Assistants Make Me More Successful — Come Meet Them

The last year and a half have been a lot in terms of the running and leadership at BookEnds. Like many companies we have gone through a vast number of changes and, thankfully, a ton of growth. Along with that has been the need for more support and hiring assistants as well as promoting assistants to full-time agents. It’s been exciting, exhilerating, exhausting and hugely rewarding.

The one mistake I made in all of this, or the one thing I learned, was that when it comes to the need for support playing small hurts. Not hiring because you’re afraid of the cost of an assistant hurts. Hiring part-time when truthfully you need someone full-time hurts. I know. I’ve done all of those things. When I knew I needed help I spent too much time waiting, until my work became overwhelming, work an assistant should have been doing. I also hired part-time when what I needed was full-time. All of these mistakes were out of fear. And every single one made my life harder and slowed our growth.

2022 is different though. After what feels like forever, we have the support staff we need and needed last year at this time. We have four brand new hires who have opened up my world in ways I didn’t even know were closed.

What I’m Doing with a Little Help from My Assistants

Now that I have so many incredible people supporting me it’s amazing to see what I’m able to accomplish. And it’s not just for the doing. It’s the thinking. There are so many things I just no longer need to worry about. Not because I don’t have to physically do them, but I don’t even need to remember they need to be done. They’re just done. All of this frees my mind to do the things I’m really good at.

Thanks to my assistants I’m feeling more energetic and creative again. I’m writing blog posts. I’m sending my authors revisions and book ideas. I’m back to doing what I do best which is growing BookEnds and thinking of how we can be better, stronger, and just generally great.

An assistant can do so much more than organize your files. They can give you the freedom to think, breathe, and lean into your superpower. Imagine how much more you could write if you don’t need to think about all of the things that, frankly, you don’t want to think about.

Get to Know the BookEnds Assistants

We recently sent out a newsletter to our clients introducing our four new assistants to them, and now I’m excited to be introducing them all to you. They chose to introduce themselves as BookEnds’s sidekicks, because they are the backbone of BookEnds and keep us in line and on track.

Madison (they/them)

By day, Madison is BookEnds’s Literary Assistant, handling social media, rights reversion requests, and a lot of spreadsheets. By night, they go undercover as a Barnes & Noble bookseller, paint their favorite scenes and characters from animated movies/TV, and try to learn how to skateboard and do hand-poke tattoos, all with varying results. They were born and raised in Southeast Michigan and now reside in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Their favorite main character/sidekick duo is Ash and Pikachu.

Marie (she/her)

By day, Marie is Jessica’s executive assistant, managing her calendar, onboarding new employees and clients and managing all types of processes and paperwork. By night, she’s making art, trying new coffee drinks, and perfecting her pasta salad recipe. She lives in Detroit, Michigan with her husband and four kids. Her favorite main character/sidekick duo is Hawkeye and Kate Bishop.

Maggie (she/her)

By day, Maggie is the literary assistant to Kim Lionetti. She turns to fictional worlds to escape reality and has a particular fondness for classics, romances, and epic fantasies. By night, she also enjoys listening to history and true crime podcasts, cross stitching, and binge watching period dramas. Her favorite fictional sidekicks are Cogsworth and Lumiere.

Sophie (she/her)

By day, Sophie works as the literary assistant for Tracy Marchini. By night, she’s a publishing student at Emerson College with only two semesters left to go. Her favorite fictional sidekicks are the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Scooby Gang.