Write Yourself Right Out Of Your Funk
July 29th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, Book Business Consultant, Your Book Is Your Hook
www.YourBookIsYourHook.com
The other day I was in a funk about something that happened in my business the day before. It happens to all of us from time to time – and yes, it does happen to me.
The next day I attended a very early networking meetings that started at 7:00 a.m. as a substitute for one of the group members who had gone away on vacation.
I rode the New York City subway into town and wrote my heart and soul out in a blog article for the website, NY Entrepreneur Week and the Relentless Foundation, which I write for regularly.
I wrote the article as a message to myself and as one for any business person who might find themselves in a funk after something unexpected turned their life or business upside down.
The article I wrote is appropriately titled: “Everything Is Going to Be Okay.”
Here I was on the train at the unbelievable hour of 6 o’clock in the morning wondering why I was putting myself through the effort to get to this meeting when I was just feeling so blue and down.
I knew my blog article was due that day so I chose to write myself a message to lift my spirits and to encourage me to set my sights on the good things ahead at the meeting that morning and for the next phase in my business.
So I wrote my article and in the process…I wrote myself right out of my funk! And I felt great and excited to be at the meeting when I got there.
The best part of all of this happened on the subway ride home after my terrific time at the meeting. A woman from Manhattan who was in the same train car with me, which was pretty empty, came over and sat in the seat next to me.
She was nervous and a bit stressed out from her Internet not working that morning and her travels on the train into Brooklyn to attend a networking meeting of her own in the middle of the day. I was a little unnerved by her coming over to sit down by me when the whole train car was pretty much empty. But I sat still and minded my own business until she asked me what the next stop was and told me about herself and her stress-filled day.
She was an executive coach and leadership development specialist who was not clear about where her stop was on the train in Brooklyn. I found out where she was going and then I introduced myself and told her that I was a writer, best-selling author, speaker, radio show host and a book consultant for other authors and writers.
She looked back at me stunned – and delighted.
I told her I had just written a blog article for someone like her in her stressful situation and I asked her if she wanted me to read it to her. She was thrilled – and really, so was I.
I watched the stops on the train for her so she could just listen and enjoy the article without worrying about missing her stop.
As I read the blog article, “Everything Is Going to Be Okay,” to her, I noticed that she smiled and laughed to herself and even chuckled with me about some of it as one entrepreneur to another.
By the time we reached her stop, she had a totally different demeanor and was ready to get to her own networking meeting.
We exchanged cards just as we arrived at her stop. She said she recognized my name from somewhere and confessed that she wanted to write a book herself.
She said she’d be in touch and happily got off the train at her right stop to go off to her meeting in Brooklyn. She also asked me to send her a copy of the article as she wanted to have it to read again.
It was such a pleasure to support her with the article I had just written to get myself out of my own funk and to see its effect on her and how it will benefit others who read it.
Later on, I received an email from her thanking me for being her Angel on the train that day. I had sent her an email letting her know I had enjoyed meeting her and that I hoped she had had a great meeting too – just like I did that day as a result of the article.
You never really know what an article can do for you and others until you write it.
Next time you’re blue and down about something that happened in your business or life, take a few minutes and write yourself right out of your funk like I did.
It’s cathartic, therapeutic and can make a difference for you and so many others when you choose to share it with the world.
You Can Do It!
Tell me about a funk you wrote yourself out of by leaving a comment below. I’d love to hear about your humanity and how you touched the lives of others with your article.
© 2010 Jennifer S. Wilkov. All Rights Reserved.
Jennifer S. Wilkov: Media personality, host and producer of the #1 radio talk show “Your Book Is Your Hook!” on WomensRadio. Jennifer is a best-selling award-winning author who has been published five times, an award-winning freelance writer and a respected book business consultant in her business by the same name, “Your Book Is Your Hook!” She has both self-published and been published by a traditional publisher. Jennifer has been called the quintessential writer and teacher for the 21st century. She supports first-time and seasoned authors in their book writing, publishing and marketing endeavors through coaching and training in her “Your Book Is Your Hook!” consulting practice. www.YourBookIsYourHook.com www.JenniferSWilkov.com
Harlequin Nonfiction’s Executive Editor and “The Menopause Makeover”
July 26th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, host of the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show on WomensRadio
www.yourbookisyourhook.com
This week on the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show, Deborah Brody, Executive Editor of Harlequin’s Nonfiction Program, will talk with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov about Harlequin’s successful foray into nonfiction after a long, successful history of publishing novels loved by women everywhere.
