November 28, 2023 • 12 mins
Starting and growing a business is, for Rebeca Seitz, similar to being a parent. The nexus of it grows quietly, in darkness, tucked away from the public eye for a long period of time. Only a handful of others know that it's there, steadily gaining traction. Then, the quiet time is over. Life is brought into this world with a lot of pain and joy. As the weeks, months, and years peel off the calendar, the new being receives her time, talent, efforts, love, and care.
Rebeca spent many months in quiet with it, working out its details in scores of spreadsheets and summary statements, sharing it with a small handful of trusted people. On November November 20, she shared this new business baby on TikTok and Facebook. And now, with this podcast, you get a front-row seat to Raising Rebeca Books.
Rebeca spent many months in quiet with it, working out its details in scores of spreadsheets and summary statements, sharing it with a small handful of trusted people. On November November 20, she shared this new business baby on TikTok and Facebook. And now, with this podcast, you get a front-row seat to Raising Rebeca Books.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[MUSIC]
(00:08):
Welcome to the first episode of Raising Rebecca Books,
the Birth of a Publishing House.
This is the audio story of me, Rebeca Seitz,
building a traditional royalty-paying publishing house from the ground up,
told to you as it unfolds.
For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death, wait, never mind,
that's a different story.
(00:28):
My intention is to record every week, documenting the process and experience
of building this publishing line that is an expansion to my existing media company,
the 1C Story Network.
I plan to share the good as well as the bad, the triumphs as well as the losses.
(00:49):
Rebeca Books is not the first business I've built.
I'm familiar with the arduous yet exhilarating task that lies before me,
and I'm crazy enough to be excited about it.
Starting and growing a business is, for me, similar to being a parent.
The nexus of it grows quietly, in darkness,
tucked away from the public eye for a long period of time.
(01:11):
Only a handful of others and I knew that it was there, steadily gaining traction.
Then, the quiet time is over.
Life is brought into this world with a lot of pain and joy,
and thank the goddess, Pain Killers.
My first one came with three days of labor,
followed by an emergency c-section, honey.
(01:33):
Anyway, as the weeks, months and years peel off the calendar,
the new being receives my time, talent, efforts, love and care.
Today, my son is 18, and my daughter is 15.
I call them my pride and joy.
They are the two best things I have ever done with my life,
and I've already made this world a better place because I put them in it.
(01:53):
But anyway, that's a different story.
This one is about Rebeca Books.
I spent many months in quiet with it,
working out its details in scores of spreadsheets,
and let me tell you, I hate little boxes with numbers.
Anyway, scores of spreadsheets, summary statements, vision statements,
mission statements, all kinds of things,
(02:14):
sharing it only with a small handful of trusted people.
On November 20th, I shared on TikTok and Facebook
about this new business baby of mine.
And now, with this podcast, you get a front-row seat to raising Rebeca Books.
You're listening to Raising Rebeca Books,
(02:36):
the birth of a publishing house on the One C Story Network.
One C is made possible in part by the support of the following sponsor.
[MUSIC]
So how is it that a woman born on the family farm in Tennessee
finds herself 45 years later, living in one of the wealthiest beach towns in the world,
(03:01):
and starting a publishing house for women 40 and over?
Well, okay, we don't have time for that entire story.
The pertinent highlights are these.
I started in book publishing 20 years ago as the first dedicated fiction publicist
at Thomas Nelson Publishers.
It's a top 10 publishing company, and now it's a division of HarperCollins.
From there, I founded a literary PR firm focused on story-driven books.
(03:24):
We did novels and biographies and memoirs.
The firm, which was named Glass Road for the road that that family farm set on,
worked with dozens of publishing houses and represented hundreds of books.
We took writers from debut to bestseller,
from a few thousand copies sold to that amazing one million copies sold,
(03:45):
It was a fast-paced, fun time.
From there, I helped found and lead a nonprofit that was focused on stories that would impact society in a positive way.
At SON Studios, we developed films, television shows, and books.
In my six years there, we helped bring over a dozen films to market.
(04:07):
We shot a television pilot that was based on one of my own novellas,
and we secured contracts for writers at publishing houses,
and we educated thousands of would-be entertainment and publishing industry workers.
