Timeline
2024
Created the informational website https://w-r-i-t-e-r.com — all about collaboration between authors and writers. The first texts:
- 25 famous books written by authors together with writers.
- "Write for you" and "Write with you": what is the difference?
Updated the writerbywriter.com, including descriptions of three ways to create books based on the client's authorial materials and reinstated the option to receive services under confidentiality terms.
2023
Oleksandr Fedienko's book “My Business — My Rules. How I “spun” in the 90s, created companies and developed the telecommunications market”. It is a very frank book about the thinking of a business leader. In translated books about business and management such frankness is almost never.
2022
We created this site (writerbywriter.com) to replace our first site pr-kniga.com from 2012, as we completely switched to open cooperation with authors. Authors now mention us in the books we help write.
Published a portfolio. Not many books on the list yet, as we've been working on books with a non-disclosure agreement for too long.
Published this timeline with links to the web archive to back up our claims.
2021
Vitaly Korolev's book “Ownership Time. Ownership Succession and Corporate Governance” is the most complex and most voluminous of the books we have worked on:
- a complex topic (how to ensure business succession with corporate governance tools);- a complex audience (business owners and their heirs, managers, consultants, independent board directors);
- complex tasks of the author (to encourage the owner to self-determine, to give the owner tools to ensure succession or prepare the business for sale, to show the necessity of corporate governance for non-public companies);
- complex presentation (high density of new ideas, rethinking of many known concepts, redefinition of known concepts, different forms of information presentation);
- complex structure (diverse structure);
- large volume (752 pages, 1.2 million characters).
We started pages on Goodreads, where we write reviews and feedback on the books we have read. Nataliia on Goodreads, Maksym on Goodreads.
2019
Diana Kodoeva's book “Gett. Service with Meaning", which we started working on in 2018. Thanks to Diana, we learned how to take better care of customers: work on demand, but find ways to pleasantly surprise with our approach to work.
2018
To gradually transition to open collaboration with book authors on our first website, we made three tariffs: “Assistant,” “Co-Author,” and “Guestwriter.” The “Assistant” tariff implied open cooperation. At that time, the tariffs seemed like a good idea, we made them the first on the market (judging by open sources), but after the transition to open cooperation with authors, the need for tariffs disappeared. Besides, like experienced American governmentwriters, over time we came to the conclusion that there should be one price for all work on a book.
Assylbek Battalkhanov's book “Transportation of the Future. How people will drive, swim and fly”. While working on this book, I had to study several hundred publications, and it was interesting. It was also the first book that we had a client place in our portfolio on our first website. You can see what it looked like in 2018 in the web archive.
2016
We started working with Vitaly Korolev on his book “The Time of Ownership”. It was Vitaly who was the first client to suggest that we should be listed in the book as assistants, which prompted us to fully switch to an open format of cooperation with all authors. We are very grateful to Vitaly for entrusting us with his book and encouraging us to develop in the right direction, and we equate cooperation with him to studying at a good business school.
We discovered that our domain name pr-kniga, the very one that Nataliia created together with the concept of PR books, was copied and registered in another domain zone. Our website is in the com domain zone: pr-kniga.com. Copypastry uses the ru domain zone.
2014
Maksym became a gostwriter. Just then the word “we” appeared on pr-kniga.com.
2013
Nataliia's book “Natural Parenthood” was published by Genesis publishing house in the series “Happiness as a way of life” (the site is blocked for users from Ukraine).
Maksym first got involved in writing a custom-made book related to IT topics. He started helping Nataliia write books or individual chapters and advised her on issues he was more familiar with.
We created a small e-book based on Maksym's blog about smart watches smartestwatch.com. The site remains only in the web archive, but the file with the book can still be downloaded and you can find out what the smart watch market looked like in 2013 according to the author of the book. The text should have been edited and properly laid out, but that's like rewriting history, and we don't like that.
2012
Created a website pr-kniga.com offering custom book writing services. At the time, the site did not look very good, but it worked and brought customers, and that's the main thing. Here are the first versions of the pages “Services and Prices”, “Book Creation”, “Portfolio”.
The first positioning of Nataliia's services sounded like this: help with writing books that promote ideas, careers, and businesses. Nataliia, who thought then as a copywriter, called such books PR-books. Hence the name of the site - pr-kniga.
