without another job lined up. But I was living in a 6-floor walk up with 3 other girls; I was paying $700 rent; I did not have a lot of debt; I was not taking money from my parents, but knew I could if the situation got desperate; I had no kids or responsibilities; so I figured: let’s recalibrate.”

Volunteering

Rachel chooses to volunteer; chooses to get involved; chooses to champion things. This is a thread throughout her career.

She started at the most basic level at Housing Works Bookstore, and worked through the ranks and got more involved. “I was a volunteer (four hours per week), then I was a part-time bookseller, then I was a full-time bookseller, I was director of public programs, and now I’m on the board.”

Rachel’s other volunteer work includes:

• Housing Works Bookstore
• Wordstock Advisory Committee
• National Book Foundation
• Committee for The Common literary magazine benefit
• The Guernica magazine benefit
• LitCrawl
• CLMP

Collaboration Mastermind: Organizing Hundreds of Events

At Housing Works Bookstore, she crafted events with others in a collaborative manner, and didn’t just book basic readings. She crafted readings, book launch parties, poetry, dance events, music concerts, and more.

Her specialty? “My passion is like, okay, we’ve got four different debut novels with a thru-line, and if we get all of those writers together, and get this band to play, then we show this animated short, then we have a cafe special that is on-theme, then we have a photo booth, then we put clips from the event up on the internet… that whole mishmash of different literary-ish things.”

She would ask, “What can we do to bring together different fan bases? We did crazy things like have Salman Rushdie read with a progressive rock band that had written an album based on one of his essays. We put him in this big leather armchair, and then there are these punk boys behind him. That was the kind of thing where some people came for the writing, and didn’t know anything about the band; some people came for the band, and didn’t know anything about the writing. We were like, ‘Let’s all get together and see what happens.'”

How did she collaborate on so many events across such a broad range of fields? “A lot of it stems from knowing what you don’t know. I don’t know anything about music; I don’t know a lot about pop culture; I don’t know a lot about comics; I don’t know a lot about poetry; I can go on for a long time. So the ability to be like, ‘You know a lot about poetry, come here. Who do you think should read with this band?’ that isn’t me being generous, that is me stealing other people’s brains. It’s benefiting from all different kinds of expertise.”

This was an incredible insight, that she saw the gaps she had in knowledge as an opportunity to ask questions, to collaborate, and take chances. I feel like so many people stop pursuing creative ideas with the phrase ‘I don’t know.’ But for Rachel, that was the instigation to keep exploring.

“It’s an interesting idea, the ‘voice’ of a bookstore, because theoretically it is a physical space and a small business. And this is what I will take full credit for is that before I started at Housing Works Bookstore, there was no social media, very little web presence, and there was basically no way of communicating with our patrons and wider community. I was not very digital and not very into internet culture. But what I had was a zero dollar marketing budget, and I was supposed to turn this place from a ‘best-kept secret’ into a city-wide institution with no resources to get the word out. What resources did I have? Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare. We were the first bookstore on Tumblr. And the voice was me, basically. I certainly exercised care and realized I was speaking for a larger institution, but the ability to put personality into it makes a huge difference. People want to show up and hang out. Housing Works values and my values are very much aligned.”

“I’m a woman on the internet. Yes I get hate mail.”

She describes her public voice as “feisty.” I asked her how becoming more honest online has affected her ability to be employed; in other words, so many people are afraid to be themselves publicly because they fear it may offend a potential employer. She responded, “I can’t imagine where I would want to work, that doesn’t value the things that I value. At this point in my life, I am much more likely to get hired for my public persona, than to not get hired because of it.”

She does have her own boundaries for what she shares. She never says anything bad a bout a book, and is never “unkind” to people to come to events and communities she is a part of.

When I asked if there is a flipside, if she gets hate mail, she responded, “I’m a woman on the internet. Yes I get hate mail.” She then referenced this episode of This American Life, where Lindy West has a conversation with her biggest online troll.

On Making a Big Career Move

After years of working at Housing Works, which she loved, she decided to leave. Why?

“There are the very real practicalities of working for a small nonprofit… you don’t have resources to do anything. A lot of my creativity stemmed from not having resources, but I was there till midnight every night stacking the chairs, taking out the trash — you don’t have your own life.”

She moved on to a startup called Bookish, which she described as “using the internet to bring readers together,” how that perfectly aligned with what she wanted to do. It gave her a growth opportunity, even though the site turned out to not live up to its promise.

Then, Tumblr came to her. To work with publishers, authors, libraries and bookstores in a community that she understands and loves. “I had been an author, at publishers, a bookstore, nonprofits, so I had a sense of what these groups needed from a platform.”

Embracing the Small

On engaging directly with readers online:

“A lot of writers are terrified of people saying ‘you have to do this brand new thing that is nothing like you have ever done, and nothing like you have ever wanted to do.’ That is not how I look at it, at all. You are a reader, you are a writer, you are a person who likes books, and probably likes talking about them. Here is one more step on how to do it. That is what I mean with start small. The idea of starting a ‘social media platform’ is terrifying. But, Tweet the last book you loved, and some people will fav it, and one person will write back and say ‘I loved it too,” this is human interaction that an author would enjoy having. Just seeing it as another way for readers and writers connecting.”

“That is my whole vision of this. I’m not promising you 100,000 new fans. I’m saying that you will find the four people who already love your book, then you’ll find the six people who listen to the books they recommend, then you’ll find the 12 people who read one of their books, then you will get to do an event because one of those people invited you to it, then 50 people will come to it… you are collecting, over your career, more and more people who are just like in your boat. And those people have an audience, even people who don’t think they have an audience.”

We ended on this note, which was so perfect: “I am trying to have a career that I am genuinely passionate about.”

Thank you to Rachel for making the time to meet with me and share her wisdom. You can find her in the following places:
http://rachelfershleiser.com
https://twitter.com/RachelFersh

For more interviews and behind-the-scenes stuff on my book Dabblers vs. Doers, click here.

Thank you!
-Dan

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