About Authority Publishing

Authority Publishing is the result of a dream realized. Founder and CEO Stephanie Chandler is an author of several books, a professional speaker, and former bookstore owner with a unique perspective on the publishing industry.

After developing an ulcer and realizing it was time for a complete lifestyle change, Chandler fled a decade-long career in the Silicon Valley to open a bookstore in Sacramento, California in 2003. Her goal was to turn it into a passive income business so that she could write novels.

But the Universe had a different plan...

Chandler discovered she had a passion for all-things-small-business-and-marketing. She began writing articles for magazines and newspapers while learning about opportunities for writing non-fiction books. She realized that she had read dozens of books about starting a business, but after learning from her own experience, she was compelled to write a more comprehensive book that was unlike any other.

A major literary agent called to report that he liked her proposal, but insisted she needed to have a platform. "You need an audience. You need to be speaking to tens of thousands of people each year." Frustrated by the advice, Chandler looked for another way to build her platform. She decided that the quickest way would be to launch a website that reached her target audience of entrepreneurs. BusinessInfoGuide.com, a directory of articles, links and resources, was launched in 2004.

Chandler self-published her first book, The Business Startup Checklist and Planning Guide, with the help of a custom publishing company much like Authority Publishing. The book was released in September of 2005, and thanks to her newly-developed online platform, the book began selling a full two months before it was in print. That's when Chandler understood what publishers wanted--an author with a ready-made audience so that they were assured that the book would sell.

Landing a Traditional Publisher

Chandler's website was receiving steady traffic and she became interested in selling information products including ebooks, special reports and workbooks, based on the knowledge she was acquiring from her experiences. She searched book stores high and low for a guide on how to launch information product sales, but nothing had yet been written. After studying how others were producing, promoting and selling their information products, Chandler launched her own products. Sales began immediately and she marveled at how she was earning money while she slept while empowering her readers with valuable information.

Can you guess what happened next?

Chandler assembled a book proposal and sent it to two publishers. Because she was able to demonstrate that she had built a platform and had successfully self-published her first book, within a month Chandler had a signed contract with John Wiley and Sons to publish her next book: From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur: Make Money with Books, eBooks and Information Products. It was released in December 2006 and has continued to build a loyal following ever since.

Catching the Publishing Bug

Chandler's next book, The Author's Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books, was released by Quill Driver Books in May 2008. Her fourth book, Leap! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business, will be released by Career Press in the fall of 2009.

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