The History of BookLocker and WritersWeekly

BookLocker.com is a family-owned and -operated, full-service publishing company that has been in business for 26 years. WritersWeekly is BookLocker’s weekly e-zine that is geared toward helping writers and authors earn more money through their writing. You like making money, right? Sure, we all do. WritersWeekly not only offers freelance writing and advice for authors each week, but also features new freelance job listings and paying markets for writers. The entire website is free. Nobody needs to subscribe to see the entire site.

 

However, BookLocker’s history is not your average tale of someone deciding, “I think I’ll start a business!” It’s actually a story that’s rooted in passion and hard times. One might even call them “desperate” times. And it is that very beginning – that foundation – that BookLocker has built its success on. To be more exact, it’s what the owner, Angela Hoy, built that success on.

 

If you want to listen about those hard times, including when Angela sued Amazon.com on behalf of the entire print on demand industry in 2008, AND WON!, listen to this:

 

EPISODE 10: How a Single Mom Built a Successful Publishing Company…With Many Personal and Professional Challenges Along the Way!

 

Angela shares how WritersWeekly and her publishing biz began, plus the funny and stressful challenges faced along the way.

 

Angela found her passion for writing in the 10th grade. She actually was able to pull off an “A+” on a book report for a book she hadn’t even read. Mrs. Martin (who gave her the A+ with the added comment: “Good BS!”) was the first person in Angela’s life that encouraged her to pursue a professional writing career. Later, her 12th grade journalism teacher, Karen Collins, who is friends with Angela on Facebook today, did the same!  

 

Later, Angela would graduate, got married (at age 19 – listen to the episode link above – those were hard times!), and have three children.

 

Unfortunately, that marriage became a bit of a nightmare (an understatement), and Angela found herself having to find work outside her full-time job to be able to make ends meet, and feed her kids. That extra work included typing term papers for local college students, doing accounting for local small businesses, putting out crab traps to have enough food to eat, growing bonsai trees (again, listen to that podcast episode above – she did anything and everything!), and sending queries to magazines for articles. That’s when her writing business really took off!

 

Angela had picked up a copy of a paying markets periodical, Writers Markets, put out by Writers  Digest Books, and contacted some of the publications in hopes of writing some articles. She found out, through the responses she got, that much of the information in the periodical was very old – even though the edition was new for that year. But, she was getting emails saying this or that editor had left the previous year.

 

Angela, knowing there HAD to be a better way, already had a website, WritersWeekly.com, and started sending out questionnaires to various publications, compiling their responses, and built that website (back then you had to code your own HTML to build a website), and presented the updated information on a daily basis, whenever she got responses from magazines and websites. And, she was receiving responses daily. She called the website “WritersMarkets.com.”

 

The idea worked. Angela’s little hobby website was providing fresh, up-to-date paying paying markets information to writers ONLINE – something that hadn’t been done before. However, after a while, a company called “Writers Digest Books” contacted her, and claimed her URL violated their trademark.

 

Strangely though, rather than asking Angela to cease and desist, they said she needed to give her website to them. In response, Angela first laughed, and then advised them that she was a single mom (by that time) raising three kids, and getting no child support (her ex was a deadbeat), and dared them to sue her. She never heard back from them, but she did change the title of her website to WritersWeekly.com. (She still owns WritersMarkets.com, by the way!)

 

WritersWeekly was born, and still 28 years later, continues to deliver to writers current, up-to date paying markets freelance jobs for writers, every week.  

 

Angela also wrote booklets teaching aspiring writers how to get into freelance writing, as well as how to become syndicated columnists (she had a syndicated column by that time). Those booklets were sold via WritersWeekly.com. Readers would mail her checks. Angela would have those books printed and stapled at Minuteman Press (like Kinkos), and then would mail them out to those who ordered them. Angela was depositing multiple checks into her bank account every week. The earliest form of true self-publishing.

 

One day, Angela realized there was an easier way. She created the very first ebooks, before ebook was even a term in the publishing industry. How? She created MSWord documents of her books, and emailed them to those who placed orders. It was cheaper, easier, and instant! Her readers loved those! No shipping costs! A few months later, Stephen King made ebook a household word.

 

It was about a year later when Angela found a small online company, BookLocker.com, that was devoted entirely to selling ebooks, and she added her own ebook to the website, “How to Publish and Promote Online.” Her e-book instantly became their #1 best seller, and stayed there. Within just a few weeks, the owner asked if Angela would like to purchase the company. His name was Shawn. He was a work at home dad. His very new website (literally the first ebook retailer online) was growing in popularity. But his wife said he was spending too much time working online. Angela snatched that popular website up for only $5,000!

 

Since then, BookLocker has designed, published, and distributed more than 17,000 print and electronic books, including international bestsellers! BookLocker offers interior design, (including for black and white AND color interior books), original cover design, professional editing, full distribution to thousands of online and brick and mortar retailers, and even audiobook services. Angela and her husband, Brian, the Managing Editor of WritersWeekly, have also created the WritersWeekly Podcast (https://writersweekly.com/podcast), which continues to gain popularity in the writing world. Their specialty is alerting authors to foreign scammers, who have literally thousands of websites on the Internet now.

 

While other self-publishing companies have come and gone, BookLocker has continued to endure for 27 years by dedicating themselves to the highest quality services, and treating their authors like family. Because they ARE.