Hi, I’m Tricia Lawrence, CEO of real/brilliant, inc. and I love kids books!

I was born at a very young age—and I don’t think I’ve grown out of that yet. I wrote my first book at age 8 (something about a squirrel and his acorn).

I took up writing teen YA before YA was a category (this was the 1980s and I was obsessed with the Sweet Valley High series). You can laugh, but I have always been a kids book writer!

If you’re here and you think you might have found the real/brilliant that was at SXSW Interactive 2011 (and thus have no interest in talking kids books), go here (link to Author Blogger, my other site for non-kids book writers). I am one and the same, but just before SXSW Interactive actually began, I joined the Erin Murphy Literary Agency as social media strategist. Suffice it to say, my world has been taken over by kids books!

Although I mostly wrote kids books as a kid, my first foray into print publishing was at age 23 (I hand-sold my first gift book to an editor at Harvest House Books without an agent) and then at 24, I sold my first gift book series, Mother, Sister, Grandmother, Friend, and Father also without an agent. The Father title was written but never released, but every Mother’s Day starting in 1998 until the year 2000, my gift book series was featured on an endcap in Target stores nationwide. I know this! I got calls from friends from everywhere telling me so! The clerk at my local Target was awestruck when he connected me with the books.

Publicity and promotion always made me just a little uncomfortable. I talked friends out of ordering even small quantities of my book series for their gift shops because it made me literally ill to think that they would be stuck with too many copies on their 80% off table after the spring season ended.

I know how hard it is to talk yourself up! I was the worst at promotion! And I didn’t have a reliable partner in an agent, so this is why I’ve joined Erin Murphy Literary. I now know the value of having an agent. You could say I learned the hard way. And yet, my publisher gave me another series in 1999, a kid’s book series: Hugs for Mom and Hugs for Dad. Those were so fun to write and gave me confidence that I would continue on in kids books from then on. Except another publisher came out with another series before my publisher with the same EXACT titles and my books went nowhere. And then 9/11 happened.

But from 2001 to 2007, I stoked the fires of my writing dream, writing and writing and writing and pitching. I got married and moved to Seattle with my husband. I started studying marketing (realizing I was so bad at it!) and soon I was helping other authors (and a Fortune 300 company) write blog posts, join Twitter, and spread their message around using social media. I wrote book proposals for hire and edited first novels (one author went on to the New York Times bestseller list!), and then in 2007, my first picture book, A Princess’s Crown, was released worldwide.

Now, a word to the wise! I didn’t get big book deals back then. I didn’t even have big publishers. I started small, because that’s how you start!

Thus, the goal of this blog is to start small, but to build slow, incremental steps toward making kids book authors bigger, better, more successful, and able to sustain a fulfilling career!

About real/brilliant, inc.

I started real/brilliant, inc. in 1995 from my tiny corner office (8′ x 8′) and have never looked back (well, maybe a few times). I copyedited and proofread, wrote kids books, marketing plans and book proposals for hire for 10 years, until, in 2005, the social media bug bit me. It was so exciting! I could start a blog and just like everybody else I could bore the world with what I ate for lunch (um, chocolate!). In 20o5, I really got into blogging, launching my first! In 2007, I started playing with social media networks (one of the first adopters of Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin), and in 2009, I officially launched my social media consulting for authors and began planning social media strategies for specific books and for an author’s overall career.

In 2011, I joined Erin Murphy Literary as the agency’s social media strategist. Thus, the majority of my consulting time is full. However, I will be teaching some kids book marketing workshops, launching a kids book marketing membership program, and developing some of my own kids book marketing infoproducts. If you’d like to keep up on the latest from this blog, plus the occasional special offer, and get notified about kids book workshop and learning opportunities, sign up on for my eZine!

If you’d like to connect online, I’m on Twitter: @realbrilliant and I’m on email: tricia at realbrilliant.com. And real/brilliant has a Facebook page!

I welcome the opportunity to brainstorm anytime (on the blog or back channel) about how social media and learning to be sticky (how to position yourself effectively in your audience’s minds) can help you as an author.

Thanks for visiting!