Ms. Brody will discuss her own experiences from her successful career in the publishing world and how she came to lead this program for Harlequin a few years ago. She talks about the realities of the industry along with her perspective of its future. She will also provide sound advice for authors wanting to publish nonfiction material today and guidance for how to best work with an editor at a publishing house.
Staness Jonekos will talk about her book, The Menopause Makeover: The Ultimate Guide to Taking 
Control of Your Health and Beauty During Menopause, with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov. Ms. Jonekos will reveal how she came to write her book as a result of her own true life experience with menopause while planning her wedding. She will discuss what it took for her to write and prepare herself and her book for the publishing industry as well as how she came to Harlequin and Deborah Brody as Executive Editor. She will also talk about how she is now using her book as her hook to transform the lives of women everywhere and empower them during this unavoidable life event.
The Truth About Where Books Come From
July 26th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, host of the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show on WomensRadio
www.yourbookisyourhook.com
As authors and writers, we’re always learning about resources and industry tools that we can use to improve our book project performance and the enjoyment of our writing and marketing experiences. Today let’s talk about the truth about where books come from.
You know, it’s like “the talk” about where babies come from. After all, our books are our babies, aren’t they? And subsequently don’t they also become the babies of our literary agent, publisher, editor and publicist?
But they have to start somewhere and that somewhere is with someone – like you.
Books are born from aspects of our life experiences – from our “story.” They emanate from our fascination with life, creativity, imagination and our humanity. They are seared into our hearts and bubble up in our souls as something we become determined to write about and share with others.
Many books these days are coming from these real life stories. In fact, as Deborah Brody, the Executive Editor at Harlequin Nonfiction said during her interview on the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show this week, something like 60% of books being published these days are nonfiction.
Like Staness Jonekos, Harlequin author of the book, The Menopause Makeover: The Ultimate Guide to Taking Control Of Your Health and Beauty During Menopause, authors are experiencing life and looking for resources when life events strike because that’s what we do. We look for a book about what’s happening to us. We figure someone else must have written about that so I could use their guidance. Like Staness, when we find there is no such resource or book, we have to live through the situation and circumstance first, find the answer and then dig down deep and make a huge commitment to humanity that we will write and share it with others. That way when they go to the book shelf, they’ll find what we were originally looking for and find the book we wish we had found there.
I know this journey personally as an author myself. That’s what I’ve done: provided good books that I saw were needed by myself and others to support individuals living through a situation or circumstance that I had had myself. In my most recent book, Boys Before Business: The Single Girl’s Guide to Having It All, I lived through the process of really finding Mr. Right after feeling like I had read all the books about it and still found myself alone. That journey alongside my co-author opened up a whole world of insights and information for us that we felt compelled to share with the other women in our lives that we knew who were successful in business like we were but that were also alone with no one to share their lives with, just like we had been.
It’s not important that there are other books in the category and subject matter on the shelf. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never written anything before resembling a book or even an article. It’s not required. What is required is you and your desire to write it.
Even fiction and children’s books burble up from the course of our lives. Just look at bestselling novelist Nicholas Sparks, who writes about his own life and shares it with others through fiction that resembles what he’s seen, heard and felt himself.
And when an adult takes on a fascination for the love between a child and her fluffy stuffed animal toy, he writes about it even when he’s been an engineer all his life. That’s what Mike McRitchie did with his first book entitled, Best Friends, a self-published book that he wrote after watching a little girl in the airport drag her stuffed bunny everywhere with her and subsequently asked his 11 year old daughter, Cathleen, to illustrate the book when he was done writing it.
We often say that life imitates art. In the book world and as an author, art imitates life.
