We recently connected with Kathy Newbern and J.S. Fletcher and have shared our conversation below.
Kathy Newbern and J.S. Fletcher, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Back in 1992, Kathy was invited to speak at a public relations conference in Raleigh, NC. We were living in Manteo, NC, at the time. Then-boyfriend Fletcher tagged along to keep her company. She was a participant on a panel, and the icebreaker question was: “What would people be surprised to find out about you?”
She answered that she had written a yet-to-be published romance novel, which got an appropriate response of laughter. Afterward, at lunch, one of the attendees, a friend, said, “Wouldn’t it be great to read about yourself in one of those romance novels?” Well, everyone at the table perked up and started joking about it.
Later, on the four-hour drive home, we started talking about the idea — trying to figure out was that even possible? Soon after, the proverbial light bulb went off. Almost simultaneously we said to each other, “You know, we could do that!” Write a romance novel where we could insert personal details like names, eye and hair color, where you live and work, your favorite music, best friends, make of car and more.
In our enthusiasm, we started outlining our first book on the back of a manilla envelope during that drive home. It’s titled “Another Day in Paradise,” set in the Caribbean and is still our best seller among the 50+ titles we now have 30 years later here at YourNovel.com.
That ah-ha moment drastically changed our lives and for the better.
We started writing the next day on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Over the weekend, we drove three hours to our nearest mall and bought our first major piece of equipment – a Macintosh Performa computer with a 16 MHz CPU and 40 MB memory.
In between writing — we both write together — we started putting together the pieces of our budding business – getting a business bank account, logo design, applying to accept credit card payments, ordering an extra phone line, getting a toll-free number and a fax machine. Yes, a fax machine. This was 1992. Looking back on those tasks, the fiction writing, based on our own trip in the Caribbean, was more fun. But we perserved.
Why did we think we could do this together? Simple: We had both been writing long before we met, starting in grade school, everything from poems to fiction to the school newspapers. Writing has always been a big part of our lives.
Why did we think it would work? Well the romance novel genre still accounts for about one-third of mass market paperback sales, and even back we will pounced on this unique concept, that number was about 30%. So did we think we’d have an audience? Yes. Did we think we’d appeal to the vanity idea of starring in your own book? Most definitely!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers?
Kathy began her career as a journalist right out of high school, working full-time while going to college full-time. By age 19, she’d worked her way up to editor of the weekly paper where she began, later became managing editor of The Chapel Hill Newspaper, and eventually chief in two different bureaus of The Charlotte Observer, overseeing their neighborhood tabloids. She’s also worked in communications at Duke University News Service and Public Schools of North Carolina.
Fletcher has had success in writing throughout his life, publishing stories, articles and poems as well as teaching writing on several levels. He has also spent time in promoting and producing entertainment events.
Those backgrounds melded nicely to take on the job of novelists here at YourNovel.com while simultaneously working as award-winning, freelance travel journalists and photographers. What we see and do for our travel writing assignments often inspire plots and settings for our romance novels, like “Island of Love,” set in Tahiti, or “African Safari: Wild Life, Wild Love.” We are very fortunate to have created a dream life that’s taken us to 76 countries and every continent and to accomplish that awesome goal of “working for ourselves!”
How does YourNovel.com work? We put any couple in their own personalized romance novel set at exotic locations around the globe. Our service lets customers input 26 details like their names, eye and hair color, best friends’ names, hometown, place of work, type of car they drive, favorite fragrances, places of work and more. That information is sent through a customized computer program that generates a book – either a paperback, hardback or ebook with or without a photo added on the cover or that can become the entire front cover. Here’s the fun part: Each book comes in a “Wild” or “Mild” version, so the customer gets to choose how spicy the romantic interludes are. (The books are titillating yet tasteful, not graphic, and 90% of the readers choose “Wild.”)
We are very proud to have created an entire genre, the personalized adult romance novel, from scratch and to still be in business 30 years later. (We started our business with $300 and have never taken out any business loan or taken on any partner/investers, by the way.)
We’re also especially happy to have helped about two dozen other writers realize their dreams of becoming published by contracting with them to write for YourNovel.com.
Over the years, these are some of the media that have featured us: People magazine, Redbook, In Style, Bridal Guide, Entrepreneur, Elle, USAToday, NPR Marketplace, Wired, CBS Marketwatch, Readers Digest, “The View,” “The Today Show,” “Life and Style,” “Daytime,” “The Washington Post,” “The Los Angeles Times,” John Boy and Billy on The Big Show, a syndicated radio program.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
We are not “business” types – we are “creatives” and proud of it. However, we had to embrace the journey of learning to become business minded in order to be successful. Early on, we also followed our instincts to keep overhead low, so instead of renting a storefront, we operated remotely, creating office space in our home and contracting with others to work where they’d like. That may not sound like a big deal now that working remotely is an every day occurrence for so many, but remember in 1992, the Internet was still rather much in its infancy, and clocking in 9-to-5 was still largely expected.
And, we quickly, had to figure out how to create a website, accept orders and get paid. Now, customers input all their personalized details in an online questionnaire and the computer program does the insertion so that any couple stars in any of our books. But back then, we hired a part-time helper who, in our busiest seasons, which is around Valentine’s, she literally stayed up all night to input those answers manually into our meager computer after we received them on a form we had customers fax back to us! We slept while she worked. Sounds like the dark ages, right? But in business, you do what you need to do to make it all work.
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
This is indeed one of the saddest experiences we’ve had. We have vendors who produce and mail our paperback and hardback personalized romance novels. We had one vendor partner who’d worked with us for many years. When the company owner passed away, it was sudden news to us, and the company was closed very quickly. We had so much respect for that individual, his expertise in printing and our long-time relationship, but we had little time to mourn (though we still do) as that company produced all of our paperback novels, so it sent us in crisis mode. Very, very fortunately, we were able to work with our hardback vendor to become quickly set up to take over paperback production also. Had that not happened, we would have not been able to fulfull those orders, which would have accounted for lost income of about 75% of our sales.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.YourNovel.com