Interview with Julie Ann Sipos: WD’s 33rd Annual Self-Published Book Awards Winner

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In Horrible Women, Wonderful Girls, grand-prize winner of the 33^rd Annual WD Self-Published Book Awards, protagonist Jaycee Grayson has been trying to make it as an entertainment executive in Hollywood but is disillusioned by the roadblocks constantly thrown up by the men in the industry. Thinking it will be better if she works almost exclusively with women, Jaycee moves from Hollywood to Littleburgh, Wisconsin, with the help of her big sister Meredith, to take a job at Wonderful Girls, a brand whose goal is to empower girls through dolls with meaningful backstories told in books and now, movies. But as Jaycee discovers, just as there are horrible men, so too are there horrible women who can create their own type of roadblocks. In other words, author Julie Ann Sipos says, “When people ask me who the audience is, I feel like it’s any woman who’s ever had a job.”

Given that Sipos has had a successful career herself in Hollywood, working for the likes of Mattel, Disney, and American Girl, it would be easy to think the connection between author and protagonist is based on shared experiences. But Sipos is quick to note that both Jaycee and the town of Littleburgh are entirely fictitious. The real connection is in the skill set Sipos took from her entertainment career and put to use in self-publishing. She says it made the choice itself an obvious one.

“I think there’s a misperception,” Sipos says, “that authors who self-publish have either neglected to or failed to pursue traditional publishing as opposed to we made this choice to do this. I did very briefly investigate it because I was an executive editor at American Girl, largest publisher of girls’ fiction in the world. So, I certainly had those connections … But I did not feel that traditional publishing was out there looking for me or my story about corporate greed and performative activism inside a corporation. … they call them the Big 5, and I think there seems to be even more gatekeeping than there is in Hollywood.”  

With self-publishing, Sipos could control not only the content of the story, but also things like creating the brand identity for what is on its way to becoming a trilogy. As she’s fond of telling her students, “Your story can’t end on the page anymore. I get that you’re a writer, and I respect that. You don’t have to be a producer, but your story only begins on the page.” So, with that in mind, she used her industry knowledge and the help of her partners at Dartmouth Park, the indie publishing house she cofounded, to develop brand ambassador boxes to send out to bloggers, librarians, and the like, containing thoughtful goodies connected to details in the story.

The other piece of Hollywood that Sipos brought to this book is her knowledge of the craft, things like how to structure the story so viewers keep watching, or in this case, how to keep readers turning the pages, and how to use dialogue to push the story forward. She says, “If you’ll notice the structure of [the book] … it’s actually 21 chapters, which is, if you write a season of an episodic series for a network, that is 21 episodes. … I’m looking for a complete story in each chapter, and I’m looking for a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter.” She continues, “My training is very specific, and it’s how I teach my students too. How I write a scene is no different in any medium—so even if I were writing a piece of animation for kindergartners—where two characters have two opposing obstacles. And what that lets you do is let the characters enunciate themselves, and how they do that is if you let them articulate their deepest desires, but also their desires in every moment. … That not only gives you the character, it gives you great dialogue; it can really pop and crackle in the moment. But it gives you the story; it gives you the conflict.”

Sipos, who won $10,000 in cash and a trip to the WD Annual Conference, has this advice for indie authors considering entering this competition: “I think not just this competition, but I think any competition that’s willing to give a cash prize is supporting the industry in a visceral way … A lot of these prizes, even the prestigious ones are businesses and so they are self-supporting themselves, and just to get the medal or whatever is great. But we intend to use this money to invest back into the property. … So, I would say definitely enter, even if you think there’s thousands of entrants, and I have no chance of bubbling up to the top. You never know what’s going to appeal to the judges.”

When asked if she has any advice for writers considering choosing self-publishing, she says, “I’m not a big regretful person in general, but if I do have any, it’s truly ever waiting for anyone to pronounce anything. And what I mean by that is, even if I’ve gotten a phone call that I’ve waited for and the news was good—meaning yes, we want to buy your script or yes, some actor wants to attach to this—I really wish I never waited one way or another because it's never good enough. … What I’m saying is, if you’re waiting for the gatekeepers to open the gate—which when you have a dream of being a novelist, that’s the way it’s supposed to go—not only are you going to be waiting a really long time, but even when they open it, it’s the wrong gate opened to the wrong way. … So never give up on your dream. Service your dream, service your talent. If you start to think about honoring your power to execute your own vision, I think people would be just absolutely amazed because there’s never going to be another you walking into the room, and I think most writers have no idea how powerful we are.”