Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
When you find something you love to do, you have to find the time for it, no matter what.
In our Fast Forward series, we profile alumni doing unique, interesting and meaningful work in their fields, inviting each to connect the support they received at Creighton, however long past, to the person they are today. See more Fast Forward features here.
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By Micah Mertes
Emily Belden Bond, BA’08, is a published author (her works released by HarperCollins, one of the world’s largest publishers) not only because of her talent as a writer but her ability to make that talent stand out.
A Creighton journalism and advertising graduate, Emily discovered, almost by accident, new opportunities in the still-emerging social media landscape of the ’00s. In ignoring the usual “How To Get Published” playbook, she forged a successful path that is fully, uniquely her own.
We spoke with Emily about how she found her way.
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Read more about Emily and her work, which includes Eightysixed: A Memoir about Unforgettable Men, Mistakes, and Meals; Hot Mess; and Husband Material.
Read about Emily’s breast cancer journey alongside a fellow Creighton alumna here.
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How did your career in publishing begin?
EMILY: I was working at a marketing job in Omaha after I graduated, but I was laid off during the recession. I headed back to Chicago, where I’m from, and tried to figure out my life.
I wanted to keep everyone informed of my adventures living in the city, so I started a WordPress blog, where I would write little entries about my day: going on a date, going to a company party, seeing drama at my apartment complex. And I would send links to the blog to all my friends, many of them Creighton friends.
One day, I got an email from a WordPress content curator. She had stumbled across one of my blogs and thought it was funny and entertaining, and she asked if she could share it on the WordPress homepage. From there, I started to get a following. People told me if this were ever turned into a book, they would buy it.
So that planted the seed?
EMILY: That’s what started it all. I decided to turn the blog posts into a book. I worked 9 to 5 in the advertising/marketing world, and I worked 5 to 9 (or sometimes 5 to 2 a.m.) working on my writing.
But the format of your first book ended up being quite a bit different from the initial blog posts.
EMILY: I knew I didn’t want this to be a book of essays. I wanted it to be a story with a beginning, middle and end.
(The result was Eightysixed: A Memoir about Unforgettable Men, Mistakes, and Meals.)
EMILY: I’ve since aged out of the mid-twenties target demo for that book, but the lessons remain evergreen, I think. People who have followed my writing career usually started with that one, and most of them say it’s their favorite. It’s still my best-selling work.
How did you transition to writing novels?
EMILY: I do everything very entrepreneurially. When I wrote Eightysixed, I knew the chances of finding an agent and publisher and getting a book deal at this point were unlikely. So, I did a lot of research and looked for ways to stand out. I put together a book proposal. Usually, you just email the proposals as a Word document. I did that. But I also made a kind of digital choose-your-own-adventure with my proposal. I started a website called readthisproposal.com. The site was this interactive way to get to know me, my writing and the proposal I was submitting.
I relied on analytics to see if anyone was even reading the page. So, if I sent the link out to five different agents that week, I would go back to my analytics and see if I had five new clicks. Even if I’m not hearing back, I can at least see if people are checking out the site.
One day, I was contacted by a writer from Forbes.com. She was doing a roundup of people doing interesting things in age-old industries and how they’re shaking up publishing. She had found my proposal online and wanted to do a little write-up about it. Ironically, my first thought was “no” because I thought if she put this site out there, I would lose all the accuracy of my analytics tracking. But I saw it was a wonderful opportunity on a huge platform, so I agreed on the write-up.
And then the floodgates opened.
EMILY: I came back to my desk after a meeting and quickly realized that my life had changed. The Forbes article had gone live, and I had gone from hearing from no one to having competing agents and publishers in my inbox asking if we could work together. It opened up my options tremendously.
Since the book is so Chicago-centric, it was covered heavily by the local press. That led to me getting a call from an agent (who is still my agent today) who said, “I don’t represent memoirs, but if you ever write women’s fiction, I would love to represent you.”
You had already had an idea for a novel, right?
EMILY: I had written a manuscript for Hot Mess, which is set in the high-end restaurant industry of Chicago. I circled back with the agent, sent her the manuscript, and two weeks later, she signed me as her client. A few months later, she sold it to a publisher, HarperCollins. They actually wanted to sign me for a two-book deal. I didn’t have an idea for a second novel at that point, but my agent, being the amazing agent that she is, said, “Of course, Emily has more ideas.”
She and I brainstormed some different material, and the idea for Husband Material came out of it. So, with one deal, I had fully transitioned to becoming a fiction author.
So now you’re a full-time author with a whole other career.
EMILY: I’ve had the same job throughout, working for corporate marketing at Marriott International. I’ve changed positions over the years, but I've been with them the whole time. They’ve been wonderful to me throughout my writing career and also through my breast cancer journey. (In August, Emily started as the director of marketing for The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe.)
I still write the same way. I work from 9 to 5 and then write from 5 to 9. When you find something you love to do, you have to find the time for it, no matter what.
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