11 Best Business Decisions of 2011
Vickie Stringer
CEO
Triple Crown Publications
Triple Crown Publications Inc. is an international leader in publishing urban fiction/"hip-hop lit" with novels distributed around the globe, including Japanese translations sold in Tokyo. It has sold more than 1 million books "and counting."
"My best strategy that I used for 2011 that allowed me to navigate through the ever-changing publishing industry was: One, utilizing my resources. I turned to non-compensated labor (in other words, free workers) by using more summer interns, seniors from a local church that assisted with marketing mailers, filing, database. In exchange I offered daily lunch, free books, credit for various accomplishments, and letters of recommendation and references. This was a great way to bring energy and passion back into my office that was about the love of publishing [and] reading, and not just [being] surrounded by employees or persons in desperate need of 'work.'"