Think about your life and the last time you went looking for a book about something you were experiencing or were interested in. Was it there on the shelf? Did you wish there was another book that was more in the style and structure you’d like to read? Were you willing to write it when it wasn’t there or did you settle for what you found and left the thought of writing a book behind?
It is the authors that have the courage and fortitude to take on the challenge of sharing that aspect of their story after they’ve lived through it and who invest their time and energy to craft the solution they wish they’d had. They stay the course, put their hearts and souls into learning the process and follow the path to get it published so you, the next person in the same predicament, can find it.
John Steinbeck said: “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.”
Contrary to John Steinbeck, who I love and have admired for years, what you are writing could very well be the most important thing in the world – to your reader.
And so… that’s where books come from: the hearts, souls, spirits and, more often than not, the real lives of the authors.
The next time you find yourself staring at the bookshelf in the bookseller or online and can’t seem to find the book you’re looking for, remember that it could be a sign that it’s your time to become an author and that your baby, I mean book, is about to be born.
Suzy Welch and Highlights from the WBENC 2010 Annual Conference
July 20th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, host of the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show on WomensRadio
www.yourbookisyourhook.com
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This week on the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show, Suzy Welch, bestselling author and keynote speaker during the Women Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) 2010 Annual Conference, will talk live from the conference with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov about her bestselling book and winning philosophy, 10-10-10: A Fast and Powerful Way to Get Unstuck in Love, At Work and With Your Family, which was the subject of her keynote speech.
Ms. Welch will also discuss her experiences with writing including what it was like for her to write the Winning books with her husband, Jack Welch, and how unique this opportunity was for her.
WBENC member and author, Julie Lenzer Kirk, will talk about her book, The ParentPreneur: What 
Parenting Teaches About Building A Successful Business, with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov during the show. She will reveal how even the most humbling of experiences as a parent can be leveraged as a business lesson and skill builder. Ms. Lenzer Kirk will also discuss how she got published and how she’s using her book as her hook.
Of note: these interviews were recorded live during the Women Business Enterprise National Council, or WBENC, 2010 Annual Conference on June 23rd, 2010, held in Baltimore, MD, at the Baltimore Convention Center.
.Grace Your Life With The Title of Author
July 20th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, host of the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show on WomensRadio
www.yourbookisyourhook.com
As authors and writers, we’re always learning about resources and industry tools that we can use to improve our book project performance and the enjoyment of our writing and marketing experiences. Today let’s talk about your life with the title of author.
When you become an author, you add the rare title of “author” to your business card, resume and marketing pitch.
More importantly than all this, you add value to others by sharing what you know and love through the incomparable venue of a book. Great content that educates, entertains and enlightens others makes your investment in writing it – and the reader’s investment of time and energy to read it – worth it.
When you belong to an organization like WBENC, the Women Business Enterprise National Council, and you become an author, you are distinguished as an even greater contributor to the organization and community. As an author, your prominence amidst the other members shines bright. You also bring great positive press to the organization as well by including your membership status in your author bio.
It is irrelevant if you choose to self-publish, pay someone to publish you or go the traditional route and get a literary agent so you can reach the larger publishing houses.
As an author, you may not only become a leader in your community and organization, you become a Thought Leader.
As a member of the organization you belong to and the community with which you are affiliated, I encourage you to join the ranks of the small percentage who ever write and publish their books.
Not only will you contribute to your organization as a member, you’ll make a bigger contribution to the Greater Good.
Replicate Yourself to Leave Your Legacy
July 16th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, Book Business Consultant, Your Book Is Your Hook
www.YourBookIsYourHook.com
Recently Soul Dancer, host of the radio show “Pay Me What I’m Worth,” asked me: “How do you replicate yourself?”
These days, I’m online and offline and many have said, “You’re everywhere.”
As leaders in the growth industries, we are dedicated to serving as many people as we possibly can and supporting the changes they choose to make in their lives in the best ways we know how.
Think about it: how do you replicate yourself now? How will people access what you know and believe today and also years from now when you’re no longer here to share it in person?
