332 - Celebrating Women’s Stories: The Importance of Representation in Publishing with Sibylline Press' Vicki DeArmon

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Big E. Darmen, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You have a long career in the publishing business. Currently, you're, I take it, you're one of the co-founders of Sibylline Press, which is a publishing company that is out there promoting the work of women over 50.

You know how I like to say it? I say we publish the brilliant work of women authors over 50.

I love that. I know.

I love the brilliant in there.

That's brilliant. I love that. As an author of 4 books with my 5th on the way, I totally get the process. Tell us a little bit about your backstory. How did, how do you get into all of this many years ago?

I think as most people may, or others may not, but I accidentally, frankly, you know how that is, right? Yeah. I, I was actually getting my master's degree in English. No, I'd gotten my BA in English Lit, and now I was getting my master's degree in writing, creative writing. And I was intercepted. My little writing self was intercepted by my entrepreneurial self. And the next thing, at the time I was working with my ex-husband who was a sportswriter also. So he was a writer and he wanted to write this sports history. Luckily it was of the 49ers. They were winning the Super Bowl. I did everything else. I set up the publishing company and then I ceased to really be the writer. I was the publisher, the marketer, all those things. Foghorn Press started in San Francisco in 1985, but in it I found like my true livelihood, which is that entrepreneurship, that creative spark that comes from creating things. And also in some ways the decline of the entrepreneur in the long-range business when, you know, at some time the entrepreneur has to step aside and let the rest of the company run itself because you're just, your creativity is just more than the company can bear. So that was a good lesson to recognize who I was in that arc.

Exactly. So you started Boghorn Press, but then you've done a whole bunch of other stuff along the way. You ran that for a while, sold it, I think, and then—

Yeah, we, yes. So thank you. I, uh, we started when I was 25, it was in 1985, and then I sold it 14, 13 years, 14 years later, uh, to Avalon Press, who then sold it to one of the Big Five publishers. So you'll find our titles now at Hachette's, coming out of Hachette, and under the auspices of Moon Publications. So that was a legacy of sorts, not totally the one I wanted, because I would have, I love publishing, so I, Then I was doing entrepreneurial stuff with my husband. I started several businesses and then I did an event business and I did this and I did that. And then I worked for Copperfields Books, which is a bookstore, which I always recommend to publishers. Now, if you haven't worked in a bookstore, working in a bookstore gives you the other side of publishing and it maybe lets you know why all those booksellers roll their eyes when you suggest all those sort of big league promotions. They're in the trenches selling their books, working on their cash flow, working so hard. And I was the marketing and events director. I ran over 350 events a year out of 8 stores. And it was something I really loved doing. And then when I stopped doing that, I did a production house where I was producing books, but not marketing them. But I'm more of a marketer. I was holding myself back. And then I worked as a consultant for the California Independent Booksellers Association, which is representing over 150 independent bookstores in the, in California. And then. Sibylline.

What got you, what got you back in the publishing business?

Oh, my solution, for instance, if you run out of toothpaste, I think, oh, you should start a company. If my solution is always let's start a company. So my girlfriend called me and she's a fabulous writer, but she, we were coming out of COVID the whole world had changed and she couldn't get her book published when 3 years ago previous they were hot to do it. I said, we should start a publishing company, of course, which is a total act of optimism. If you know publishing at all, really?

I know.

Yeah. So then we, and then we reached out to women and I was flabbergasted that so many women, I guess they, because they knew us or they could see our history, which was very deep by the time. A little different this time through when I started a publishing company, I had 3 women partners and altogether we had 100 years in book publishing. I was fortified and I couldn't really as much go off on my own trail thinking, this is a great idea. This is a great idea. I had to work within the confines of other people, but the whole company is based on collaboration. And that's what I think.

So how long has Sibelaine been around?

Only since August 2022.

Oh wow. Just right after the pandemic. So this is, you're 2 and a half years in.

Yeah. Going on 3. We're just rising out of the ashes of COVID for sure.

And you got, you got, looks like you got what, 9 or 10 books already on your list?

