Rosie's Success
Marketing, Merchandise, and Fun
After Rosie’s Daughters came out, Matilda got the great idea of wearing a Rosie the Riveter-style bandana (the iconic red-and-white, polka-dot bandana). At first, it was a prop we wore when presenting Rosie’s Daughters at book signings and talks. We started to sell the bandanas to attendees at these events and eventually began selling online through our websites.
About a month before Halloween 2009 we noticed the sales picked up a bit. After Halloween someone sent us a picture of herself in costume wearing our bandana. And that’s when it clicked...women were dressing as Rosie for Halloween. We invited women to send us pictures of themselves and to post their photos on our Facebook Page RosiesBandana. In preparation for Halloween 2010, we made a YouTube video with a montage of photos of women who sent us their pictures with the Rosie the Riveter song playing and a little background about the original bandana.
Today, we sell thousands of these bandanas every year to women who want to make a statement about their own sense of empowerment and image. Women and girls of all ages wear our bandanas in dance recitals, to costume parties, at reunions and for team events. In every case, this is their way of celebrating their lives as strong, capable women and showing their affinity for all that Rosie the Riveter means to them.
In honor of 2012 being the 70th anniversary of Miller’s iconic Rosie the Riveter “We Can Do It” poster, we have added additional merchandise to the product line. We’ve just begun to offer Rosie’s Employment Badge Collar Pins, cute little Employment Badge zipper pulls, and soon we’ll introduce a poster that is the background from the Miller illustration. The latter will allow women to take a photograph of themselves standing in front of the background and putting themselves into the original “We Can Do It” picture...the perfect way to show off their support for Rosie, highlight their bandana, “do the Rosie” and have fun.
Telling An Important Story
“Storytelling is such a powerful form of communication. The individual stories, while anecdotal, provide strong connections. People bond through stories; they become more emotionally tied to the individual, but they also come to recognize their own stories within the stories of others. And telling one’s story is about the best way I know to share experiences with others and help the individual work through her or his issues. In the memoir genre we call this healing through writing (or telling). I’m very proud Rosie’s Daughters helped so many women begin to explore their own stories.” – Matilda Butler
Taking Charge
“Like Rosie herself, many women today have a “We Can Do It” attitude,” Bonnett said. “And that’s what you need in today’s marketplace. Publishing, indeed most industries, are experiencing dramatic change. But with an open mind, an aggressive can-do attitude and a willingness to embrace change and make it work, we can more than survive the turmoil; we can make it work to our advantage. The FW2 generation provides a powerful role model for anyone today who wants to publish a book or start a new business. If you have an idea, a dream, a passion, follow it...even if it’s never been done before. Be the first.” – Kendra Bonnett
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Feature
Women in Publishing Part II
Good Books for Women and Writers
Last month, you heard from Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, authors of Rosie’s Daughters: “The First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story and Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deep, and their views on being a part of the independent publishing industry. This time around, Butler and Bonnett take on authorship to tell their stories and give writers advice on how to write successfully.
The duo’s first book, Rosie’s Daughters (a 2008 IPPY Award Winner), was born out of a Butler’s personal desire to tell the story of the First Woman To (FW2) generation – the women born during World War II.
“I am a Rosie’s Daughter,” Butler explained. “I conceived the book after attending the 40th reunion of my class at National Cathedral School for Girls in Washington, DC. I was struck by how the stories of my class differed from those of women who graduated even five years earlier or later. For the most part, despite good educations, women who graduated earlier than my class did not seek careers but found fulfillment as wives, mothers and homemakers. Women who graduated some years after my class (Baby Boomers) took their careers and the juggling act of work and family for granted. They were fulfilling a pattern they had observed and planned for.”
All of this change is thanks to Rosie the Riveter, the iconic working-woman who advocated “working for victory” on the home front during WWII. Women were welcomed into the workforce and found that there were new and exciting careers available to them. Interested in this incredible shift in mentalities, Butler teamed up with long-time friend and fellow writer Kendra Bonnett. Together, they turned more than 100 interviews with women Matilda had collected into a collective memoir that examines the phenomenon that Rosie started.
“This was a story of women that begged to be told,” Butler told me. “We were unique; pioneering opportunities for all subsequent generations of women. Kendra and I were well into the project before we came up with the identifiers for this special group of women: ‘Rosie’s Daughters’ since we were the children of the Rosie the Riveter generation, and became the ‘First Woman To’ generation because we hold claim to more firsts than any other group of women before or since.”
The book took off from there. Made up of interviews, quotes from famous FW2s, a timeline, and tons of wonderful photographs, Rosie’s Daughters is not simply about telling a story; it is also about putting out a message, sharing research, and praising the women who were responsible for such extraordinary change.
“Everyone is moved to greater understanding and appreciation for the force FW2s have had on changing women’s roles in the United States,” Butler said of the successes of the book. “All one has to do is read even a partial list of FW2s to see that some of the most accomplished women in politics, entertainment, sports, education, literature and business of the last 30 years have one thing in common – they’re all Rosie’s Daughters: Martha Stewart, Diane Sawyer, Anita Roddick, Sherry Lansing, Annie Dillard, Jill Clayburgh, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Billie Jean King, Leslie Stahl, Angela Davis, Nora Ephron, Judge Judy and Twyla Tharp. These are just a few.
“Equally important, Rosie’s Daughters examines the lives of ordinary women born during World War II. Women who had to figure out their lives and opportunities without role models. These are the women who opened doors for the Baby Boomers.”
