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Meet Justin Matott

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Justin Matott.

Justin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
As a child, I was often in trouble for talking too much in class and entertaining while my teachers were trying to teach. Not a class clown, but an extreme extrovert with a need to be heard I suppose. I’ve spoken to some of my childhood teachers now as an adult author and have been told I was one of their favorite people and one of their least favorite students. I’ll take that.

I began working right out of college towards the ends to use my Marketing and Management degrees. I was busily immersed in a career in a Fortune 500 Telephony company when I wrote my first book. I self-published it and within a year was picked up by Random House and left my corporate job to be a full time speaker, storyteller and author.

Adopted and raised by two English Professors perhaps it was my destiny to create story and try to change a corner of our world with my anti-bullying talks and humor in a world that needs much more humor daily.

My intention as an author is to bring humor, thought and fun to the lives of those most in need of it.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There is very little smooth about the world of publishing. There are as many opinions as there are stories. I once heard an agent tell a roomful of us hopeful authors at a very large writing conference that if she had a fight with her boyfriend at the time she received a solicitation for a manuscript, she might reject it just because she was in a terrible mood. Try that one on when you’ve just spent three years writing a book and three months preparing a pitch for that agent. There was a collective gasp.

Rejection! Rejection! Rejection! The three most basic words of the publishing world. No matter what you write, you will have to have resilience and the ability to stick to your beliefs, words and believe that there is someone out there who will see the value in what you have to say.

I got a terse rejection letter from a publisher I solicited prior to my first book being self-publisher telling me they didn’t think I had the stuff and I should find another way to express myself. This was about six months after Random House republished my self-published book and were preparing to publish my second book. At the point this angry editor told me I wasn’t any good, my first book had garnered a national tour and national television spots.

I go into a pitch expecting the best and the worst. I do not let either bring me up or down. I have been at this game for twenty years and I’ve seen so much, but I know I have more to see.

Believe in you. If you don’t, who will?

We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am most proud of having built a platform in education to speak in a different way about the subject of bullying in schools. I tell a very personal story that works at all ages and stages and creates an impact on the lives of those whom need to know they do not have to give their power over to a bully. Bullies, some, hear my story and want to change because their teachers, counselors etc can use my story as a vault to learn why they are doing what they are doing to others.

I am also proud of the laughter I have brought into the world. We are living in a time of many humorless people. People who desperately need levity and escape from the hard issues facing us today. I am proud to bring families humor, togetherness and create a space where they share their own stories as a result of sharing mine. I hear constantly from families about the way my stories created that space in their homes.

I am both a publisher and an author. I am a designer and a coordinator of talents. I never presume to know how to tell someone good at what he or she does, how to do what he or she does. I let our talents merge, mingle and bring out fantastic stories.

My brand it unique in that I’ve published novels, picture book, board books, poetry books, fractured fairy tales, personified dog tales, mix and match books, recorded books, written a 50 year history for a private school and bound it in a whimsical picture book. Presently working on comic books and graphic novels are in the works and have soon to venture in to scripts to adapt my successful six book chapter series into movies.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would have written my first three books more authentically. I was trying to imitate very commercially successful authors and wasn’t using my own legitimate voice. It was only when I poured my head AND heart into my work that I found success. Since that start, I only create what i my original voice and focus on my own individual way of telling a story.

I also wouldn’t have listened to some of the naysayers who were trying to convince me to stay in my lane in the corporate world and not venture out into the scary world of publishing. I didn’t let it hold me back long, but I wish people would just be brave and put it out there to see if you have what it takes.

If you don’t have it now, you can’t lose it. So why not just go for it all?

Pricing:

  • Picture books $17
  • Chapter books $17-25

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