Much more.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Website's not updated then.

I think you were when I first contacted you, or my person did. We have, we had 10 books a year that we were publishing, and then we introduced another line of books called Sibling Digital First. We're publishing, Doug, we're publishing a book every week. Wow. Yes. So I'm already at 60. By the end of this year, we'll be at 100. It's really, and it's really skyrocketed the company, but it's that aggressive entrepreneurial thing where, yeah, let's just go all the way in and having a bigger list. You know, you're always looking for a way to get a seat at the table, to have foreign rights looking at your stuff, film rights, all that kind of stuff. And certainly having a bigger list helps.

So you're publishing these books digitally?

No, I'm not.

Oh, they're paperback, paper and—

They're digital first.

They're digital first. Okay.

But they also have, when you're a woman my age, all my authors are women my age, which means we say over 50, but really we're just covering that we're over 65. Okay. Anyway, they all want a book, a physical book.

Okay.

That's our generation. So I was like, okay, do I succumb to this? Because I really wanted to just publish digital ebooks, like the name suggests.

Much easier.

Much easier. In, out, no overhead.

No inventory. You don't have to worry about print on demand or any of that stuff.

Production costs way down. Exactly. You know, they weren't buying that. So the first season, about half had books and half didn't have print books. And then by the second season, every woman wanted a print book. And I, I also had this little streak of codependence, but actually I saw the possibilities there that, that we could in a way reinvent a kind of publishing that wasn't self-publishing, that wasn't necessarily trade-oriented, and would still generate revenue and be really add to the publishing house. Because when you think of book publishing, you think always of the hardcover or softcover of the book.

Right.

But there's all the right sales. There's all the right sales.

I know. It's a product that can be marketed through a whole bunch of different channels.

Absolutely.

And that's what people don't recognize.

Your content is, it's presentable in a lot of streams. And that's what we've been doing over the last 3 years. It's really adding new streams. There's a library stream, there's the Shopify stream, there's all those kinds of things start adding up. And then at some point they're going to come pouring in with revenue. Is that correct? I think so.

Nope. One hopes.

One hopes. One—

Well, I know it took me my fourth book before it finally started making commercial sense. I get nice royalty checks off my fourth book, but my first three, not a dime.

Yeah. But you can look at a book. Every book is a revenue stream in, in one way or another.

Right.

Yeah. And I agree. I think sometimes when we often, because women my age who haven't made it yet, let's say in book publishing, they don't have their first book published. They don't, whatever. We often. Recognizing them a beautiful book, but it's often a woman with not a very high platform, which is a prerequisite now at the, the higher levels of the bigger publishers.

Right.

So it's for us, it's okay. What is that platform? The platform is partially Sibylline. Here's the brilliant women as we're publishing. And so the brand is a big part of that, but we also help each woman with her brand and try to, and so once we've signed a woman, we're into her, we want to know what, what other books you have in that back drawer of your desk.

Oh, cool. So it's a relationship that you hope to nurture.

Oh yeah. I, and I love working with women. It's so collaborative. It's, it's inspiring every day. Honestly, I couldn't really ask for a better thing. All my roads led here and I didn't, I didn't have a, any of this is where I was going.

That kind of was leading into my next question. You've been doing this for a long time. What is it that gets you up in the morning and gets you really excited to go to work?

Business is such a creative process. I think so many people from the outside of business don't necessarily know that the creation of product. Which books are, the creation of promotions, the creation of marketing campaigns, the creation of partnerships, all these things. Just like I had lunch with an author which yesterday, and I should never do this because it turned into a 3-hour lunch and after— there's a million ideas, let's go do them. And I was like, oh my gosh, I, what I probably don't need is more ideas. It's very exhausting.

The one thing that I am taking away from all of this is you're having a blast.

I am. I'm very pumped up.

Yeah, really have a lot of time. What is it, through all these years in the publishing business, what is it, Vicki, that about you personally that you think make, that you bring to the table that makes all this work?

I think my optimism.

That helps.