It, too, was a crazy, incredible experience.
During all of those years, leading companies, five of my novels were traditionally published.
(04:28):
I wrote a memoir that was released with its film counterpart at a really fun red carpet event in New York.
I wrote two more memoirs for other people.
I wrote and published two novellas, wrote a ton of feature articles about successful startup CEOs for an entrepreneur magazine,
which was kind of like getting an MBA, but for free.
Anyway, I also became a best-selling writer, which was cool.
Then, in 2019, I founded 1C Productions to grow a podcast library of story-driven shows.
(04:54):
Most of them are scripted stories that we bring them to life with sound effects and music and voice actors from all over the world.
Now, why am I telling you all of this?
Here's why.
Because I think everything that came before in my life brought me to and prepared me for
the journey of raising Rebeca Books.
(05:15):
I know how to run a publishing house because I have worked inside and alongside major and minor ones for 20 years.
I learned how to successfully start companies by listening to the subjects of those articles that I wrote
and putting their wisdom into practice in other startups.
I honed my ability to spot a story that will sell by crafting and executing hundreds of promotional campaigns for them,
(05:39):
selling millions of copies of books.
And I know what it's like to be a writer, placing your baby in the hands of others and hoping that it'll all work out.
Speaking of writers, I've crafted the Rebeca Books plan in such a way to compensate them better than current standards.
First, our royalty rates are higher than the industry standard.
(06:00):
And that's good. I'm proud of that, but it didn't feel like enough.
I felt like something more was needed to address the imbalance between corporate profit and writer compensation.
So at Rebeca Books, writers are included in that corporate profit.
Each year, 10% of profit is distributed equally amongst the writers whose books were released in the previous 12 months.
(06:23):
Backlist writers whose titles sold at least 2,000 copies in those 12 months are also included in the distribution.
In this way, writers not only profit from the sale of their individual books, but they also profit from being here
within the writing community of Rebeca Books.
Now look, I don't know if this will be able to go beyond 10%.
I honestly, I would like it to be beyond 10%.
(06:45):
But since I couldn't find any other house that was doing this, I had no precedent to consult.
All I could do was work this idea into the gojillions of tiny boxes filled with numbers in the business plan.
And lo and behold, it worked.
So we're starting at 10%.
To be clear, Rebeca Books is a traditional royalty-paying publishing house.
(07:08):
Our authors do not pay for any portion of the publishing, distribution, or promotion of their books.
Now, let's talk a bit about what types of writers and content fit Rebeca Books.
We're looking for writers who identify as women and who are 40 years old and beyond.
We publish only two genres, business and romance, the two sides of a woman, right?
(07:32):
In both instances, the books should be about women who are 40 and over.
For the business line, we want women who have tested and lived the ideas that they want to transmit.
Readers should be able to look at your life path and see the outcome of what you're recommending or sharing.
In my career, I've noticed that we women tend to go about business differently than our male counterparts.
(07:54):
It's those differences that I want to highlight and capture.
The way we communicate with our coworkers, our employees, contractors, and superiors.
The way our non-working lives, the personal, the spiritual, how that impacts our working lives,
for good or for ill. The holistic approach to living that many of us take.
The ability to set and maintain healthy boundaries.
(08:16):
The talent of navigating male-dominated, male-driven, male-created industries and workplaces.
All of this and so much more is needed in the Pantheon of Business Books.
Each of us women, we get up every day, we enter into an industry that most often
was created by men and is led by men. We have learned how to thrive there.
(08:39):
Some of us have learned what to take away from it and then create our own spaces.
Rebeca Books is looking to publish the wisdom that we've built in that process.
Whether you're thriving in their marketplace or you've created your own,
that's the wisdom we want to capture here.
Our business writers are also eligible for our speakers bureau services, but I'll get into that
(09:00):
in a different episode. On the romance side, we're looking for stories with color and shape.
Round, short, tall, angular, different, divergent, black, brown, white, the rainbow,
in whatever way that women show up in this world, in all the ways that women show up in this world,
we want to publish stories about the romances of those lives.