Bonnett agreed and pointed to the long-reaching effects of the book. “Publishing Rosie’s Daughters brought us into the larger sphere of memoir writing and its importance as a literary genre. We launched our blogsite Women’s Memoirsin February 2008, and today, almost 1,000 posts later, we are connecting with about 7,000 people each month. Women’s Memoirs started us on our path to working with memoir writers, both published and aspiring authors. We teach, coach and consult on both writing and book marketing. Writing and publishing one book has launched a full-time business for us.”
The buzz created by Rosie's Daughters led to new opportunities for Butler and Bonnett, including their newest literary venture. Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deep was released on April 15th of this year under Butler and Bonnett’s own imprint, Knowledge Access Books. So how did it all begin?
“When we began teaching writers, we discovered a significant difference between what they knew about writing and what they actually wrote,” Bonnett told me. “We saw our students’ frustrations with writing in the sense that there was often a disconnect between what writers envisioned would be their finished product and what they actually wrote. Knowing the basics of writing wasn’t the problem. It was the writing – the execution – that wasn’t working.”
After taking a step back (and with inspiration from composer Dan Becker), Butler and Bonnett realized that they had to break down the writing process into its most basic forms.
“The results were remarkable,” Bonnett enthused. “As people slowed their writing process and spent more time in what we call the pre-writing phase, they went deeper into their characters and story detail. And what they wrote came alive on the page and connected with readers. From the results we’ve seen with our students, we believe that Writing Alchemy has the potential to become a truly revolutionary process and a great asset to writers at all levels of their craft.”
The duo continued to refine their new system until they were ready to commit it to the book. Writing Alchemy is a product of more than four years of workshops, online classes, live events, coaching and speaking about writing. As Bonnett puts it, “The objective of Writing Alchemy is to remake writers into purposeful writers by giving them the means to achieve greater focus, banish superficiality and help them connect with their inner writer...in short to put them in control of the writing process.”
According the Butler and Bonnett, the Writing Alchemy system is made up of the twin processes of Deconstruction and Construction. The new book encourages writers to focus on and Deconstruct each of the five Essential Elements of Writing:
• Characters are developed with a precision of detail that gives birth to a complete, three-dimensional person.
• Emotions are identified and so vividly expressed that readers empathize, understand, even believe they know the characters.
• Strong Dialogue that communicates while moving the story forward and captures the tension, emotion and pacing in a scene is key.
• Sensory detail draws on the Five Senses to paint a scene so vibrant and alive that readers don’t simply picture it in their minds--they see, hear, smell, taste and touch the author’s world.
• A Time and Place is described in detail to give a story context and verity and to show how the characters and story were shaped by them.
Not only is this method tried and true with hundreds of students, but the authors also incorporated some of the best research from the social sciences. “We show writers how to apply the lessons of sociology and psychology to their work. Our premise is that knowing what’s behind personality, behavior, motivation, emotional expression and communication helps us understand our characters and present multi-dimensional, believable people to our readers,” Butler said.
Due to their years of hard work and preparation, Writing Alchemy has debuted with a bang. “We’ve just returned from the Story Circle Network ‘Stories from the Heart’ conference where we enjoyed the first reactions to Writing Alchemy,” reports Bonnett. “The response has been most heartening. We sold a lot of books, but most encouraging was seeing our concepts registering on the faces of the women in our workshop. I can’t even count the number of writers who came up to us and thanked us for the insight they’ve gained. I think the book is going to be everything we had hoped.”
The two authors also used the Story Circle conference to conduct a pre-conference workshop that introduced Structural Alchemy, which ultimately will be the second of four books in the Alchemy series. Bonnett and Butler report that attendance was high and enthusiasm for what is shaping into a new way of thinking about and applying structure was most encouraging.
“We’ve also sent out Advanced Review Copies to a number of published memoir authors,” adds Butler. “These women have taken time out of busy writing and teaching schedules to review the book. Their testimonial blurbs are coming in now, and the reactions are universally very positive. Many of these writers actively teach aspiring memoirists and they’re all looking forward to incorporating some of the lessons of Writing Alchemy in their own classes. That’s a powerful endorsement.”
With the success of their research and classes leading the way, Butler and Bonnett have big plans for marketing the new book.
“Writing Alchemyis very much a hands-on book filled with activities, interactive tools and writing exercises,” Bonnett explained. “Given this hands-on nature, we’ll be supplementing the book with video versions, specialized workbooks, online classes and workshops. While the book will be available for writers who want to work on their own, by pairing the book with online classes, writing critiques, live workshops and more, we can reach large numbers of writers with a wide range of formats suited to every individual’s preferred method of learning.”
In addition to promoting their new book and hosting events, Butler and Bonnett are compiling more interviews for an updated edition of Rosie’s Daughters. Stay up to date by tuning into their blog, Women’s Memoirs, and learn more about both Rosie’s Daughters and Writing Alchemy below!
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Read the feature, Women in Publishing I.
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The breakthrough book about the generation of women that broke through centuries of limitations to take their place in the world. These precursors of the Baby Boomers achieved more “firsts” than any group of women before or since, earning them the name of “First Woman To” Generation.
Buy it here: http://rosiesdaughters.com/the-book/
Writing Alchemy: How to Write Fast and Deepshares the secrets that put writers in total control of their writing process. Writing Alchemy applies the best of social science research to help you write with intense purpose…and have fun in the process.
Buy it here: http://womensmemoirs.com/the-writers-store/books/
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Jillian Bergsma is a writer and contributing editor for Independent Publisher. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English. She welcomes any questions or comments on her articles at jbergsma (at) bookpublishing.com.