ACE Inspire

I’m Antonia Chitty. You might know me from my website Family Friendly Working, my former PR business ACPR, or as part of the ACEInspire team. Or, maybe you know me because you have read one of my books. This is my story, of how I became an author, and how my life has transformed.

Back in 1997, I was walking home from work at RNIB with a friend. We were discussing dreams and ambitions, and I said ‘I’d love to write a book.’ I didn’t think anything more of it at that point. I had nothing to write about, no practical plans to achieve my dream.

Fast forward a few years. In 2005 I’m a PR business owner, mum to one and expecting number two. I do PR for some people, and have written some factsheets to help others who have a tiny budget and need to do their own PR. In the space of a week, two business contacts who have seen the factsheets both say, “You could turn that into a book”. Suddenly, I have something to write about. What’s more, with maternity leave coming up I also have time to write. My first book, A Guide to Promoting Your Business, comes out in spring 2007.

Fast forward again to today. I’ve now written 15 books. Rather than working swapping my time for money, I have merged ACPR into ACEInspire which is run by a great team, giving me far more freedom. The business has grown so we have a stable income I speak at conferences and run training on and offline. Publishers approach ME with book ideas now, and I write those that interest me the most.

I’ve learnt LOADS along the way as I’ve worked with a range of publishers:

• I’ve self published books, and ALWAYS made a profit.
• I’ve discovered how to sell books when you have thousands of copies of a self published book sitting in a garage! And I’ve found out how eBooks can take the risk away of investing in printed books.
• I’ve promoted my own books, and those of other people: I can even tell you how to sell 100 books from an email.
• I’ve worked through all the hard ways of promoting an eBook, and discovered all the smart ways.
• I’ve built up a great team who help my books succeed.

If you want to join me and make the most of all my knowledge and experience, join the From Knowledge to Profit course. Not only do you get my help, you also benefit from input from other key members of my ‘book creation’ team including Erica Douglas. On Monday you can find out how an eBook helped Erica say good bye to the job centre and was the start of much bigger things.