Authors Are Entrepreneurs, Too
3 ways author life prepared me for CMO life
I’m Tawny, author of Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze, co-host of the Recovery Rocks podcast, and co-founder of the vinegar-based botanical beverage, (parentheses)
DISCLAIMER: I recently launched a non-alcoholic drink. Running this business with my husband is a big part of my daily life, so my recent newsletters reflect this new era. IDK how to write about start-up life without sounding like an advertisement. But I guess that’s author life, too. IDK how to talk about being an author without talking about my book. (Anyone else struggle with this feeling?)
My book tour ended in early February. My professional life is now CMO of (parentheses) and planning upcoming author events. There’s a lot of overlap between authors and entrepreneurs because authors are entrepreneurs. We have to be. We must also be delusional enough to think our idea for a book is so good that other people should not only read it but give us money in exchange for our prose. The same mentality rings true for getting our drink into the world. There’s a certain level of delusion required to believe that the drink we spent years developing is worthy of your money and tastebuds. But hey, if you’re not your own biggest fan, who will be?
Authors Are Chief Marketing Officers, Too
OK, I’m not technically a CMO, as (parentheses) has no board of directors or C-suite, but I'm in charge of all things marketing while hubby is in charge of all things operations. Nick and I wear 100 different hats every day, not unlike being an author.
In the same way that we authors are responsible for our own press, marketing, book tours, websites, newsletters, and posting on every single social media platform all the fucking time—in addition to actually writing the book, we food and drink entrepreneurs are also in charge of our own press, marketing, trade shows, websites, newsletters, and posting on every single social media platform all the fucking time—in addition to actually creating and selling our drink.
The juggle is real, y’all.
The Ghostwriter to Co-Packer Comparison
To further compare authors to food and beverage entrepreneurs, imagine a publishing world where most books are written by ghostwriters: Someone has an idea for a book, they choose not to write that book for various and valid reasons, and they hire someone to write and research the actual book.
The “author” name on the book cover belongs to the person with the idea. The ghostwriter might get a shoutout in the acknowledgments, or their name may even be on the cover, but much smaller and underneath the other “author” name.
That’s how the non-alcoholic drink scene is right now: lots of folks with really great drink ideas who’ve outsourced the R&D, manufacturing, and fulfillment (and 1,000 other things) to someone called a co-packer.
Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with co-packers, ghostwriters, or the people who choose to hire them. I repeat. There’s nothing wrong with co-packers, ghostwriters, or the people who choose to hire them.
Ghostwriting is an incredible skill that I consider to be the method acting of writing, and co-packers have the infrastructure, machinery, personnel, warehouse space, and many other assets that most start-ups don’t have unless they have investors with lots of capital. We, as a society, need ghostwriters to tell certain stories, and we need co-packers to help food and beverage brands scale up.
Talking to fellow authors about the publishing industry helps me feel less alone. I took the same approach when entering the CPG (consumer packaged goods) space, only to realize that we are (kind of) alone in how we run our business. The more I ask around, I realize that we’re one of the few non-alcohlic drink brands that actually develop, package, bottle, and ship our own products. I wasn’t expecting the act of hand-making our drink to be one of our biggest value propositions.
In the same way that I learned how to write a book and get a book deal, we learned how to develop and launch our own drink. People in recovery are scrappy AF, y’all.
From Influencing to Hiring Influencers
It’s no secret that I used social media to help spread the word about my journalistic research on sober sex and dating, unintentionally creating “The Sober Sexpert” platform that landed my book deal.
I don’t refer to myself as an influencer, but people call me one often and I don’t correct them. I’m a journalist first. I definitely relate to influencers, especially the unseen heavy workload of the job. It turns out that the skills I learned as a content creator also help me as CMO of (parentheses).
Last year I took a class from
called Goodbye Influencing. In this class, she brilliantly broke down the skills that influencers and content creators develop in our line of work: pitching yourself to big brands, copywriting, videography, video editing, photography, photo editing, networking, rate negotiation, styling and staging photoshoots, cross-promotion, and so much more. Lee’s class showed content creators and influencers how valuable these skills are and how to put said skills on a resume to find a job outside of the influencing world.I’m now on the business side of working with influencers. My years of signing contracts and combing through PDFs of brand guidelines helped me create my own contract template and brand guidelines to use when hiring content creators.
Watch this new collab with one of my favorite people on BookTok (the literary section of TikTok), Dakota Bossard:
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While it’s tough to juggle author life and CMO life, I’m grateful to have an answer to those extremely annoying questions that all authors get while promoting a book: What are you working on now?!?! and What’s your next book about?!?!
I have no clue what my next book will be about, but I’m beyond grateful for my experience as an author that makes this career transition a little easier.
-Tawny
I love the comparisons between author life and marketing your NA beverage company! It's a good reminder of all the ways we need to hustle these days—including the whole "what's next?!" question. I'm glad you've found such a good "next" to talk about!