When you think of replicating yourself, I encourage you to focus on the legacy you want to leave.
Do the activities and create those things that will touch the lives of many for the rest of your life – and beyond.
Do them online and offline. Make them meaningful. Your passion and enthusiasm for them will shine through.
I’m a big fan of books – it’s no secret! I really do believe that your book is your hook.
We continue to read and re-read so many works of people who are dead and no longer here. Yet, their legacies, ideas, practices and stories live on. Authors such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hemingway, Shelley, Bronte, Wharton, Woolf, Stowe, Alcott, Austen, Dickinson, Capote, Dickens, Eliot, Fitzgerald, James, Lewis, Orwell, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Tolstoy and Twain might be there alongside others.
Charles Dickens, as an example, in his day wanted to express the social conscience he saw that was missing. In the society he lived in, he spoke of responsibility and ideas for how one individual could be a good citizen within the community that they lived. After all, he was the one who said, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Take a minute right now to marvel at how many dead people you have “living” on your bookshelf these days. Interesting, isn’t it? Even our kids are reading the works of dead people from their summer reading list because what they wrote was so darn good. It made a difference then and it’s still touching lives today.
Look at your favorite religion, whichever one it may be. The legacy of the beliefs are housed somewhere in a book. Jews have the Torah. Christians of all kinds have the New Testament. Followers of Islam have the Qur’an, and so on. The original writers are dead, yet they left a legacy that could be passed on and shared in so many ways – these days online and offline.
As a Thought Leader, consider how you can best replicate yourself and make your teachings and ideas accessible to others. Some will be offered for free and for the masses. Others will pay a fee and invest their valuable time and money to work more closely with you in order to absorb and integrate your best practices into their businesses and beliefs – and benefit greatly.
Choose wisely and replicate purposefully.
We’ll all reap the rewards for many years to come – and so will you.
You Can Do It!
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© 2010 Jennifer S. Wilkov. All Rights Reserved.
Jennifer S. Wilkov: Media personality, host and producer of the #1 radio talk show “Your Book Is Your Hook!” on WomensRadio. Jennifer is a best-selling award-winning author who has been published five times, an award-winning freelance writer and a respected book business consultant in her business by the same name, “Your Book Is Your Hook!” She has both self-published and been published by a traditional publisher. Jennifer has been called the quintessential writer and teacher for the 21st century. She supports first-time and seasoned authors in their book writing, publishing and marketing endeavors through coaching and training in her “Your Book Is Your Hook!” consulting practice. www.YourBookIsYourHook.com www.JenniferSWilkov.com
Publisher Dominique Raccah of Sourcebooks & Ken Corday, Executive Producer of “Days of Our Lives” And Now Author With His New Memoir
July 13th, 2010
By Jennifer S. Wilkov, host of the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show on WomensRadio
www.yourbookisyourhook.com
This week on the “Your Book Is Your Hook!” Show, Dominique Raccah, the publisher of Sourcebooks and the 
co-chair of the Book Industry Study Group will talk with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov about how she started her publishing company, Sourcebooks, now the largest book publishing company in Chicago, and the approach she takes with authors to publish and support their projects.
Raccah will discuss her perspective of the future of the book publishing industry, her outlook on the impact of digital publishing and important advice for authors when crafting and writing their books.
She will also inform listeners about the Book Industry Study Group, its efforts to navigate the industry changes that are affecting the supply chain and the constant challenge that publishers face in getting the right book at the right time into the right consumer’s hands for them to read and enjoy.
Ken Corday, the executive producer of NBC’s long-running, popular 
daytime drama, Days of Our Lives, will also discuss his memoir entitled, The Days Of Our Lives: The True Story of One Family’s Dream and The Untold History of “Days of Our Lives,” with radio personality and host Jennifer S. Wilkov during the show. He will reveal the humble beginnings of Days of Our Lives and his own experience with coming onto the show as a teenager, first as a composer before joining the ranks of the producers.
Corday will talk about why he wrote the memoir now, how he got published and why he chose Sourcebooks to publish the book. He will also share a few favorite memories from working on the show and how he is using his book as his hook.