The glass is always half full or sometimes brimming for me and my willingness to risk. Certainly a huge thing. I often feel that I'm pulling my partners over to the edge of the cliff and they're just like, oh yeah. And also this is a weird little description. Maybe you have it and understand this too, but I think also when you're on the front lines, when you're the publisher, when you're in charge of the company, I say it's like you're standing in the middle of where all the train tracks converge and all the trains are coming. Really what you do is you see the, you deal with the first train and you ignore that 5 other trains are all around and they're coming at you. That ability, that's a sustained meditative practice. I tell you that you can just live it and deal with that and then move on to the next. And I can tell if I'm tired or I've done too much that I can't do that quite as well. But if I'm, if I do, I, I do it every day.

Wow. That's great. So the show's called Listening with Leaders because as a peacemaker, I found that listening is a foundational skill of life. I'm curious how you became a good listener.

I like the supposition that I am, but let's go with that.

Of course.

Assume that. I think that is something that you gain with age, certainly. And I would say when I first started my first company, I, I was not a good listener. I only heard my own ideas and my own self, the way I wanted to go, for sure. I documented in my little memoir, Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire, which just came out in April. But as you evolve as a person, and then you have all these interpersonal connections with people, that it's a vital thing. So I would say today I'm a much better listener than I was. There's a lot of ways you hear. You're hearing what is going on in the marketplace. That's a very— that's a very—

yeah.

And it's subtle because what I have to do is, luckily for me, I am my customer. I am the age of most of my customers, so I can hear, oh, this is what we need. We need to be acknowledged. We need to be honored. We need to be seen. And so that's useful. I use it with my staff because I can hear when I have the person in the wrong place. So I have a fabulous person who's working for me, but I don't have her in the right place. And so often that will result in a, like, a one-on-one where I say, look, do you like what you're doing? What do you wanna be doing? What do you like best of what you're doing? And then I just move them over there. And that's happened multiple times. The other thing is I hear my authors and what happens there is, cuz we're collaborative, is it first starts as almost like an irritation. Like one author wants something and you're like, okay, I'll get to that. Oh my God, over here, another author wants that same thing. Oh, this author wants it. Oh my God, we should hire a publicist because every one of them wants a publicist. Let's hire that publicist. And then she serves everybody. So I think that kind of listening where you're picking up kind of trends, especially in your own business, is the kind of listening I probably do best. I also have a better listening for myself, like where I feel that, like right now, the difference between me at 25 and 65 is that I'll let that idea spin a lot longer before, just, I'll work out it, I'll work on it, I'll run it by people, I'll work on it before I really go, okay, here, here we go. So that's the kind of listening that I, maybe I didn't have in my urgency to push that rock up the mountain the first time.

That was the word that came to my head when I was thinking about 25 years old. See, I'm 10 years older than you, 25. I was still in law school. Oh yeah. And when you started your business in '85, I was just, I was 10 years into my career as a trial lawyer. So, amazing.

But you had that same experience where I think you just absolutely wait for the universe to line up, which sounds very airy fairy, but if you do wait, sometimes it does. Quite often it does. And you're just pushing to get your way, to get your thing done, all those things. And you get pretty battered by your own resolve.

That's right. And the, what I've learned is that if you just, and this takes age and wisdom, this is not something you can teach to a young person, 25, 30, even 40 years old. But it was finally at 48 when I finally came to the realization that being a trial lawyer was not my calling, even though I was very good at it. Right. That's when I left and I went back to school and got my master's degree in peacemaking and conflict studies. Left the practice of law with a week's notice and became a peacemaker.

And the world is better for it.

Oh my God. And I'm better for it.

And you wake every day with joy in your heart.

Absolutely.

I know.

I serve more people in a week than I served in 22 years as a trial lawyer.

And also you're leaving that legacy. Now there's a legacy to leave. I know. I always remember, I think I was like 20 and I was working for Bank of America in the summer and the manager there took me aside and said, you would be a great bank manager. And I was like, And probably I would've.

Yeah, probably. But you're too free-spirited to be able to.

