What it took for my second book to happen
Buckle up. I had two kids when I started it and now I have three.
I hope you have been enjoying the History of Women’s Handbags from the dawn of time through the 1950s, ending in the delightful, non-ecofriendly, toxic (and extremely heavy) lucite bags. To recap:
Part 1: The Middle Ages through the Renaissance, including the origin of handbag silhouettes
Part 2: The 1800’s, travel, trunks, luxury through the Spanish Flu
Part 3: The Roaring 20’s, the FET Handbag Tax, though post-war prosperity
I know it’s been a week, but I had to press pause with the next installment coming next week. Today, we will discuss how my second book, Savvy Suzanna’s Amazing Adventures in Handbags, has just gone live on Amazon for pre-sale. This has been a long time coming.
My first book, “Handbag Designer 101,” came about through a fortuitous meeting during grand jury duty. I scanned the interesting people (it’s jury duty, so no judgment) in the pool I was going to be stuck with for a month and noticed a woman carrying a stack of bridal magazines and no ring. Suffice it to say, she looked normal, and I figured quickly she was in some sort of industry because no one carries wedding magazines for fun.
I informed her we would be friends and sit next to each other through the end of this experience, and as luck would have it - she was a literary agent. After becoming fast friends and telling her that there are no books about how to actually “be a handbag designer and start a handbag brand and business,” she was kind enough to say that I should, especially since I was in the thick of running my own line, taking it to retail, and then knocking it off for a lower priced iteration. At that time, I was in the midst of a licensing deal that I can only say was a life lesson on what not to do and who not to work with. They were trying to push me out even though we had a contract, and it turned so messy that they stopped including me in sales and market meetings and even birthday parties in the office. (True story.) So - I spent that time writing my entire book from start to finish.
After completing all 200+ pages, I told her, “Ok, I’m ready for my next chapter - when will this book sell? I am so done with bags.” She laughed - like really laughed, and said, “Oh - publishing doesn’t work like that. This is going to take time. And you can’t leave handbags if you ever want this book to come out.” (I am paraphrasing FYI.) Six years and five Handbag Awards later, I got my book deal and had just had my second child. Almost two years later, the book finally came out. This is 2011.
After that, I decided now that I was a published author. It was time for my next book. Ah, the naiveté, as if I didn’t learn my lesson with the first book. I went to lunch with my agent and told her my idea of a children’s fiction book focused on handbags and entrepreneurship. Having a young daughter, she was still in the single digests that I had invoicing me for everything she did (have to teach them young) and was also thrown into my world of handbags - I was shocked that there were no books to address either which were both of great interest in girls in that age group. Considering I had been what I like to call “professoring” for over ten years by that point, teaching Fashion PR, Fashion Marketing, and had just started teaching Entrepreneurship and saw firsthand the opportunity to expose children to these methods could only inspire them to do bigger things, in a smarter way.
Again, she laughed and said, “You are switching genres - this basically starts from square one. Don’t forget how long the first one took.” Well, I thought this would be different, and I was famous now. Right? (Oy.) The first draft of “Savvy Suzanna” came out in 2012. From there, I wrote and rewrote various iterations - at least 300 of this children’s story of an entrepreneurial little girl who started businesses and stumbled into the world of handbags. But the rejections came back fast and furious, as they typically do for most authors (starting a new genre with no credibility - or enough of a following. “Not interesting,” “not relevant,” “not the right time” - was what I heard. Again, I wrote and rewrote. I even made bags and stationery and had my daughter write thank you notes for their consideration. (Yes, she invoiced me too.) Be creative, I thought - what would Elle Woods have done?
My daughter had taken an amazing sewing class at the age of five at The Fashion Class here in NYC, where she learned to sew in one day and immediately was empowered and fearless. Yes, this would absolutely be incorporated into the story. If only kids knew that if they understood how to fail forward, fail fast, learn how to budget, pay for things themselves, and understand the value of hard work - and by the way, handbags - how could this not be a runaway hit!?
Well, note that in the above, my daughter, who reluctantly participated in this “making of Suzanna’s bag” video (and yes, I was invoiced for that), is also seven years old. Suzanna was sent out multiple times to every publisher, and of course, you can’t pitch the same story to the same person. It’s the holidays, someone is on maternity leave, you wait for their replacement to get settled, and suddenly, it’s 2020. I have three kids - it’s a pandemic - and the final word was, “Unless you have something new happening, have a ton of movement on your social platforms, or anything else that could be deemed newsworthy - we can’t go back out to publishers again.” This ate away at me, and typically, I can let things go. As entrepreneurs, you have to learn to do that. For the next three years, I would open this story, read it, smile, and close it up. One day, while waiting at my son’s piano class last November, I was targeted by a vanity publisher for self-publishing.
I said to myself - ok, it’s a sign. I paid the money for illustrations (fortunately not an arm, and a leg) with the opportunity to publish with them (for an arm, and a leg, and a full body too. Oy.) While I don’t recommend these types of “hybrids” as most of them are scams, this got me to the point where I could start to visualize what this could look like. I was terrified to self-publish, and I really didn’t want to because if this was going to be my next chapter, you can’t make mistakes, not at this stage, or at least for me. I know what it takes to launch a brand. I have done it too many times, and to start from scratch, I thought this story would not get the impact on the target audience to justify the reason why I wrote it in the first place.
I brought the story with me to Las Vegas in May for the Licensing Expo to pitch a Savvy Suzanna companion product to Walmart (yes - I launch as a full brand, always) and had a chance encounter with Karen Kilpatrick of Genius Cat Books. I showed her the story, and she said it showed potential, but the illustrations looked like AI (I know they had to be somewhat), and the story was too long. Ego is something you age out of, so I asked her if she could suggest someone to help tighten it up, and I will find a “real” illustrator and use these current images as just guidelines.
I found an incredible Brazilian illustrator, Claudia Varjotie, who lives in Finland. I went through the book line by line with an editor (with no ego), and Karen said, “Ok, you are ready—it looks good.” For the past five months, I have devoted my days to perfecting this story, making sure it checks all the boxes for a budding kidpreneur and that Savvy Suzanna can be a brand that will impact this generation.
Suffice it to say that in July of 2025, Savvy Suzanna’s Amazing Adventures in Handbags will be released into the wild, with an additional surprise at retail. 50,000 copies of Handbag Designer 101 have been sold. My daughter is applying to college; my oldest son is in 10th grade, and my youngest son is in third grade. Am I tired? Maybe. Probably. But you will never know if you meet me, especially if I talk about this story. There is so much more to come, so follow along and stay tuned.
I love you my friend. It’s hard work and dedication and perseverance and belief that takes you places . You are a true example of this. So proud of you !!!