Meet Mary Helen Sheriff | Author Marketing Coach & Award-winning Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mary Helen Sheriff and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mary Helen, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
It wasn’t so much that I decided to start my own business, rather it was that I decided to publish a book. My women’s fiction novel Boop and Eve’s Road Trip needed a business behind it to get it into the right readers’ hands. Suddenly, I had a book and a business. It takes time to build a lucrative career as a writer, and I needed to invest money into my business to make money. The writing world offers many paths to supplemental income. I considered what skills I brought to the table and how I might leverage those. Several of my author friends encouraged me to help other authors with their marketing endeavors. The former teacher in me wanted to teach authors to help themselves, and my author marketing coach business was born.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My debut novel is Boop and Eve’s Road Trip. It’s a love story between a grandmother and her college freshman granddaughter Eve, who take a road trip together through the American South looking for a missing relative. Though my first published novel, it is actually the fourth book that I’ve written. The others are children’s books which languish on my hard drive. When I started writing Boop and Eve’s Road Trip, I planned to write a young adult novel. Only as I wrote Eve kept inching older, and Boop decided she wanted to tell her story too. Suddenly, I found myself writing a book for adults. This presented some unexpected challenges as I’d really only studied writing for children and young adults.

There are apparently unwritten industry rules for debut authors writing adult books. After a slew of agent rejections on an earlier draft, I attended the Algonkian Author’s Retreat where I learned from a handful of industry professionals that I had broken not one, but three of these unwritten rules. This was a crushing blow and left me faced with giving up on this novel or a massive rewrite.

The pull of Boop and Eve’s story was too strong. I couldn’t let it go, so I put on my big girl pants and spent the next 18 months revising from a character-driven to a more plot-driven novel, changing the point of view from first person to third, and switching the setting from the 1990s to the present day.

At last, I was ready to send it out again. I sent it to a handful of agents, who passed. At this point, I decided that after decades of rejection I was tired of waiting for permission from the industry to publish my book. I believed in Boop and Eve, so when She Writes Press green-lit my novel, I was ready to jump on their hybrid model and invest in my dreams.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
First, a shoutout goes to my parents for nurturing my love of literature and to my husband for supporting my endeavors in countless ways. I thank Han Nolan and Hillary Homzie for mentoring me as a writer. Women’s Fiction Writers Association and James River Writers have provided numerous learning and networking opportunities along my journey. Thanks to Julie Valerie for teaching me about branding and pushing me to go big. Thanks also to Grace Sammon for nurturing and nudging my entrepreneurial spirit. A final shoutout goes to the tour guides of my favorite reader community, Bookish Road Trip, for your dedication and inspiration.

Website: https://maryhelensheriff.com

Instagram: @maryhelensheriff

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryhelensheriff/

Twitter: @maryhsheriff

Facebook: @maryhelensheriff

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrZm_DldCO9Ri1R7W8WnQ2A