I’ve been a writer for 30 years, having finished my first novel in 1986, and I’m no stranger to the ups and downs that come with the business. Heck, even though my work won awards in the interim, I didn’t truly break into publishing until 1995 when my first full-length work of nonfiction catapulted its way onto bestseller lists. That work was followed by a dozen other bestsellers, nearly all of which were published by Macmillan and distributed to the world by Simon & Schuster, that is until the business turned and I found myself at a crossroads.
The year was 1998 and I turned away from full-time writing for a short while to work for a Seattle-based startup. Around the same time, I jumped ship from Macmillan and an opportunity to write for Microsoft arose. Microsoft was working on a new series of books called Pocket Consultants. They needed writers who could write fast, clearly, concisely, authoritatively and just as important meet crazy timelines not just once or a few times but always. Surprisingly, always hitting timelines isn’t something many writers can do.
I went over to Microsoft without any hesitation. They loved my writing so much that my style became the Pocket Consultant style and soon I had not just one contract with them but three, then four. I not only hit my timelines while writing clearly, concisely and authoritatively, I consistently walloped them.
Microsoft loved this. Soon the Pocket Consultants and I were synonymous. In the years that followed, I wrote dozens. Not only were the books read in print by millions (thank you, readers!), articles and extracts from the books were posted on Microsoft websites and read by millions more.
Pocket Consultant was in fact a $100-million+ brand in its nearly 20-year run. Peanuts to Microsoft where only the word that starts with b (billions) matters, but an amazing success story nonetheless. And it all started with a few people working behind the scenes who believed in me, my writing style and my unique approach to the various subjects I write about.
The people working quietly behind the scenes know who they are. If you have any of my Pocket Consultants you know who they are too—they’re listed on the copyright page. They include Anne Hamilton, Lucinda Rowley, Karen Szall, Juliana Aldous, Martin DelRe, Maureen Zimmerman, Jeff Koch, Valerie Woolley, Julie Miller, Denise Bankaitis, Maria Gargiulo, Rosemary Caperton, Melissa von Tschudi-Sutton, Carol Vu, Chris Nelson, Jean Trenary, Devon Musgrave, and many others (apologies for any misspellings or omissions).
What readers may not know, however, is just how important those working behind the scenes are to writers. Some who read my work may think that Microsoft’s #1 author for the past twenty years lived at the Redmond Campus. The truth is much different, especially as I’m a very independent cuss. I didn’t write dozens of books by being a social butterfly either. I met my schedules, by putting my head down, blocking out the distractions, and working. That meant the social butterfly stuff was done for me by others, who acted in my best interest around Redmond campus even though I was never there.
In those two decades of work for Microsoft, five people in particular were my biggest champions and spokespersons:
Anne Hamilton
Lucinda Rowley
Karen Szall
Juliana Aldous
Martin DelRe
All of them were there at the beginning pulling for me and a few of them were still there nearly two decades later at the end doing the same. So while I was breaking new ground, setting the pace for the publishing world with the revolutionary series called Pocket Consultants, these were the people who had my back and best interests at heart. In life and publishing, that’s not just rare, that’s otherwise unheard of.
So today as Pocket Consultant sunsets, I look back and smile. All the years, all the words, all the books were worth all the time, all the effort, all the sacrifice.
To all the readers out there, great things are still happening. I hope you’ll hang in there with me as I blaze new trails with Stanek & Associates.
Thank you for reading,
William Robert Stanek
williamstanek at aol.com
PS
If you’re using Office 365 and Exchange Online, I hope you’ll buy my books on these subjects. Good starting points? Sure...
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