The days are long gone when being an author, you wrote a book, got it published, and into book shops. Today, there is more than one way in becoming published, and after navigating, or rather roller coasteering my way through this industry over the years, I have emerged as an independent or ‘Indie’ author as we are affectionately known.
After much soul searching, I took a leap of faith and started my own publishing company, ‘The Fish Face Publishing Company’ in January 2020. Being an indie author in today’s world is running a business and a multi-faceted one at that! You have to be savvy and aware! The learning curve is humungous and one thing I did learn very early on, is that not only is it very challenging to do everything yourself, but it’s not entirely sensible either. For example, when it comes to tasks like editing, it is very risky to rely solely on yourself!
You need an engaging website, and it needs to be maintained! You have to promote yourself. There are a zillion other tasks to keep on top of. Oh, and if you don’t believe in yourself and that you will make it in this incredibly competitive industry, don’t even go there in the first place!
So, bottom line, to help you on your road to success, you need a fairy! Or in today’s speak a VA! A virtual assistant. That, in itself, is a challenging task to find the right person!
And I was LUCKY! Or was it the fact that my parents are looking down on me? I mean, what were the chances out of thousands of potential VA’s (it’s a blossoming industry for all the obvious reasons) that I should happen, early on in my search, to find a VA who has trained as an author’s assistant! Job done!
Enter stage left the lovely Virtual M, Emma Setterfield. My fairy!
I am truly blessed to be working with Emma. She is tech savvy knows about working with websites, a superb ideas lady, bubbly, bright, patient, kind, and has 100% integrity. If she doesn’t know something, she will go out of her way to find out about it and learn it, and loves doing so! Emma is a brilliant systems person and organizer which even for a very organized person like me, is so helpful! And she teaches me stuff I didn’t know I had to learn!
Being an author can be a solitary career at times and to know there is someone there who cares and is rooting for you, working in your best interests is something to be very grateful for.
So if you are reading this and need a VA, look no further than the lovely Emma Setterfield. And let me stress that Emma’s abilities are in no way limited to working for authors. This is just one of Emma’s attributes. To find out more head this way! ➡
Emma Setterfield
Virtual Assistant, Virtual M