Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathy Newbern and J.S. Fletcher.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
One of our thrills in life is when we meet someone and they find out what we do, then proclaim: “I want your job.”
Rightly so. We turned two passions — writing and travel — into an unusual business concept, YourNovel.com, where we put any couple in their own personalized romance novel. Our 29-year success perfectly exemplifies our mantra: If you’ve got a great idea, act on it, because it can change your life.
Back in 1992, Kathy was invited to speak at a public relations conference in Raleigh. Then-boyfriend Fletcher tagged along to keep her company. She was on a panel, and the icebreaker question was: “What would people be surprised to find out about you?”
She answered that she had written a yet-to-be-published romance novel, which got an appropriate response. At lunch, one of the attendees, a friend, said, “Wouldn’t it be great to read about yourself in one of those romance novels?” Well, everyone at the table laughed and joked about it.
Later, on the four-hour drive home to Manteo, NC, we started talking about the idea — was that even possible? Soon after, the proverbial light bulb went off. Almost simultaneously we said to each other, “You know, we could do that!” Write a romance novel where we could insert personal details like names, eye, and hair color, where you live and work, your favorite music, best friends, make of car, and more.
In our enthusiasm, we started outlining our first book on that drive home. It’s “Another Day in Paradise,” set in the Caribbean and still our best seller.
That moment changed our lives.
We started writing the next day on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Over the weekend, we drove three hours to our nearest mall and bought our first major piece of equipment – a Macintosh Performa with a 16 MHz CPU and 40 MB memory.
In between writing — we both write together — we started putting together the pieces of our budding business – getting a business bank account, logo design, applying to accept credit card payments, ordering an extra phone line, getting a toll-free number, and a fax machine. Yes, a fax machine. This was 1992. Looking back on those tasks, fiction writing, based on our own trip in the Caribbean, was more fun.
We had both been writing long before we met, starting in grade school, everything from poems to fiction to the school newspaper. Writing has always been a big part of our lives.
Kathy began her career as a journalist right out of high school, working full-time while going to college full-time. By age 19, she’d worked her way up to editor of the weekly paper where she began, later became managing editor of The Chapel Hill Newspaper, and eventually chief in two different bureaus of The Charlotte Observer, overseeing their neighborhood tabloids. She’s also worked in communications at Duke University News Service and Public Schools of North Carolina.
Fletcher has had success in writing throughout his life, publishing stories, articles, and poems as well as teaching writing on several levels. He has also spent time in promoting and producing entertainment events.
Those backgrounds melded nicely to take on our job as novelists here at YourNovel.com as well as award-winning, freelance travel journalists and photographers. What we see and do on our travel writing assignments often inspire plots and settings for our romance novels, like “Island of Love,” set in Tahiti, or “African Safari: Wild Life, Wild Love.”
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Starting any new business has challenges; creating an entirely new publishing genre, personalized novels for adults, was no exception. Our biggest advantage: We believed in ourselves and our unique idea. Being in love and trusting each other made whatever challenges arose easier to handle. We’re in this together.
During busy times – Valentine’s is our busiest “season” – we’ve had to take on part-time help. Other times, we sought out skilled people to handle things beyond our abilities, like creating our initial website and later, updating and maintaining it. We moved from black-and-white, spiral-bound book covers (like an old cookbook) to perfect bound covers in full color.
A few years in, we added the option that a couple could upload their photo to add to their book cover. The latest evolution: A person’s photo, like a wedding pose, could become the entire book cover. That took the help of technical folks and graphic designers. Those steps improved our products and made them easy to order, all online.
Through the changes and growth, we knew this was our baby.
Hardships have been few. Books do have to be made and mailed, so when winter weather closes or slows down book production at our two printers, it is stressful. Of course, that winter weather comes during our busiest season. Hurricanes can create the same problem.
Some personal moments required we put the business on the back burner temporarily, like deaths in the family and an illness or surgery, which of course can affect anyone in business.
Our decision to keep our company small might not have been the choice someone else would have made. We could have made a lot more money, and our company could have been a lot bigger, but we purposely kept it small and manageable for us. We’re writers first who had to figure out business along the way.
The opposite of challenge is opportunity. Here’s our example: While we were not interested in supervising a lot of employees, we did expand our book line-up by finding other writers, more than two dozen, and teaching them how to create storylines that work for anyone in order to be personalized. Working as their editors and publicists has been another creative outlet for us along with our own writing. Helping them realize their dreams of seeing their work in print was fulfilling for all of us. They helped expand our products to meet varied readers’ tastes, including detective and vampire themes, plus time travel for instance.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about www.YourNovel.com?
YourNovel.com can put any couple in their very own personalized romance novel. We currently have 50+ novels and ebooks set at exotic locations around the globe available for personalization. Our service lets customers input 26 details like their names, eye and hair color, best friends’ names, hometown, type of car they drive, favorite fragrances, places of work, and more. That information is sent through a customized computer program that generates a book – either a paperback, hardback, or ebook with or without a photo added on the cover or that can become the entire front cover. Here’s the fun part: each book comes in a “Wild” or “Mild” version, so the customer gets to choose how spicy the romantic interludes are. (The books are titillating yet tasteful, not graphic, and 90% of the readers choose “Wild.”)
Over the years, these are some of the media that have featured us: People magazine, Redbook, In Style, Bridal Guide, Entrepreneur, Elle, USAToday, NPR Marketplace, Wired, CBS Marketwatch, Readers Digest, “The View,” “The Today Show,” “Life and Style,” “Daytime,” “The Washington Post,” “The Los Angeles Times,” John Boy and Billy on The Big Show, Scott Mason on Raleigh’s WRAL “Tar Heel Traveler,” and many more. With that kind of publicity, we think it’s really funny that when we meet someone and tell them about YourNovel.com, they have never heard of us. Guess that’s proof enough that our plan to stay small has been a success. Maybe when it’s time to let someone else pick up the reigns to the magic of YourNovel.com, their actions could really make the company a household name.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Fletcher’s:
Time spent with my parents. My mom was so encouraging about my reading skills. She bought little books she read to me, then later subscribed to magazines and insisted we get a set of encyclopedias. Likewise, my dad read the newspaper every day and devoured paperback books by writers like James Michener and Ernest Hemingway. In fact, when I was 13, he lent me “Hawaii” to plod through.
Kathy’s:
Unlike Fletcher, my childhood home had very little reading material. In elementary school, I fell in love with the library and The Weekly Reader. A school-year highlight was Book Fair, when I could actually order a book of my own to keep. I vividly remember in second grade entering a coloring contest on the back of a cereal box. I won second prize, a printing press. I had a grand time creating my own newspaper, covering all the happenings in my 7-year-old world.
Pricing:
- • Paperback plain: $49.95 • Paperback with photo: $74.95 • Paperback with full custom cover: $89.95
- • Hardback plain: $94.95 • Hardback with photo: $119.95 • Hardback with full custom cover: $134.95
- • eBook plain: $19.95 • eBook with photo: $49.95 • eBook with full custom cover: $74.95
- • STANDARD U.S. Priority Mail is $8.50 • STANDARD Out-of-Country Priority Mail is $27.50
- • U.S. EXPRESS Service is $32.50 • Out-of-Country EXPRESS Service is $65
Contact Info:
- Email: knewbern@yournovel.com and fletch@yournovel.com
- Website: www.YourNovel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yournovelcom/
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/YourNovel
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/YourNovelCom
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcYzf3urAe-L5Ex64PRjlBZ7YDQDi4cvO
- Other: https://www.fletchernewbern.com/ and https://www.yourspareport.com/
