We were lucky to catch up with Tim Jacobs recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Tim, thanks for joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

When I started, it was five editors and myself. We offered editing and proofreading, and that was it. At that time, I was living in Southwest Florida and had connections to many writing groups. Collectively, close to 800 writers, who all at one time or another would need editing. The good news is we were busy and having fun.

Once I started to connect with the publishers, I saw that they needed ghostwriters as well as editors. So, I teamed up with a few exceptional writers and began to offer ghostwriting services in addition to editing and proofreading.

Everything gradually grew from there. I discovered that authors who were self-publishing liked one-stop shopping. Only having to deal with one person made them more comfortable and trusting of the process. So, we brought on book designers, cover designers, and marketing teams.

Now, JWC Publishing is a small, niche hybrid publisher offering authors complete packages so they can write, edit, design, market, and publish their book with confidence.

Tim, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Believe it or not, I got into publishing because of Kindle. Shortly after the Kindle was released in 2007, I received one for Christmas. At that time, I didn’t really know or understand what ebooks were. As I explored Kindle, I fell in love with the fact you could find authors you would never otherwise hear of. However, I also soon realized that many authors uploaded their work bypassing the most important step – editing.

So, being the president of a large writing group (200+ members), I knew a handful of great editors. I drew up a 1-page business plan for an editorial service for authors. After sharing this with them asking for feedback, they all said it was a good idea and they all wanted to be on the team. Thus, Jacobs Writing Consultants, LLC was born. Later, it would become JWC Publishing as we grew and added other services to complete the process of writing and publishing a book.

Now, our main focus is business books for business owners. We enjoy working with coaches, speakers, CEOs, etc., writing and publishing their stories. They leverage their book to gain clients, land speaking engagements, and further their brand. Instead of selling their books for $15/ea., they give their book away as a lead magnet and this is how they draw in new clients and scale.

We’ve had clients create coaching programs from their book; a real estate brokage firm generated $250K from their book, motivational speakers who have upped their fee for speaking, and a salesman who double his leads from his book.

A book is not a hidden secret, it’s a must-have resource for your business.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One major pivot was going from editing/proofreading to full scale publishing. One of our clients (a hybrid publisher) was need of ghostwriting services, which we didn’t supply. Once I realized that being the president of such a large writing group, and having many writers in my contacts, I could easily accommodate the publisher. After that, I just keep scaling and I still am.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

One of my business partners is Susie Schaefer, publisher of Finish The Book Publishing. We met at a publishers mastermind group and remained connected on social media. When I realized a couple of years ago that I need a marketing person and someone who can handle things like registering ISBN, LNCC, uploading files to Amazon, etc., I had no clue who to reach out to. So, I hopped onto LinkedIn and was going to put my feelers out. As my LI page loaded, the first post to pop up was by Susie. I was like, “Duh! Why didn’t I think of her?” I picked up my phone and called her letting her know what/who I was looking for and she said, “Let’s do this!” We’ve since done a dozen books and currently have another three in the works. It’s a great feeling to hand off projects to someone and have that peace of mind everything will get taken care of.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jacobswc.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timjacobsghostwriter/
• Other: Substack: https://substack.com/@timjacobs3

Image Credits

All photos courtesy of Tim Jacobs