Writing this article has turned out to be a reflective time for me, as I don’t think I’ve thought of myself as someone who means business. Rather, I see myself as someone who simply enjoys a challenge. Each time I achieve a goal, I then get to set another one. The next one is always more challenging than anything I’ve done before, and I love it.
When I began my career in publishing, I worked in corporate America, specifically in the tech industry, and enjoyed solving the various puzzles of streamlining processes. While I worked to understand the business deeper and deeper, I not only dreamed of owning my own company but also dreamed of being an author. For me, these were originally two very separate goals. My writing friends were the ones who opened my eyes to the idea that the two could be combined. Now I had a new challenge: building a publishing company.
It was 2019 when I started Creativity Untamed, and I was lucky to get started in a time where so much solid advice was available from people who had figured out the path to self-publishing and who wanted to share that knowledge. Sure, I had to do the hard work, the research, and make sure I didn’t miss any steps. But that so many people made themselves available to answer questions, share documents, and more, made my path so much easier than it would have been. It made me fall in love with our little branch of the publishing industry because there were so many people uplifting one another.
I immediately published a fun short story of horror I named Paramortal. I published it first because it was edited and ready to go. Plus, I needed to figure out not only what I knew, but what I didn’t know, and the way for me to find out was to jump in. Once I had one publication under my belt, I started working on my novella series, The Habitual Humanity series and my novel, The Sinister Strand.
At this point in my new career, it was time to set a new goal. I haven’t stopped writing, but I also started helping other authors to publish, therefore expanding Creativity Untamed into an exclusive hybrid publisher. My dream here was clear: to build the business of my dreams with a team of people who want to help others and want room for their talents to shine. With my team of amazing creatives around me, I began helping other authors to achieve their goals of publication.
And I love it. I love helping other authors find the courage and path to make their dream a reality. I enjoyed it so much I took the vision even further. In 2021, I founded The Atlanta Self-Publishing Conference, a local Georgia conference focused on helping self-published and aspiring to be self-published writers. When I hear from people I’ve helped through that conference, I feel an immense sense of accomplishment. And I’ve also gotten to work with incredibly intelligent people within our industry. Truly, working on the conference has been the most rewarding experience of my professional career.
As I sit back and think about the journey I’ve taken to this point, I’m still in amazement to those who helped to lift complete strangers and teach them how to build their own brand new careers. I’m inspired by their selflessness and their own focus on success.
This gratitude I feel has led to my next endeavor: creating a new type of platform to help people build or improve their independent publishing businesses. I’ve started The Speakeasy Authors Community, which is an online community for independent authors to learn directly from multiple professionals, have monthly webinars to build their skills or connect with professionals they can trust and hire, and network with one another. And The Speakeasy Authors Community will offer an online conference that welcomes everyone and provides affordable access to good information about our industry.
So maybe I do mean business. Or maybe, I just really love the written word and helping people. Stories truly are magic and so is uplifting one another. I can’t think of a better endeavor than to spread magic.
Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers.
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