We caught up with the brilliant and insightful London Clarke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

London , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

I wanted to write books from the time I was a young girl. I was an avid reader of all sorts of fiction, and as I went through elementary, middle, and high school, I wrote “stories” all the time. But as an adult, finding an agent, much less a publisher, was not easy. I went through many years of trying to go the traditional route. After tons of rejections, I finally got an agent in 2010. But after a year or more of trying to sell the book I had at the time, it went nowhere. Several years later, a second agent ended up selling my next book to a small publishing company that did absolutely nothing with it except allow it to die a slow death. A third book with a third agent again went nowhere. By that time, it was 2018, and self-publishing was taking off. Finally, I realized–what did I have to lose? Why not try this on my own? So, I stopped writing what I thought an agent might pick up and I started writing what I thought someone like me might want to read. I got some self-publishing help from an amazing course by Mark Dawson, and I started putting out my books one by one. Mine was the creepy-crawly method. I didn’t quit my day job. I did all my writing and marketing in the mornings, the evenings, and whenever I could. It didn’t happen all at once but little by little. One day, I realized I was actually making money selling books. After that, I just kept writing and plugging away.

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 am a writer first. I write gothic and romantic suspense, supernatural thrillers, and horror. But I also own Sighthound Editorial Services LLC. I work by word of mouth only, but I edit and critique manuscripts, and my husband, Stephen Lee, is an award-winning designer, who creates book covers for most genres. We teamed up to establish the LLC when we realized we could help others get affordable editing and book cover designs for their self-published work.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I never saw myself as a self-promoter or marketer. I hated tooting my own horn. But after consulting with many other writers, including some one-on-one mentoring, I realized I had to get over it. If I wanted to sell books, I had to be willing to learn how to self-promote. One mentor told me to focus on one social media branch and get good at that. But I sort of plunged into all of them at once. At one point, I was posting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and TikTok. It just got ridiculous, and I was making a minimal impact in any of them. I decided to look at what I did best, which was NOT video, so I dropped the TikTok and YouTube accounts and focused on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Pinterest I still use frequently to post imagery for each of my books. I found that the more I posted on the channels, the more followers I got, and then the algorithms kicked in. I also advertised my books on Facebook, which made a huge impact.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Yes! I used to be so stubborn about this and felt like I didn’t have time to read books or take courses on marketing or even my own craft. I needed to be writing, writing, writing all the time! But I finally slowed down and read a book by Steven James called Story Trumps Structure. I found this book to be SO helpful to my writing and my writing style. I was always wondering, “Am I doing this right?” Reading that book was so freeing and instructive. After that, I did a one-on-one mentorship with James Rubart. Jim is a marketing guy-turned-novelist, who is equally talented in both. He helped me revamp my website, figure out what I really wanted to write, and decide how to brand myself. It was life-changing. Finally, in 2019, I started an ongoing online course with Mark Dawson’s Self-Publishing 101 (now called Self-Publishing Launchpad). This is a comprehensive, step-by-step, how-to course with a bestselling author who has figured out how to create a system that works. I did everything he said to do, and it completely changed the course of my writing. Mark Dawson’s course allowed me to see myself as a professional author rather than just someone dabbling in a hobby I loved. That was when I saw my book sales spike.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.londonclarke.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/londonclarkeauthor/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LondonClarkeAuthor/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/londonclarke2
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/londonclarkeauthor/

Image Credits
Personal photo by Esther P. Photography Book covers by Stephen J. Lee