(09:22):
In addition to a diversity of outward appearance and the corresponding arrays of inner systems
and beliefs that brings, we want heroines who are 40 and over.
So you need to be a writer who is a woman 40 and over and your heroine needs to be 40 and over.
Those kinds of romances necessarily include elements that younger heroine stories do not.
(09:46):
You know, things like children from a previous relationship or the presence of an ex-husband or two.
Scars and growth from maturing beyond the immature relationship experience.
And yet maybe still not the expert on all things love.
Mid-career, late-career, or retired status, falling back in love with an existing spouse,
(10:06):
awakening to life and love in new ways that were previously inaccessible due to fear, culture,
or old-value systems that we've grown beyond.
These stories should be rich and colorful, showcasing the ultimately vibrant love stories that we
experience in the 40 and beyond years. Now, to make sure our readers know what to expect and
(10:28):
that they can buy the stories that fill with their comfort level, I created a Spice-O-Meter.
Stay with me. Each romance novel will have its spice level indicated on the book. There are three levels.
One chili pepper means there are no physical scenes between the characters in this story beyond
kissing. Two chili peppers means there are physical scenes between the characters, but no
(10:51):
form of sex is written. And the chili pepper with flames on it means there's at least one
sex scene of some sort included in this writing. You can see what the peppers look like at
rebecabooks.com. Just remember, my Rebeca has one C in it, R-E-B-E-C-A, Rebecabooks.com.
There are also instructions there for how to submit your work for acquisition consideration.
(11:11):
It's important to note that at this time we do not require our writers to be represented by agents.
And there's a whole lot more about Rebeca Books that I'm excited to share with you, but I also know
your time is valuable. So let me wrap this up for now. In the coming chapters of this story
here on this podcast, you're going to hear about securing funding. How I went about
financing this shindig, identifying and negotiating with the team that is responsible for
(11:34):
acquisitions, editing, cover design, type setting, printing, selling, shipping, distributing the books,
what our publishing process looks like. Why there's an iris in our logo? How it got the name Rebeca
Books? What genres we publish? And why the reason behind our focus on 40 and over? What's happened
in a given week? There's a ton that I'm going to share with you. You are here with me in almost
(11:54):
real time building this company. You are going to see how a traditional royalty paying publishing house
is built from the ground up. Because right here you've got a front-row seat to raising Rebeca Books.
You've been listening to "Raising Rebeca Books" the birth of a publishing house from the
(12:17):
1C Story Network. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at
RebecaBooks.com. That's R-E-B-E-C-A Books.com
(12:46):
The 1C Story Network, for the love of stories.
[MUSIC]
(00:08):
Welcome to the first episode of Raising Rebecca Books,
the Birth of a Publishing House.
This is the audio story of me, Rebeca Seitz,
building a traditional royalty-paying publishing house from the ground up,
told to you as it unfolds.
For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death, wait, never mind,
that's a different story.
(00:28):
My intention is to record every week, documenting the process and experience
of building this publishing line that is an expansion to my existing media company,
the 1C Story Network.
I plan to share the good as well as the bad, the triumphs as well as the losses.
(00:49):
Rebeca Books is not the first business I've built.
I'm familiar with the arduous yet exhilarating task that lies before me,
and I'm crazy enough to be excited about it.
Starting and growing a business is, for me, similar to being a parent.
The nexus of it grows quietly, in darkness,
tucked away from the public eye for a long period of time.
(01:11):
Only a handful of others and I knew that it was there, steadily gaining traction.
Then, the quiet time is over.
Life is brought into this world with a lot of pain and joy,
and thank the goddess, Pain Killers.
My first one came with three days of labor,
followed by an emergency c-section, honey.
(01:33):
Anyway, as the weeks, months and years peel off the calendar,
the new being receives my time, talent, efforts, love and care.
Today, my son is 18, and my daughter is 15.
I call them my pride and joy.
They are the two best things I have ever done with my life,
and I've already made this world a better place because I put them in it.
(01:53):
But anyway, that's a different story.
This one is about Rebeca Books.
I spent many months in quiet with it,
working out its details in scores of spreadsheets,
and let me tell you, I hate little boxes with numbers.
