We were lucky to catch up with Caroline Malloy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Caroline thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

When people ask about “The Write Malloy,” I always say that no one told me that you shouldn’t make your business name a pun! I like to think it didn’t work out too bad, but it is good advice.

I had heard all the advice to “just use your name,” but that felt so boring (echoing Jack Black in The Holiday, “Caroline… if you were a brand…” – I just didn’t feel exciting!). So I decided to work on something about writing and started playing with other things in my life, like travel, history, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that using “write” to mean “right” could open up more opportunities, and “The Write Malloy” was born.

I like how it lets you know right away my business has to do with writing, but it also has a little subconscious marketing pull (i.e. I’m the right coach for writers). Finally, since my brother is a published author, I feel like it’s a personal nod to him, because he’s a Write Malloy, too.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a historian by trade. I thought I would spend my career in academia, and did teach at several universities before deciding I needed something better. I knew it would have something to do with books, but wasn’t sure what or how. Coincidentally, when I left my last teaching job, I started traveling as a Resident Historian with Viking Ocean cruises. On multiple occasions, guests approached me, book manuscript in hand, and asked for my opinions on their book.
I told them I was honored, but definitely not the right person! I was a historian, not a book editor!
When the pandemic hit, I was already contemplating how to turn this experience into something real. I had read about this new space in the editing world called “book coaching” and realized it was what those writers had been asking for.
Support. Advice. Insight. Direction.
So when a close family friend called to share she was working on a manuscript, needed help, and said she didn’t know why, but just knew I was the one who could help, I knew book coaching was my path. I got certified within the year, and the next thing I knew, I was reading books for a living. You can’t beat it!
(I’m not a big “the universe is speaking” kind of person, but in this case… it was impossible to ignore.)
Like so many entrepreneurs, the early days of the business were about trying to do everything for everyone, but over time, it became clear that I was most inspired and excited by writers who were on a mission to be heard, in particular, women who were over-achievers (like me) with a story or a strategy to share, and who were determined to publish it, often in the face of marginalization or discrimination. I like to say I work with women leaders who are really amped up about their topic, and even more amped up because someone or something in their life made them feel unentitled to their authority. Our work together is loud and bold and determined.
Most of my work with writers starts at the very beginning. My writers are thought-, industry-, and scholar-leaders who know what makes their idea amazing; they just don’t know how to make that amazing idea into a book. We hammer out the foundations, the target readers, the marketing plan. And then… we write the book proposal.
What a lot of people don’t know about nonfiction publishing is that you usually sell the idea of the book before you actually write the book. In fiction, you write the whole manuscript and then shop it around to agents and publishers. In nonfiction, you develop a book proposal first – basically a business plan for your book – and pitch that while you write. This proposal is where we spend all our time. I help writers through clear strategies, consistent feedback, and honest guidance so that they have a proposal and a plan that aligns with their passion. After that, we finally move on to the book and my support continues with accountability checks, scheduling guides, and editing.
Writing a book is hard, lonely, and it’s easy to convince yourself that all the other books and authors are having an easier time of it. They’re not. They’re just so happy to have their book published (often after many years!) that they forget all the challenges, the rejection letters, the revisions, and the self-doubt. My job is to keep writers inspired, moving forward, eyes on that incredible prize: your book!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As a lifelong teacher, the transition to book coaching should have been pretty seamless. Even more, I’m an indoor cycle and fitness coach on the side; I literally coach people in some way, shape, or form in all aspects of my life. But book coaching requires turning off (ok, turning down) one really prominent skill; giving advice.
My job as a professor was to advise students on how to improve their writing, their arguments, and their critical thinking.
As a Resident Historian, I deliver lectures from an actual stage, and people expect me to know the answers to the questions they ask.
As a fitness coach, it’s important that I always have an eye on the room to advise on form, function, and workout choices.
But as a book coach, my job is to step back, to support through a soft touch. I may know about the industry, but I don’t know about the book. The writer is the one in charge. And it’s up to me to be solid and steady and quiet about it. I give writers room to think, bounce around ideas, and discover the book inside them. There’s no advice I can give about what really matters there.
I like to joke that my superpower is “not-knowing.” I ask questions because I don’t know the answers. In trying to come up with the answers, that’s how writers begin to discover their books.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

The biggest risk I’ve taken so far in the business was an impulsive decision in the Fall of 2023 to run my first writing retreat… in Athens, Greece! (go big or go home, right?) Writing retreats were definitely a part of my five-year plan. And because I travel internationally so much as a historian, I knew I wanted to bring these two worlds together and host retreats in inspiring international locales. My idea was to do this maybe in 2026 or 2027!
But last Summer, due to unexpected circumstances, I wound up with a nonrefundable ticket to Athens that I had to use by the end of 2023. I looked at my schedule and realized I was probably going to just lose it.
Then my husband suggested I fly over and host a writing retreat.
I told him that was a ridiculous idea… and within a week, I was planning it!
I would not advise anyone to plan an impromptu international writing retreat. It was, in many ways, a terrible idea! But my familiarity with and connections in Athens made such an unwise plan imaginable, at the very least.
I scrambled for lodging, meals, and activities, but the biggest hurdle was launching this plan into an untested market.
I assumed the writers in my universe were the right kind of people for this sort of last-minute, international writing-intensive experience, but I had no market research to back that up—just a hunch and some crossed fingers.
In other words, the marketing was equally as impulsive as the trip.
But over the course of a month, I filled 2 of the 3 spots, and off we went! The week in Athens was amazing, inspiring, and the writers just incredible to work with.
I’m not sure when the next retreat will be, but I know it will happen. And I’ll be certain to have a real plan next time!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thewritemalloy.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thewritemalloy
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/thewritemalloy
• Other: https://thewritemalloy.substack.com

Image Credits
Brick photos: Steve Glaab All other photos: Avi Loren Fox