Chrisanna Northrup had a big idea based on a simple question: What’s normal?
She thought the question could be expanded to make a strong Internet survey, and the survey results would make a great book. Interactive questions could travel the world, and if the survey and the book detailed relationships and finances, she believed, women, especially, would buy it — “The Normal Bar” — to find out how their lives compared to the lives of other women, country by country.
Who pays the majority of the bills in your house? Do you split your incomes? How often do you kiss? How often do you make love? What’s the normal bar from San Diego to Manila, Dubuque to Milan, Mumbai to Paris?
However, Northrup, 41, had never written a book. Just about the only book she’d ever read, she jokes now, was the “Twilight” series. She’d never been to college, and she knew nothing about the art and science of interactive surveys.
For 17 years, Northrup, a resident of Bird Rock, had been working her way up to client relations specialist at a La Jolla financial institution where she now executes stock orders and helps with estate planning, administering to people of more than $10 million net worth.
“I work with millionaires and billionaires all day. When you work with people with that much money, you learn a lot. Movie stars, producers — I know people who once had nothing but an idea, and now they are CEOs of publicly traded companies. Everybody’s just a person. I came to all this not being intimidated by anybody. I think that makes a big difference” when you are launching a concept or a company. “My mindset is: It’s all attainable.”
Still, few people turn questions into corporations or, in Northrup’s case, curiosity and unhappiness into potentially best-selling books, because in her home life, in her relationship with her husband, Northrup was desperately unhappy.
She wanted more time to create (she had once taken off six months to write a screenplay about a “psycho-nanny” and sold it for $100,000). To her surprise, she learned that her husband wanted different things from her than she would have guessed. It hit her, then: Is my relationship normal? And she asked herself: What constitutes normal for other people?
At the same time, she was struck by how obsessed many people were with reality shows and magazines. “They’re curious, curious about how other people are living their lives, and then I thought, why not give that to them? Why not let people know what’s really going on?”
She bought a book on how to write a book proposal but realized she had some gaps to fill.
“I knew the market as a consumer, but am I an expert? No. So, OK, I need an expert. I went onto Oprah’s website and I found Pepper” — Dr. Pepper Schwartz, best-selling author and a University of Washington professor who is probably America’s leading relationships expert.
Northrup cold-called her.
“Chrisanna is a force of nature, in a good way. Optimistic, smart, incredibly passionate,” says Schwartz, who was immediately intrigued by the survey’s possibilities. “I thought it took sociology and put it in a framework that everyone could get interested in. People wonder what other people are doing and how they compare. She was interested in questions that people in a relationship want to know but are rarely, if ever, asked in sociological studies. I felt that the international comparisons would be unique and that cyberspace would make it possible for us to get more countries to answer more questions than I had ever seen done on this topic.”
Northrup then searched for top researchers online surveys, to find James Witte, director of the Center for Social Science Research at George Mason University. Witte’s doctorate came from Harvard, and his research focused on ways to use the Internet to collect survey data.
Witte had a large grant to interactively study how zookeepers take care of their elephants. Northrup asked, “Have you ever thought of doing this more for the mainstream market like relationships, and he said, ‘Uhh, no.’ ”
Witte explains: “The first couple of emails she sent, I ignored. I had no idea who she was and the idea sounded a bit vague and far-fetched. But her persistence paid off (persistence and persuasiveness are two of Chrisanna’s real strengths.)” Witte decided there was “a real need for sociology, and in fact social science more generally, to play a role in the public sphere.” He was in.
With two of the best-known names in the field now attached to the project, Northrup went hunting online for an agent. She searched for the five most appropriate big-time book agents in the country. Incredibly, all five replied, and almost the next day. She picked the one, Helen Zimmerman, who she believed liked the project the most.
Recalls Zimmerman, “She mentioned her past success with the screenplay and being on Rachael Ray, and she was very engaging.”
Northrup wanted the survey to be visual, the questions illustrated with engaging cartoons. She hired San Diego artist Stacey Aguilar, and convinced Aguilar, who was a painter, that she could draw cartoons, and she gave her a draw list, stick figures filled by paint to represent degrees of happiness, for instance. Keep it fun!
Northrup had no signed survey partners, so she boldly wrote that she would be working with AOL, Reader’s Digest, iVillage, Huffington Post and AARP. Later, she would negotiate deals with each.
She wrote the book proposal.
In two days, Crown Books, a division of Random House, offered the three authors $250,000.
“That’s not enough,” she tells Schwartz.
“Are you crazy?” Northrup recalls Schwartz exclaiming. “Take it!”
“I’m thinking, if a publisher is willing to give you mid-six figures in 24 hours, they’ll go higher.”
She asked for another $100,000.
Deal.
“I’m not so crazy as to turn down Random House,” explains Northrup, and “I figure they don’t want a bidding war.”
Sounds like a dream to those dreaming of how to publish, but “The Normal Bar: Where Does Your Relationship Fall?” comes out January 2013. (If you’d like to participate in the interactive survey, go to thenormalbar.com.
After the book, I’m thinking, then maybe the movie, the talk show, the run for Congress (California likes buff politicians, look at Arnold) and then, well, sky’s the limit, people.