Anyway, scores of spreadsheets, summary statements, vision statements,
mission statements, all kinds of things,
(02:14):
sharing it only with a small handful of trusted people.
On November 20th, I shared on TikTok and Facebook
about this new business baby of mine.
And now, with this podcast, you get a front-row seat to raising Rebeca Books.
You're listening to Raising Rebeca Books,
(02:36):
the birth of a publishing house on the One C Story Network.
One C is made possible in part by the support of the following sponsor.
[MUSIC]
So how is it that a woman born on the family farm in Tennessee
finds herself 45 years later, living in one of the wealthiest beach towns in the world,
(03:01):
and starting a publishing house for women 40 and over?
Well, okay, we don't have time for that entire story.
The pertinent highlights are these.
I started in book publishing 20 years ago as the first dedicated fiction publicist
at Thomas Nelson Publishers.
It's a top 10 publishing company, and now it's a division of HarperCollins.
From there, I founded a literary PR firm focused on story-driven books.
(03:24):
We did novels and biographies and memoirs.
The firm, which was named Glass Road for the road that that family farm set on,
worked with dozens of publishing houses and represented hundreds of books.
We took writers from debut to bestseller,
from a few thousand copies sold to that amazing one million copies sold,
(03:45):
It was a fast-paced, fun time.
From there, I helped found and lead a nonprofit that was focused on stories that would impact society in a positive way.
At SON Studios, we developed films, television shows, and books.
In my six years there, we helped bring over a dozen films to market.
(04:07):
We shot a television pilot that was based on one of my own novellas,
and we secured contracts for writers at publishing houses,
and we educated thousands of would-be entertainment and publishing industry workers.
It, too, was a crazy, incredible experience.
During all of those years, leading companies, five of my novels were traditionally published.
(04:28):
I wrote a memoir that was released with its film counterpart at a really fun red carpet event in New York.
I wrote two more memoirs for other people.
I wrote and published two novellas, wrote a ton of feature articles about successful startup CEOs for an entrepreneur magazine,
which was kind of like getting an MBA, but for free.
Anyway, I also became a best-selling writer, which was cool.
Then, in 2019, I founded 1C Productions to grow a podcast library of story-driven shows.
(04:54):
Most of them are scripted stories that we bring them to life with sound effects and music and voice actors from all over the world.
Now, why am I telling you all of this?
Here's why.
Because I think everything that came before in my life brought me to and prepared me for
the journey of raising Rebeca Books.
(05:15):
I know how to run a publishing house because I have worked inside and alongside major and minor ones for 20 years.
I learned how to successfully start companies by listening to the subjects of those articles that I wrote
and putting their wisdom into practice in other startups.
I honed my ability to spot a story that will sell by crafting and executing hundreds of promotional campaigns for them,
(05:39):
selling millions of copies of books.
And I know what it's like to be a writer, placing your baby in the hands of others and hoping that it'll all work out.
Speaking of writers, I've crafted the Rebeca Books plan in such a way to compensate them better than current standards.
First, our royalty rates are higher than the industry standard.
(06:00):
And that's good. I'm proud of that, but it didn't feel like enough.
I felt like something more was needed to address the imbalance between corporate profit and writer compensation.
So at Rebeca Books, writers are included in that corporate profit.
Each year, 10% of profit is distributed equally amongst the writers whose books were released in the previous 12 months.
(06:23):
Backlist writers whose titles sold at least 2,000 copies in those 12 months are also included in the distribution.
In this way, writers not only profit from the sale of their individual books, but they also profit from being here
within the writing community of Rebeca Books.
Now look, I don't know if this will be able to go beyond 10%.
I honestly, I would like it to be beyond 10%.
(06:45):
But since I couldn't find any other house that was doing this, I had no precedent to consult.
All I could do was work this idea into the gojillions of tiny boxes filled with numbers in the business plan.
And lo and behold, it worked.
So we're starting at 10%.
To be clear, Rebeca Books is a traditional royalty-paying publishing house.
(07:08):
Our authors do not pay for any portion of the publishing, distribution, or promotion of their books.
Now, let's talk a bit about what types of writers and content fit Rebeca Books.
