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

Melanie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

When my client Sara and I began collaborating on her marketing strategy, she had just written her first book and was in the process of editing it. Her goals were lofty but attainable. She wanted to create awareness and visibility for her book and business, build her authority as an expert, grow her community, and ultimately create new revenue streams. And that’s just what we did. As part of her marketing strategy, we developed messaging that she used to attract and build a large audience filled with people who were so excited to buy her book when it launched. She grew her email list from scratch and enjoys around a 55% open rate on her emails (the average for businesses is about 22%).

She regularly appears on podcasts, has won numerous book awards, and was also able to fully fund a $16,000 kickstarter campaign thanks to her marketing efforts. Now she’s working on more books and is very confident in her approach. Once you create a marketing strategy for your book and business, you don’t have the reinvent the wheel each time. With consistent implementation, your business can continue to grow just like Sara’s has.

Melanie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

In my career I have always helped amplify the stories of others. my first job out of college was as a publicist in Hollywood walking A-list and B-list celebrities down red carpets, attending movie premieres and writing press releases to secure their media coverage. I then earned a master’s in journalism and worked as a radio news anchor and reporter. As a journalist, I found that my favorite stories were those which allowed me to give a voice to the voiceless – from children who attended bereavement camp to military veterans whose stories were almost lost. Their stories moved me and deserved to be shared with the world (or at least the listeners in Central Pennsylvania).

When I was laid off from my radio job at 5 months pregnant, my mission shifted. Entrepreneurship came calling and I resolved to design and manufacture clothing for breastfeeding moms that was fashionable and functional. So in a way it was giving clothes to the clothesless. I grew the company each year and sold my designs on Nordstrom.com, Amazon and in boutiques across North America. Then in the 7th year of business, I hired a so-called “marketing expert” and that was the beginning of the end.

The marketer belittled me, berated me, and took my money to the tune of $25,000. It became too hard from me to continue the business. My heart was no longer in it. I couldn’t even open the door to my home office without getting a sinking feeling in my stomach. Within the year I had closed up shop.

It took a bit for me to I had some decisions to make. Should I go back to the 9-to-5 or continue the entrepreneurial journey?

The latter won by a long shot when I did some soul searching. I realized that my new venture would be to help entrepreneurs with their marketing in a supportive way. Within a year, I niched down even further. Now I solely help nonfiction and children’s book authors publish their books and develop a customized marketing strategy to grow their business with their book.

I am a book marketing and publishing strategist for nonfiction and children’s book authors who want to grow their business and know that a book will help them do that. My clients are coaches, consultants, and experts, worldwide, who want to amplify their message and authority. I help them helping them publish and promote a book that they can leverage for speaking, media opportunities and new revenue streams as well as book sales.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

One book that has greatly inspired me in my entrepreneurial journey is The Go-Giver, from
authors Bob Burg and John David Mann. It’s
a parable that illustrates the importance of
integrity and giving. It is one of the books I
keep close by so I can refer back often.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My first job out of graduate school was working as an afternoon news anchor and general assignment reporter at a radio news station in central Pennsylvania. I was the only woman in a newsroom of men and felt like a fish out of water coming from LA to a small city of just 50,000 people. Some of the in-depth reports included stories such as a story on a camp for young children who had lost a parent or sibling, a series on the wives of senatorial candidates, and a three-part story on teens stuck in the Pennsylvania foster care system. I’m proud to say that these stories garnered journalism awards, but the most rewarding part was the gratitude from those featured in the stories. Around my second year at the station, my husband and I started talking about having children. I knew that having a baby would be frowned upon, so we waited to start trying until a nonelection year. I reasoned that at least my three-month maternity leave would not interfere with election reporting. When I was five months pregnant with my first child, I was abruptly laid off from the station. At that point in my life, my entire identity had been wrapped up in being a journalist, and without that position, I felt like I was nothing. What’s more, reporters from other news outlets began calling me to ask why I had been laid off so they could include it in their outlets. I had become the story. As luck would have it, I was not unemployed for long. The
local newspaper scooped me up and brought me on to cover an inner-city school district with serious budgetary woes. So, I still got to report and give a voice to the voiceless.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://vipbookmarketing.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vipbookmarketing/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melherschorn
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-herschorn/

Image Credits
Karianne Munstedt Photography