Raise the Bar!
She thought the question could be expanded to make a strong Internet survey, and the survey results would make a great book. Interactive questions could travel the world, and if the survey and the book detailed relationships and finances, she believed, women, especially, would buy it — “The Normal Bar” — to find out how their lives compared to the lives of other women, country by country.
Who pays the majority of the bills in your house? Do you split your incomes? How often do you kiss? How often do you make love? What’s the normal bar from San Diego to Manila, Dubuque to Milan, Mumbai to Paris?
However, Northrup, 41, had never written a book. Just about the only book she’d ever read, she jokes now, was the “Twilight” series. She’d never been to college, and she knew nothing about the art and science of interactive surveys.
For 17 years, Northrup, a resident of Bird Rock, had been working her way up to client relations specialist at a La Jolla financial institution where she now executes stock orders and helps with estate planning, administering to people of more than $10 million net worth.
“I work with millionaires and billionaires all day. When you work with people with that much money, you learn a lot. Movie stars, producers — I know people who once had nothing but an idea, and now they are CEOs of publicly traded companies. Everybody’s just a person. I came to all this not being intimidated by anybody. I think that makes a big difference” when you are launching a concept or a company. “My mindset is: It’s all attainable.”
Still, few people turn questions into corporations or, in Northrup’s case, curiosity and unhappiness into potentially best-selling books, because in her home life, in her relationship with her husband, Northrup was desperately unhappy.
She wanted more time to create (she had once taken off six months to write a screenplay about a “psycho-nanny” and sold it for $100,000). To her surprise, she learned that her husband wanted different things from her than she would have guessed. It hit her, then: Is my relationship normal? And she asked herself: What constitutes normal for other people?
At the same time, she was struck by how obsessed many people were with reality shows and magazines. “They’re curious, curious about how other people are living their lives, and then I thought, why not give that to them? Why not let people know what’s really going on?”
She bought a book on how to write a book proposal but realized she had some gaps to fill.
“I knew the market as a consumer, but am I an expert? No. So, OK, I need an expert. I went onto Oprah’s website and I found Pepper” — Dr. Pepper Schwartz, best-selling author and a University of Washington professor who is probably America’s leading relationships expert.
Northrup cold-called her.
“Chrisanna is a force of nature, in a good way. Optimistic, smart, incredibly passionate,” says Schwartz, who was immediately intrigued by the survey’s possibilities. “I thought it took sociology and put it in a framework that everyone could get interested in. People wonder what other people are doing and how they compare. She was interested in questions that people in a relationship want to know but are rarely, if ever, asked in sociological studies. I felt that the international comparisons would be unique and that cyberspace would make it possible for us to get more countries to answer more questions than I had ever seen done on this topic.”
Northrup then searched for top researchers online surveys, to find James Witte, director of the Center for Social Science Research at George Mason University. Witte’s doctorate came from Harvard, and his research focused on ways to use the Internet to collect survey data.
Witte had a large grant to interactively study how zookeepers take care of their elephants. Northrup asked, “Have you ever thought of doing this more for the mainstream market like relationships, and he said, ‘Uhh, no.’ ”
Witte explains: “The first couple of emails she sent, I ignored. I had no idea who she was and the idea sounded a bit vague and far-fetched. But her persistence paid off (persistence and persuasiveness are two of Chrisanna’s real strengths.)” Witte decided there was “a real need for sociology, and in fact social science more generally, to play a role in the public sphere.” He was in.
With two of the best-known names in the field now attached to the project, Northrup went hunting online for an agent. She searched for the five most appropriate big-time book agents in the country. Incredibly, all five replied, and almost the next day. She picked the one, Helen Zimmerman, who she believed liked the project the most.
Recalls Zimmerman, “She mentioned her past success with the screenplay and being on Rachael Ray, and she was very engaging.”
Northrup wanted the survey to be visual, the questions illustrated with engaging cartoons. She hired San Diego artist Stacey Aguilar, and convinced Aguilar, who was a painter, that she could draw cartoons, and she gave her a draw list, stick figures filled by paint to represent degrees of happiness, for instance. Keep it fun!
Northrup had no signed survey partners, so she boldly wrote that she would be working with AOL, Reader’s Digest, iVillage, Huffington Post and AARP. Later, she would negotiate deals with each.
She wrote the book proposal.
In two days, Crown Books, a division of Random House, offered the three authors $250,000.
“That’s not enough,” she tells Schwartz.
“Are you crazy?” Northrup recalls Schwartz exclaiming. “Take it!”
“I’m thinking, if a publisher is willing to give you mid-six figures in 24 hours, they’ll go higher.”
She asked for another $100,000.
Deal.
“I’m not so crazy as to turn down Random House,” explains Northrup, and “I figure they don’t want a bidding war.”
Sounds like a dream to those dreaming of how to publish, but “The Normal Bar: Where Does Your Relationship Fall?” comes out January 2013. (If you’d like to participate in the interactive survey, go to thenormalbar.com.
After the book, I’m thinking, then maybe the movie, the talk show, the run for Congress (California likes buff politicians, look at Arnold) and then, well, sky’s the limit, people.
Raise the Bar!