We're looking for writers who identify as women and who are 40 years old and beyond.
We publish only two genres, business and romance, the two sides of a woman, right?
(07:32):
In both instances, the books should be about women who are 40 and over.
For the business line, we want women who have tested and lived the ideas that they want to transmit.
Readers should be able to look at your life path and see the outcome of what you're recommending or sharing.
In my career, I've noticed that we women tend to go about business differently than our male counterparts.
(07:54):
It's those differences that I want to highlight and capture.
The way we communicate with our coworkers, our employees, contractors, and superiors.
The way our non-working lives, the personal, the spiritual, how that impacts our working lives,
for good or for ill. The holistic approach to living that many of us take.
The ability to set and maintain healthy boundaries.
(08:16):
The talent of navigating male-dominated, male-driven, male-created industries and workplaces.
All of this and so much more is needed in the Pantheon of Business Books.
Each of us women, we get up every day, we enter into an industry that most often
was created by men and is led by men. We have learned how to thrive there.
(08:39):
Some of us have learned what to take away from it and then create our own spaces.
Rebeca Books is looking to publish the wisdom that we've built in that process.
Whether you're thriving in their marketplace or you've created your own,
that's the wisdom we want to capture here.
Our business writers are also eligible for our speakers bureau services, but I'll get into that
(09:00):
in a different episode. On the romance side, we're looking for stories with color and shape.
Round, short, tall, angular, different, divergent, black, brown, white, the rainbow,
in whatever way that women show up in this world, in all the ways that women show up in this world,
we want to publish stories about the romances of those lives.
(09:22):
In addition to a diversity of outward appearance and the corresponding arrays of inner systems
and beliefs that brings, we want heroines who are 40 and over.
So you need to be a writer who is a woman 40 and over and your heroine needs to be 40 and over.
Those kinds of romances necessarily include elements that younger heroine stories do not.
(09:46):
You know, things like children from a previous relationship or the presence of an ex-husband or two.
Scars and growth from maturing beyond the immature relationship experience.
And yet maybe still not the expert on all things love.
Mid-career, late-career, or retired status, falling back in love with an existing spouse,
(10:06):
awakening to life and love in new ways that were previously inaccessible due to fear, culture,
or old-value systems that we've grown beyond.
These stories should be rich and colorful, showcasing the ultimately vibrant love stories that we
experience in the 40 and beyond years. Now, to make sure our readers know what to expect and
(10:28):
that they can buy the stories that fill with their comfort level, I created a Spice-O-Meter.
Stay with me. Each romance novel will have its spice level indicated on the book. There are three levels.
One chili pepper means there are no physical scenes between the characters in this story beyond
kissing. Two chili peppers means there are physical scenes between the characters, but no
(10:51):
form of sex is written. And the chili pepper with flames on it means there's at least one
sex scene of some sort included in this writing. You can see what the peppers look like at
rebecabooks.com. Just remember, my Rebeca has one C in it, R-E-B-E-C-A, Rebecabooks.com.
There are also instructions there for how to submit your work for acquisition consideration.
(11:11):
It's important to note that at this time we do not require our writers to be represented by agents.
And there's a whole lot more about Rebeca Books that I'm excited to share with you, but I also know
your time is valuable. So let me wrap this up for now. In the coming chapters of this story
here on this podcast, you're going to hear about securing funding. How I went about
financing this shindig, identifying and negotiating with the team that is responsible for
(11:34):
acquisitions, editing, cover design, type setting, printing, selling, shipping, distributing the books,
what our publishing process looks like. Why there's an iris in our logo? How it got the name Rebeca
Books? What genres we publish? And why the reason behind our focus on 40 and over? What's happened
in a given week? There's a ton that I'm going to share with you. You are here with me in almost
(11:54):
real time building this company. You are going to see how a traditional royalty paying publishing house
is built from the ground up. Because right here you've got a front-row seat to raising Rebeca Books.
You've been listening to "Raising Rebeca Books" the birth of a publishing house from the
(12:17):
1C Story Network. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at
RebecaBooks.com. That's R-E-B-E-C-A Books.com
(12:46):
The 1C Story Network, for the love of stories.
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