THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT SERIES post #5
I've been delighted to be consulting for the past few years with Sarah Towle, a woman who's been transforming herself from a hardworking author to an
even harder working author and publisher striving to, as Sarah says, “combine
the traditional power of storytelling with the magic of the touchscreen to
create portals to the past.” A few weeks ago, at a splendid event hosted by
KidLit TV in New York City, Sarah officially launched her company,
Time Traveler Tours & Tales, which is a digital-first multiformat
publishing company with the goal of turning kids on to history by turning history
on. I’m delighted to have Sarah with us on “our stories, ourselves” to talk about
what led her to start her own company and to share some advice and lessons she’s
learning along the way. Welcome, Sarah!
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[edd] How did you come to start Time Traveler Tours &Tales? What
problem do you see Time Traveler Tours &Tales positioned to solve?
[st] I didn’t set out to forge this path. Far from it. I was
content in my career as a language and literacy educator. In my last role, I
helped to run a citywide initiative in New York City to train whole school
populations—from admin to teachers to students to janitorial staff—in how to
negotiate conflict creatively. We taught the concepts through children’s
literature, then developed skills through dramatic role-play. It was a fabulous
job. I was changing lives. And I loved it.
Then, in 2004, my husband’s job took us to France. Two years
sounded like the perfect amount of time for a mid-career sabbatical. I would
learn French, be a full-time mom, and discover everything I possibly could
about the history and culture of Paris. I would return to my career smart and
refreshed. But two years turned into five, and the French authorities refused
to let me teach. Then the global economic crisis wiped out my job back home. So
at what should have been the pinnacle of my professional life, I was forced to
start over.
At that point, my daughter was a tween and I came face to
face with a huge issue in education: At the secondary level, school cultures
worldwide make a dramatic shift. Kids are suddenly swamped by the tyranny of
testing and rigor. Instead of getting out and about to explore the world around
them, they are constrained by textbooks, timetables, and walls. Even in Paris,
where history whispers from every cobblestone, field trips to local museums, monuments,
and other historic sites are few and far between.
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| Paris at the outbreak of French Revolution |
Ironically, as I was growing more enamored of my adopted
home and more appreciative of how its history affects and influences its
culture today, my daughter and her friends were turning off to history. I resolved to use my skills as an educator
to write a fun interactive book of the history of Paris for them that would
include a story and great characters layered among the historical details. Folks are now calling
this concept “Place-Based Education”—learning through
the unique history, environment, culture, economy, literature, and art of a
particular location. But when I tested a chapter of my
book on a group of forty-eight 14-year-olds, they insisted it would make a
better app than book.
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| the app |
As a teacher, I had cut my teeth
on CD-Roms and other web-based learning tools. I was already thinking
digitally, but didn’t know it. Many editors had at that point lauded my concept
and the execution of my manuscript and vision, but they didn’t know where it
fit on a bookstore shelf. What’s more, in the economic climate of 2009-10, publishers
were unwilling to take a risk on something so new and different, particularly
historical fiction/creative nonfiction.
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| the book |
The app was a critical success, but its use was limited to
people with an iPhone in Paris. So when Apple introduced iBooksAuthor in 2012,
I republished the story as an interactive book for iPad
(link here) for the school and
library markets. Then, recognizing that there are still many learning
environments that can’t afford new technologies, I released a print version (link here) of
my revolutionary tale in 2014. A curriculum guide soon followed. With all of
these various formats of the story now in circulation, I created a second imprint,
Time Traveler Tales, and the Time Traveler Tours & Tales “title suite” was
born.
What an amazing creative evolution you and your work are going through! So, what inspired you to make the (huge!) leap from self-produced
author to independent publisher?
Honestly, this has all been a sort of happy accident brought
on by loss and change, the need to adapt and the willingness to listen to the
muse. That’s why I call myself an “accidental entrepreneur.”
While Beware Madame La
Guillotine continues to be a critical success, it’s not been a commercial one.
However, the interactive story-history-tour concept seemed to be touching hearts
and minds, a “hiding in plain sight” kind of idea. I realized I needed to gain
some business acumen before deciding which way to move forward, if at all. I
sought advice wherever I could find it, and fell into a start-up meet-up
community at the suggestion of Dominique Raccah, Publisher of
Sourcebooks. Thus began my education into the world of agile publishing.
In 2013, I attended a “Startup Weekend” in Paris—it was
basically speed dating for visionaries and geeks. In fifty-four hours, the motley
crew I was able to assemble there produced an app based on my concepts for Beware Madame La Guillotine and we went
on to achieve a stunning 2nd place victory. With that came a touch of free
mentoring and a bit of seed capital and the confidence that my idea could be
scaled into a business with multiple revenue streams.