Yeah, I wasn't going that way for sure. Much better to write for a small, a small newspaper and make no money. That was my choice. There you go.

What advice do you give to young, especially young women today based on all the experience you have and they're trying to struggle and we live in a really weird time right now.

Yeah, it is different.

Misogynistic and all the horrible stuff going on in politics and policy, it's just awful.

I think there are always elements of that for sure. When I was 25, 27, 28, up to 30, all the time when I was running Foghorn just starting out, I was always the youngest person in the room and I was often the only woman in the room. And so those two things, it's just, you take your place at the table is what I'd say. It's, let's not say why you're not at the table. Let's not struggle against something. Let's just go there and take your place and act like you belong there.

There you go.

Yeah, I do think younger women though, I was just talking to a friend about this, are super empowered. One of the things that they do better than what we ever did, and maybe this isn't the purview of this show, but is that allowing their sexuality at the same time they allow their empowerment. There was a lot of shutting that down in my day. And even when I wrote my book, telling the truth about that kind of thing, the way we were in those days is still a point of, geez, should I tell people this? Do they really need to know who I slept with in 1989? But when you write a memoir, you do include those things. There would be no shame in that for that younger woman now. It would just be part of who she was. And so I, I actually admire younger women for that. And I think it's just, it's a hard-won fight and I've been in the fight for sure. But given my optimistic nature, it's just somehow I do find myself always at the table.

So where do you see the future of Sibylline Press? What's the plan? Keep doing it for as long as you can and be happy?

Yeah. Although it's that whole entrepreneurial thing that at some point they'll probably have to retire me and bring in a real manager. Okay. Really settle down over there. But right now is like the key times, like the first 5 years of building a company, the first 7 years of building a company. I can lay that down all day long. I just love it. Yeah. I try not to think too far in advance. Certainly at Foghorn, that was one of the things that in the end it was, I wanted to go a different way and I couldn't because I had locked myself in so deeply into what I was doing. I think I see, I can foresee a long, at least 10 years of invention ahead of me. So we'll meet again in 10 years, shall we?

Absolutely. And then what's going to happen is you're going to, that entrepreneurial spirit is gonna drive you to say, I'm tired of this. I gotta go do something else.

Let's build something better.

Let's do something. Absolutely.

That's why in the old days I used to, I was always wanting to do events and things like that as an expression of my marketing. So the books would be part of a big marketing campaign. They were outdoor books. And so we'd do hikes and the book would be part of it or whatever. So I think there's a lot of invention within the roof of one company where you can take those partnerships at some one point. I think I was on every board in America. That's an exaggeration.

That's also a big one.

And like the service part of it was really active in the community and reflected in the visibility of Foghorn too. But there's a lot of ways to go with that. So I don't think I'll be short of any plans, that's for sure.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like you're gonna be short of energy for a while either. No. Good for you. One more question and I'll let you go. Vicki, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know about? That you didn't write about in your memoir that we would not know about unless you revealed it to us?

Okay. I wrote about everything in my memoir, so that's not a very good comparison.

Does that mean we have to go read it to find out all about your dark secrets?

If you do, your eyebrows may go from here to here.

Ah, sucka!

Yeah, I say, I thought I was writing a lighthearted book about the book publishing industry, but in effect, I was writing this coming-of-age story of a young woman entrepreneur getting pretty banged up, but just kind of loving it. It's like the mosh pit for us, right? Let me back in. And so I, without trying to age myself dearly, I think the thing maybe that people would know is that I support women in all their roles. So like motherhood, I love, I love being a mother and now I love being a grandmother. So those kinds of things don't enter into the conversation a whole lot, but maybe they should because what we need to know is grandmothers look like this and grandmothers act like this and they still love the heck out of their grandkids.

Absolutely.

So it's a, it's that sort of stop pocketing all these different selves and include them in the one and represent that, right?

Embrace all your identities and in one, in one. Vicki, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure talking with you.

I enjoyed the heck out of it. Thank you so much, Doug.

You're welcome. Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag Listening with Leaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasE. Doug Noll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.