By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Becky Robinson was young, she read voraciously and dreamed of being a writer.
Now an adult with three daughters of her own, she cultivates their love of reading and works to help writers connect with an audience.
Robinson recently launched a Bowling Green page in her Hometown Reads project. It’s the 43rd page devoted to locally sourced literature.
“The vision of Hometown Reads is for local people to discover authors in their hometowns,” she said.
The concept is simple. First go to the home page (http://hometownreads.com/) and find and see a photographic listing of cities from Ann Arbor to Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Places as small as Grants Pass, Oregon to places as large as Los Angeles. Then click on the photo of the county courthouse and that brings you to: http://hometownreads.com/city/bowling-green. (Or of course you can go directly there.)
On the page currently are links to half dozen books by local authors. Click on the link and that connects to more information about the book and author. Like what you see? For most books there’s “Learn More” button takes you to the author’s home page and another button links to Amazon where you can buy the book. (Many of the books are also available locally.)
Robinson said usually she wants more books to populate a page before launching it, but she felt there was enough market in Bowling Green to take a chance. She like to see more writers affiliated with Bowling Green State University avail themselves of the service.
The service for writers is free. Robinson said at first it was free for the writer’ first book, with a charge for any subsequent volumes, but she is switching to make all listings free.
At this point Hometown Reads is a passion project that’s funded by her core business Weaving Influence. That company provides marketing assistance, both online and traditional, for the authors of business books.
The Lambertville, Michigan-based entrepreneur founded Weaving Influence in 2012, and she now employs about 30 associates.
She launched the business after earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Miami University and a master’s degree in Intercultural Studies at Wheaton College in Illinois. No formal tutelage in business or marketing, she notes.
Robinson spent nine years at home raising her daughters.
She transitioned back into the workforce doing freelance marketing consultant work for business book authors and working as a social marketing director for a management consulting firm. Other authors approached her, but she was reluctant at first to take the offers because she was working full-time. Then having a vision of an enterprise larger than herself, she started Weaving Influence.
Early on she had the idea for Hometown Reads as a division of the core company. She even bought the domain names. “I realized there were a lot of authors who cared a lot about their content and their books but didn’t know how to market.”
But she also realized “I didn’t have time, staff energy to make a startup go.”
By late 2015 she was ready to revisit the idea, and in early 2016 she started Hometown Reads. Toledo was the first city.
“I know how much heart and soul people pour into their books, and I think they deserve to be recognized,” she said.
And the satisfied reader will spread the word about the book, and maybe about Hometown Reads.
She selects cities that are close to her Lambertville home base. In other cases, authors organize and approach the company. Kansas City is the most successful, she said, probably because the newspaper published a feature story on Hometown Reads.
The ultimate goal is for all the Hometown Reads authors to know how to effectively market their book, she said.
She admits at this point how she may be able to monetize the site is up in the air. But she’s unconcerned. This is a passion project, and making money from it is not the key at the moment. Weaving Influence is profitable enough to carry it.
More than a company, she views it as a movement to “read local.”
Robinson believes: “The next great book you read could be by someone who lives around the corner from you.”
