My name is Brian Whiddon and I’m the Operations Manager here at BookLocker. We know it can be nerve-wracking to hand over your hard work to a publisher. Rest assured that this is what we do all day, every day, and we will make the process as painless as possible.
I’d like to take a moment to explain BookLocker’s history, and what makes us different. It describes how a single mother of three built a professional, highly-respected publishing company with no loans and no outside investors. And, she later sued Amazon for federal anti-trust violations – and won! Her much larger competitors were too afraid to battle the Goliath of the industry – but Angela was not. Her friends and family were not surprised.
In the late 90’s, Angela Hoy wasn’t thinking about starting and running a new business. She was struggling to raise three children as a newly single mother who had recently escaped an abusive marriage. After discovering that most police departments can’t protect women and children from abusive men, she wrote and self-published The Emergency Divorce Handbook for Women. The ebook is available for free for any woman who requests a copy. The print edition is for sale on numerous websites across the globe, including Amazon.
With no support from the children’s father (who later gave up his parental rights), Angela struggled to make ends meet, and feed her children. Besides working full-time for an Internet marketing agency, and being the director of a popular Y2K website, she took on additional work she could do at home. It was mostly writing articles for publications, and doing accounting work for local businesses. She even put up fliers at the local college, and typed term papers for college students who didn’t have their own computers.
During this time, Angela was also writing and printing her own books locally, and selling them through her website, WritersMarkets.com, where other writers could find leads to writing jobs. That website later became WritersWeekly.com, which is, today, one of the most respected and well-known writing websites on the Internet.
Angela lost her full-time job in 1999. With the pressure mounting to care for her children, Angela scrambled to get as much freelance work as she could, and continued to write more books. During this time, Angela met Richard Hoy, and Internet marketing expert. They discovered they had quite a bit in common, and got married and he adopted her three children.
Over time, Angela grew weary of printing and mailing her books to her readers. She decided to start selling the Microsoft Word version of her books on her own website so her readers could instantly obtain the information they needed and, of course, pay less. Her sales soared! She had unknowingly created one of the very first ebooks – before “ebook” was even a common term. Angela later wrote a book titled “How to Write, Publish, and Sell Ebooks,” which brought in more than $700 on the first day it went up for sale.
She then found a website that sold a variety of ebooks by numerous authors, and listed her book there. Her book quickly became the #1 selling book on that site. Angela’s website was doing so well that she was able to “hire” Richard away from his full-time Internet job, and assist her with growing the business.
Angela and Richard eventually offered to purchase that small ebook website for $5K. It was called “BookLocker.com.”
Since then, BookLocker has published more 10,000 print and electronic titles – one book at a time. Angela has never forgotten what it was like in those early days, often skipping meals so her children would have enough to eat. BookLocker has never grown beyond Angela’s family and a few employees. While the business received numerous offers of investments, and even buy-outs, Angela and Richard refused to cash in and walk away because they knew BookLocker’s authors would then be just another number in a conglomerate publishing company. They had seen many sites go out of business after selling out and they refused to allow that to happen to their authors.
Angela still works today like she did back then – as if her family’s and authors’ lives depend on the success of BookLocker. And, every author that signs on with BookLocker is considered family. We don’t shuffle our authors from one “customer service” rep to another. We communicate directly with them, from A to Z, and every step in between during the publishing process.
BookLocker specializes in small business professionalism and customer service – with big company performance. YOU will be treated like family as well.
Please review our prices, and those of our competitors, RIGHT HERE.
We will be happy to review your manuscript at this time, or whenever you’re ready, to determine if it meets our criteria. There is no obligation on your part for us to consider your manuscript for publication.
If you’re not ready to move forward, that’s okay. We’ll be right here when you are. We don’t have overseas call centers so you can always contact me directly.
When you’re ready –
BLACK AND WHITE INTERIOR BOOKS:
You can either submit your manuscript for consideration ON THIS PAGE.
Or, if you’re in a hurry, you can sign up right away right RIGHT HERE.
Please note that you do NOT need to submit your final manuscript for formatting today. You can wait and do that when you are ready for us to begin the formatting process.
COLOR-INTERIOR BOOKS:
You must submit your manuscript for a quote because special formatting fees apply. You can do that RIGHT HERE.
Please note that you do NOT need to submit your final manuscript for formatting today. You can wait and do that when you are ready for us to begin the formatting process.
I’m right here if you have any questions. Please feel free to contact me to see if we’re running any sales right now! 🙂
OH, I ALMOST FORGOT! You can read about Angela’s battle with Amazon RIGHT HERE.
Have a super day!
Brian P. Whiddon
Operations Manager, BookLocker.com
Managing Editor, WritersWeekly.com
