Ruthie Gray is a wife, mom, grandmother and founder of Authentic Online Marketing where she breaks down social media marketing into easy-to-understand pieces and empowers others to market their dreams! While navigating her own empty nest season of life, Ruthie found herself on-mission to help other women weave their passions into purpose. Her passion for marketing and for seeing others succeed at their goals through her marketing tips resonates strongly with MRM and our goal to care for our clients and their dreams. In fact, because of our like-minded missions in business and service, we invited Ruthie to join us this year at Refined Conference as one of our session speakers, and we just adore her!
We are thrilled to have partnered with Ruthie to publish her new book, Empty Nest Awakening: Weaving Your Passions into Purpose. This new release is for the mom who finds herself a little lost upon entering the empty nest years and encourages her to use her gifts and talents to find her new purpose!
About This Recent Project
Book Edits, Cover Design, Formatting, & Typesetting
We began Ruthie’s project with a final proofread, since she had already contracted other editors for the bulk of the manuscript development. Randi completed the read through focusing on grammar, tense, and sentence structure to ensure the final product was consistent and well-polished. This step was fairly simple and went quickly, thanks to Ruthie’s prompt responses, and Randi was able to provide the clean, formatted document to Nelly in record time.
It was important to Ruthie that the cover design felt cohesive with her existing branding and website, so Nelly worked from her brand kit to incorporate her brand colors, fonts and groovy vibes into the overall design of the book—while also staying true to the theme of the book. We all were wowed by Nelly’s creativity with the illustrations of birds and a threaded needle on the front cover, the spine, and the interior designs. Each chapter includes the intricate line-drawn illustration of the birds from the cover, and the journal pages use the threaded needle and bird to weave the theme throughout the pages.
Publishing & Optimization
Empty Nest Awakening was formatted for both IngramSpark and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, in print and eBook formats, to expand the opportunities for distribution and sales. As part of our Market Refined Publishing imprint, we purchased all the necessary ISBNs for print, digital, and audiobook versions, registered the new release with the Library of Congress, and managed the publishing process on both platforms.
Sara worked to optimize the book’s back cover copy, author’s bio and the product description to ensure our marketing approach would reach the right readers. She also performed our usual metadata keyword and category research to increase the searchability and visibility for Ruthie’s book on all retailers, but especially on Amazon. As a final touchpoint in this phase of our work, Debi offered a brief audit of Ruthie’s existing platforms and a detailed action plan to be sure her online presence served her well through the launch.
As a simple add-on to our project scope, Nelly also designed beautiful and complimentary pre-order bonuses (a partner journaling guide and a re-worked chapter of the book) to help incentivize early sales. These pieces are perfect companions to Empty Nest Awakening and are also great resources Ruthie can use again in the future.
Marketing & Publicity
As part of our work with Ruthie, Sara crafted a detailed strategy and timeline for the book launch. This strategy guided all marketing and outreach efforts from pre- to post-launch and provided Ruthie with swipe copy, content templates for email campaigns, and a list of priority tasks for launch week, and our team seamlessly implemented these pieces in other support tasks as well.
Randi stepped in to complete the digital assets package which included pull quotes from the book for promotional posts, shareable graphics, social media cover images, and a content calendar for Ruthie to repurpose throughout her online marketing of the book. We love including small but meaningful touches in these packages such as a list of relevant hashtags and emojis that pair well with the book! This makes social media promotions so much easier for all involved and allows for consistency across platforms.
Debi helped Ruthie manage the launch and review team by moderating the Facebook group, sending email updates and prompts to participants, and prompting launch team members to share online through pre-launch, launch week, and post-launch. Debi and Ruthie kept the group light and fun with weekly challenges, prizes, and Facebook lives.
Our team also strategized a publicity campaign and influencer outreach for Ruthie. We repurposed marketing copy and Sara’s templates to create pitch emails and foster connections for podcast interviews, social media shares, and newsletter and blog post appearances. We managed the correspondence and organized responses for Ruthie in a way that allowed her to focus on the launch of her book and show up focused for conversations.
It was our pleasure to guide Ruthie through the publishing process, providing the extra care MRM is known for along the way! We are delighted to see Empty Nest Awakening take flight!
What Ruthie had to say…
“The team kept me on task, communication was clear and prompt, including answering any and all questions I had through the entire process. Mandy kept the ship steered in the right direction and she is definitely doing what she was born to do!!”
Services Included in this Project
- Copy and line edits and final proofread
- Book cover and interior design, formatting, and typesetting for IngramSpark and Kindle Direct Publishing (Print and eBook)
- Metadata, category, and keyword research for IngramSpark and Kindle Direct Publishing
- Marketing copy for the product listing and author bio
- Product(s) and author profile setup and optimization for Amazon Author Central
- Use of Market Refined Publishing imprint
- Marketing and launch strategy and implementation
- Digital assets package and content calendar
- Launch team management
- Publicity campaign and influencer outreach
Team Members Involved
Randi Avant
Nelly Murariu
Mandy Roberson
Debi Stangeland
Sara Ward
Find out more about these ladies and the rest of the team here at MRM: Meet the Team
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