Today we’d like to introduce you to Cindy Childress.
Cindy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’d always wanted to be a writer, and it seemed like I was choosing a different path in 2008 when I finished my Ph.D. and then joined my new husband for his oil and gas job in Malaysia. We were in Southeast Asia for seven years, and during that time I was President of two expatriate women’s clubs and did corporate sponsorships, memberships, project management, and of course, writing and editing. All unpaid, volunteer work.
When we returned to the U.S., I had a seven-year work gap, and I couldn’t even get an interview at nonprofits, marketing firms, or lastly, office temp agencies. I felt like my degree had been for nothing and that my best days might be behind me, and I was only in my mid-30s.
Then, I saw an ad for personal trainers, and since I’ve lost 80 lbs and kept it off–for 18 years to date–and run two marathons and countless half-marathons and 10K’s, I applied. I was hired and became a superstar at phone conversions and was quickly promoted to supervise the phone center and do quality control on the 1-800 number. They asked if I could do technical writing, and I created a sales manual and other teaching materials for them.
By the end of 2016, I had done all the writing they really needed, and I launched Childress Business Communication to write for other businesses. At first, I thought I would do more manuals, but my first clients were entrepreneurs, and I did copywrite until a friend of mine needed her book edited. She was very happy with my work, and I realized that as good as I had made her book, I could’ve made it even better if I’d been there from the start, and that’s when my ghostwriting service took off.
Has it been a smooth road?
It’s been a challenge to pivot to book services only. For two years, I was only talking about ghostwriting in my marketing, and actually, my sales page copywriting was supplementing the book work. Still, I believed in myself and kept niching down to become known for my work with books. It was very scary to tell a happy client that I wasn’t going to offer to renew his newsletter/blog package, but I knew that was what I had to do to make more room for the books.
At first, I was meeting clients in coffee shops when they were local to Houston. After about a year, a client got food poisoning at the cafe I’d chosen. I helped her to the restroom and got the staff to clean the area while she was tidying herself, and I was in a panic. I had already started to feel unprofessional without a quiet place to meet, and that incident was the tipping point that pushed me to get an office at We Work. That was the first significant monthly overhead I took on, but having the office makes it easy for me to meet with clients, have a quiet place to work, and network with the other entrepreneurs so I’m less isolated.
I also used to have a staff of four people working with me as writers, editors, and admin staff. Now, it’s just my VA, one contractor, and me. When I decided not to replace my staff, but instead go it alone, I pivoted from a boutique writing agency to a VIP freelancer with a waitlist. I found that I could be more choosy about the jobs I take because I’m not worried about giving employees hours or making payroll. Although it takes a lot of time to do all the work myself, I have more control over the timeline than when I sent my teamwork to be done and then had to get it back and fix it to varying degrees, depending on the quality.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Expert’s Ghostwriter story. Tell us more about it.
I’m The Expert’s Ghostwriter and a publishing consultant for coaches and consultants with transformational stories who want to create a legacy in content. As a ghostwriter, three of my clients’ books hit Amazon bestseller lists in the past two years. With their books, my clients have gotten TEDx Talks, built coaching businesses, created nonprofits, and launched international movements.
As a publishing consultant, I work with aspiring writers to help you shape your ideas into a book that will attract and inspire your readers. I developed my Write My Book BlueprintTM framework to create a reading experience that encourages reviews and word of mouth and turns readers into lifelong fans of the author.
What makes me different from other ghostwriters is that I approach writing with the reader in mind first, which comes from my P.h D. in English when I studied literary theory and creative writing. Most tend to start with what do you want to write about. I dig in there as well for sure, and I find it much easier to do so when the audience is narrowed down so we’re only considering what you want to say to that one person as if you’re inside their head. I also encourage slightly longer books, so if you’ve heard of book writing packages for 7K words, mine is usually at least 30K and up to 60-80K words–more like any other book you would pick up at Barnes and Noble.
I also offer a Get My Book started package in which we decide your target audience, goals as an author, and do a brain dump of all your best ideas to share with the reader, from which I derive your Table of Contents. Some clients find that this is all they need to get a book started, while others like to stay and have me ghostwrite for them, which consists of an interviewing and editing process to create a polished manuscript ready to be formatted into your book.
I support clients across the US and in Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway, and the UK through virtual meetings, retreats, and writing services, so you can work with me in a teacher-student way as well. In October 2019, I’ll host my annual Write Your Bestseller in Paris retreat for authors, and I have just two spots left. I started the retreat to help people who want to write a book themselves and were coming to me for guidance, not to write the book for them. It wasn’t enough for me to offer to edit, so I put together this 3-day retreat for them.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
You can probably already see that nonfiction books published in the last year or two are becoming more and more conversational and informal in tone, and I expect that to continue as well as intensify. As annoying as that is for grammar sticklers, it’s a sign of the times. There’s still going to be a place for books to do what blogs don’t–in terms of going into more detail and connecting the ideas together to have a clear, coherent theme sustained across 40-80K words. At the same time, authors will have to go with the flow and use more subject headings and bullet points to write in the way readers expect to read digitally, which means skimming. I teach a way to choose your reader as a “fast food reader” who wants short chapters with quick wins, a “grazing reader” who’s happy to scroll through several pages and stop and go as it suits them, or you have the “binge reader” that wants your ideas no matter how you serve them, so long as you keep it consistent.
I definitely see self-publishing here to stay for the foreseeable future, I can’t imagine Amazon changing something that would majorly negatively impact that industry, but even if they did, there are enough other players, as well as a strong demand and supply, so I think being able to make yourself an author and readers not limiting themselves to the big publishing houses is here for the long haul.
Pricing:
- Ghostwriting starts at $17K
- Book Editing starts at $3K
- Write Your Book in Paris Retreat $4950
Contact Info:
- Address: 2700 Post Oak BLVD 21st Floor
Houston, TX 77007 - Website: www.iwritebestsellers.com
- Email: cindy@dr-cindy.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/cindychildressphd
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/cindychildressphd
- Other: LinkedIn Personal: Linkedin.com/in/cindychildressphd
Image Credit:
Jeremy Permenter, Kerry Gorelick
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