Nataliia made a small e-book “Promotion by Books” based on the materials of the site pr-kniga.com, where for the first time she called herself a go-strategist (or rather - gostwriter). The author changed her opinion on some issues, but still the book remains in her portfolio as a part of her journey and a testimony of her experience.
2011
Nataliia published her first book “Natural Parenthood” on the service ProstoBook.com (positioned as “the first on-demand book publisher in Runet”). Today, information about this publishing house is available only in the web archive.
Nataliia came to the freelance exchange to look for orders for copywriting, saw the request “to create a book from the materials of the site”, submitted an application and thanks to the presence of her own book received the first order to create someone else's (order #268317 on Weblancer was marked by the customer's representative). Specified task after the project discussion: to study the materials of the site, to develop the concept of the book and create a manuscript (including - to edit the existing texts, to complete the preface, afterword and a few missing chapters). Bonus for the customer: preparation of an application for a publishing house. This is how Nataliia's portfolio got a link to the first completed book order and a positive feedback, and we learned who ghostwriters are and what kind of work they do.
2009 - 2011
After having a baby, Nataliia figured out what science thought about parenting, researched the topic for herself for a year, and then wrote and published a book. In the process she learned how books are written and published (samizdat and classic publishing). I didn't plan to write any more books, and studied copywriting for work.
Maksym developed websites. He created his first website back in the early 2000s for himself, later he made a website for his own company Edict, which in 2007 brought about 30% of clients. When the company closed, he took up website development as his main activity and managed to create several dozen websites for his clients. For this he had to study design, SEO, programming, layout, internet marketing. Maksym's site miiini.com remained in the web archive.
2007 - 2008
The two of us started a small company called “Edicta Legal and Consulting Company.” (About the company, company website in the web archive). Nataliia chose the name so that she wouldn't have to check in the registration database many times for a decent amount of money to see if it was occupied (that's how it was done back then). Probably we decided to save money on the name, so that now we would be ashamed, because except for the name there was nothing else left of the company. At the time of opening our business, we were 23 and 24 years old. We did everything ourselves. Each invested a little over a thousand dollars, for which we rented an office, bought furniture, equipment and advertising. While accumulating a base of clients for subscription legal and accounting services, we earned money from accounting and computer courses (2007!), legal and accounting consultations. The first employees were brought in from the company where Nataliia used to work (they had a free schedule, so some worked for two firms). At the best of times we were organizing the work of fourteen employees. Received clients in the office for 12 hours every day Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturday. Made a lot of mistakes, spent a lot of money, but learned a lot. After a year and a half, they stopped the company's operations.
Nataliia Tolmacheva until 2007
Nataliia Tolmacheva received a law degree (graduated from LNU named after Franko in 2005).
During her studies she worked in a student legal counseling center, where she learned to draft basic legal documents and solve practical legal problems.
After studying at the university for some time worked as a lawyer in the firm Kon-Vent-Audit, where she was engaged in registration of legal entities, office work, legal advice. She completed a commercial director course. In order to promote legal services on her own initiative, she conducted free courses for future business owners (topics: how to properly execute documents required for registration, operation, development and protection of the company).
Maksym Momot until 2007
He received higher education in Lviv Commercial Academy, specializing in “Commodity science and commercial activity”. Independently wrote a thesis on the topic “Electronic commerce as a special type of trade”. The professor asked: “What do you think, Maksym, what will be sold over the Internet ten years from now?”. When he heard “Everything” in response, he asked “What exactly?”, after which he and his colleagues laughed heartily at the phrase “Anything, even airplanes”.
He grew up near computers, as his mother was a programmer, so after studying at university, every job Maksym had was in one way or another directly related to information technology.
He started his career as a salesman in the computer store Cenitech, where in addition to sales he was constantly dealing with all kinds of equipment.
He worked a little bit as a forwarder and a sales agent. Then he held a universal position in the firm Reitar plus, where he had to work simultaneously as a sales-purchasing manager, sysadmin, assembling and repairing computers, and running an online store. After Reitar, I worked in the computer service of the company Dominanta-7.
Created:
May 23, 2024, 11:21 a.m.
Changed:
Sept. 2, 2024, 5:27 p.m.