Caroline Goldsworthy
“It’s the breadth of knowledge as much as anything else. I’ve looked around at other self-publishing courses [and programs]. They offer a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of the other. But with selfpublishing.com, you get resources from beginning to end and there’s somebody there every step of the way.”
Results
Her Story:
Caroline Goldsworthy always dreamed of making a living by writing stories. In school, she had amazing history teachers that instilled in her a lifelong love of history.
This love expanded into a passion for all the tales that the past has to offer. Writing seemed like a natural career path. However, as a child, she struggled with reading.
“I was not a good reader as a child. [But, even still] I started reading Agatha Christie when I was about 10 or 11.”
Reading mysteries helped her overcome her reading struggles. Little did she know, Agatha Christie’s books would inspire her own future writing.
But young Caroline started to crack the mystery before the book did. This would eventually become the genre she was known for, but Caroline wouldn’t become a successful author until much later.
“The biggest challenges before joining selfpublishing.com was the focus but also [not] having that business mindset.”
The moment her journey began:
“I’ve always wanted to write a book. It wasn’t until 2006 that I had the story. The story came to me with the events happening in my hometown.”
Caroline Goldsworthy is British and lives just a short drive down the coast from Southwold, England. Due to some of the things happening in her own local area, she has a budding story idea. This is when she knew it was time to make her author dream come true.
Caroline tried writing some books on her own, but she lacked focus and found it difficult to commit to a specific genre. She also knew she needed to view her books as a product – something to market to a specific audience. The clarity on her ideal reader wasn’t there quite yet – but help was on its way.
She decided she needed guidance and proven ideas for marketing her books. That’s what started her search for a high-quality writing and self-publishing course. She didn’t just want a writing or book coach though, she wanted full, start-to-finish support for her novels.
“[I needed to] look at the books not just as my babies but look at them as a product. It was that aspect of selfpublishing.com that I wanted to look at because I’d looked around. There’s lots of courses that will help you with writing but it was the marketing side of things which I think I was most interested in.”
Seeing that selfpublishing.com offered not just guidance on writing but many resources to help her learn marketing, Caroline knew it was the answer she needed. She teamed up with her personal selfpublishing.com coach, entered into the active community of current authors, and got to work.
“I’ve really enjoyed working with Ramy [my selfpublishing.com fiction coach]. He’s very enthusiastic and inspirational, and he’s also very good at getting to the root of the problem.”
Her process for publishing her book:
Caroline’s fiction writing process started with a lot of research. It started with the genre. She noticed that other authors writing genres similar to hers were doing well. Maybe she could too.
“When I was investigating and researching the market to see whether a 1920s cozy mystery series was really the place to go, Ramy made me work very hard to prove that there was a growing market.”
Once she identified that yes, she could not just write this genre but sell it, and sell well, she dug in – and almost immediately started to see the numbers roll in.
One area that didn’t really require research on her part was the setting of her novels.
Caroline had grown up reading mysteries and she knew she wanted to write cozy mysteries set in the English country or seaside. In love with the coastal town of Southwold, she wanted to use it as the setting for her Eastwold by the Sea series. Although the novel version of the town is entirely fictional and she tends to move streets around, she knows the coastal town well.
The small details help her stories come alive.
“It was finding out who were the authors similar to me that made a big difference [in sales].”
Her transformation:
Multiple successful books later, Caroline has turned her dreams of becoming a successfully published fiction author a reality, with millions of views to prove it.
“My Summer Slain novels are the ones that have done the best for me. They’re the ones that I used the research I was taught how to do through selfpublishing.com. It’s because of that I think I’ve had the most success with my writing.”
Most recently, Caroline self-published her third book in her Lady Gayle series. During her launch month, she racked up half a million page views.
“I’ve now gone over 5 million [page views] in the lifetime of my books.”
In addition to learning how to market her books and increase sales, selfpublishing.com instilled in Caroline the importance of growing her author newsletter. After working with us, she now actively engages in creating content for her newsletter list. And she’s seeing major growth.
She has experienced countless successes since starting to work with selfpublishing.com:
- Her income has increased exponentially
- She has newfound confidence in her own abilities
- Her ability to write more quickly has improved
- She understands the inner workings of Amazon marketing
- She understands keywords and advertising at a whole new level
Today, Caroline continues to live out her dream of being an author. In fact, she even sees her books on the “also read” and “also bought” lists of authors she looks up to. She is still a member of our Fiction Author Advantage Accelerator Program and she continues to write, market, and learn…while her sales just keep coming.
“It’s the breadth of knowledge as much as anything else. I’ve looked around at other self-publishing courses [and programs]. They offer a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of the other. But with selfpublishing.com, you get resources from beginning to end and there’s somebody there every step of the way.”
Ready to take the next step towards your author goals?
Whether you are looking to join one of our core programs, or you have a finished manuscript and are simply looking for basic publishing services, selfpublishing.com is here to help.