I loved the idea of expanding this platform to showcase
stories and content by authors other than myself. And in April, 2014, while we
were both teaching at Julie Hedlund’s Writers Renaissance Retreat in Florence, bestselling
author Mary Hoffman pitched me an idea for an interactive tour to the world of
Michelangelo through a story from the point of view of the model who stood for the
artist’s famous statue of David.
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Mary Hoffman, David, Sarah
with original map of Florence by Roxie Munro |
That's when it all clicked: I now had a world- renowned author
interested in working with me as well as a bit of money and a few trusted
consultants and advisers to guide the process. It was time to create a real
team to help make it all a reality. I’m lucky enough to have found a terrific
team of people to help me brainstorm every bit of this new company (from the
creative aspects to the marketing and business aspects and everything in
between) and together we decided to use Kickstarter to raise funds for—and
spread the word about—our launch title by Mary Hoffman which is called In the Footsteps of Giants. (link here)
[Note from edd: Sarah has written a series of informative and honest "case study" posts that chronicle her team's decision to use Kickstarter, what's required of a good Kickstarter campaign, and what the entire Kickstarter process for this project has been like from beginning to end. For more information, see her blog here.]
Oh boy! Balance has been elusive since the Kickstarter
campaign began on May 19. But I know I will find it again when the campaign
concludes on June 26. Prior to the kick-off, I found balance thanks to the
routines imposed on me by my four-legged companion, Gryffindog. He forces me
out of my chair at regular intervals. I also endeavor to practice yoga every
morning as I listen to the news, and I sing with a local choir every Monday evening.
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| Gryffindog! |
Because I live five hours ahead of the business
day in New York, I can give myself over to pure creative writing time each
morning while my colleagues are sleeping. I return to “business” and social
media and the buzz of life after my first long walk with Gryffin. This means I
put in very long hours, starting my day in London GMT and ending in EST. But it’s
the only way I manage to get everything done.
I’m also very fortunate to have a husband who loves to shop
and cook. He keeps me fed. We recently emptied the nest—our daughter, Lily, is
now at university—and simultaneously relocated to London. I now have few
friends and no children at home. So it’s a good time to be working twelve- to fifteen-hour
days six or seven days a week, which is par for the course for any one starting up a
business.
What are three lessons and/or surprises you've experienced as an accidental
entrepreneur? What does anyone thinking about
becoming their own boss and business owner need to know?
* Very few companies are making it by just
producing apps. That’s why I wish to re-purpose the creative assets of our
future StoryAppTours to produce story content across multiple formats. I also
believe we should make our stories accessible where our young audiences want
them most. And not everyone has a smartphone or tablet.
* Making one app that contains a single
story is not a commercially viable business model. For this reason, our goal
now is to build a single app framework that can contain a multitude of stories.
With that framework we can produce TTT&T-branded apps as well as
white-label apps for any future company clients, museums, or other cultural
institutions, which will provide us with multiple revenue streams.
* In the digital age, collaboration is key.
Sharing ideas and tips, even code, makes great business sense.
This is such great advice. Three warnings you might give others
seeking to start their own businesses?
* Be ready to work hard. And then work harder. And
then work even harder again.
* Don’t expect your nearest and dearest to
understand or even be supportive. And don’t fault them for it. You’ll find your
support in unexpected places and it will come to you via mysterious ways.
* Be prepared for everything to take longer than you think it
will and for your path forward to be fraught with some frustration and some rejection.
But stay the course and remain focused on your dream. If it’s a good one, it
will eventually take flight.
These are terrifically honest and helpful answers. I love the
entrepreneurial community--people like you, who are
paving new paths, are always willing to help others along with advice, guidance,
and more. So, did you always consider yourself an "authorpreneur"?
When I was strictly authoring, I
never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But then I realized that all of us trying to live by our craft must
act as our own little businesses. In contrast to, say, Michelangelo’s day,
there are few patrons like the de’ Medicis today who support artists. All
creative people are therefore entrepreneurs. And it’s in working together and
supporting each other that we make magic happen.
Here's to making magic happen! UPDATE: Sarah's Kickstarter campaign was fully funded before the end of the campaign. Congratulations, Sarah!
Change
of any kind is profound. It can be great. It can be gratifying. And it can be
hard. Really hard. The change from apathy to exercise--the change from
promising myself to take better care to actually taking better care--has been
profound both physically and mentally. It's been great. It's been gratifying.
And it's been hard. Really hard. 
