Crystal Mahey-Morgan
Crystal Mahey-Morgan is founder of OWN IT!, a lifestyle brand sharing stories across books, music, art and film, which Crystal owns and runs with her husband, and Creative Director, Jason Morgan. At the heart of everything OWN IT! does is a desire to share, empower, celebrate and inspire.
Crystal began her career as a freelance journalist, writing for publications such as the Guardian and The Face magazine before embarking on a career in publishing in 2006, completing various work experience placements before her first job as a literary assistant at Peters Fraser & Dunlop, then as a contracts assistant at Random House. From here she held a variety of roles in sales, marketing and digital before departing to found OWN IT! in 2014.
'I was trying to fit into an environment that had no space for me.'
What inspired you to found OWN IT!?
I branched off from mainstream publishing in 2014 having worked there for eight years. I felt quite frustrated that certain voices, authors and storytellers weren’t being recognised and acknowledged, and that they weren’t given the opportunity to contribute to the canon of British literature. I was also frustrated as I felt that there were huge audiences and readerships that were not being tapped in to. As an industry I think it’s really important that we’re forever growing our audiences and finding new readers, and I felt that was especially important in our current landscape.
Entertainment is so broad and varied; a lot of it is multimedia, that includes devices, and there are new ways of engaging with content. I thought that as an industry we were so behind and didn’t have the right skill sets within publishing to really tap in to that. I felt it needed a different type of thinking and a different culture and so I thought I could contribute so much more to this new area of publishing by setting up independently.
It also got to the stage where I was really drained and I felt I was losing pieces of myself because I couldn’t contribute in the way I wanted to; I was trying to fit into an environment that had no space for me. I felt compelled to do something and in that moment founding OWN IT! seemed like all I could do.
'I found it really hard to get into publishing; there were a lot of barriers.'
In publishing, we’re often encouraged to focus on building a specific set of skills related to our individual roles. What do you see as the benefits of the varied positions you held before starting out on your own?
I’ve always been learning and have always been involved in storytelling in one way or another. Before I worked in publishing I was a music journalist, so I was writing about mainly hip hop and working with artists and storytellers in that way, which I was expressing through journalism. In that sense OWN IT! didn’t come from nowhere, it came from when I was sixteen and thinking about stories through music and writing and from there it’s been a long lead up to this point.
On a practical level, I found it really hard to get into publishing; there were a lot of barriers. I am not ‘traditional publishing’ in any way and I think now we are in an age where it feels like there are a lot of tick boxes to attract people like me, but at that time there wasn’t even this effort in the same way. It was really hard, and as a result of that I ended up doing different jobs and moving around because I was trying to get to where I wanted to go but ultimately it felt like there was very little space for me anywhere. I worked in contracts, sales, digital, marketing – in a sense that was my grounding, through necessity I worked in different departments but that became a really brilliant thing when setting up OWN IT!.
Luckily I’ve got a really supportive husband but it was a risk; we had no plan, no savings and we self-funded OWN IT! from its inception. It’s still completely independent, and we’ve done whatever it took to grow it to this stage. We feel really proud that year on year we’ve made and grown a profit and have done that really from a standing start to this point.
'We are using art to create better societies, understanding and connections between people.'
What are the benefits of OWN IT!’s multifaceted approach to publishing?
We’re using stories to create empathy amongst the largest possible audiences, readerships and demographic groups. The wider benefit of that is that we are using art to in some way create better societies, understanding and connections between people. Ultimately I feel that’s what the best art and storytelling does. I know that sounds very noble, but also it’s important to note that I’m a businesswoman and that’s as much my driving force – OWN IT! is a commercial business and we care about profit. Our business model is a 50/50 net profit split with our authors, so every time we acquire a book there is no advance upfront and all subsequent profit is split. With everything we’ve published, there’s usually a healthy profit for authors in the first six months. For us that’s really important – I think sometimes when we have conversations about what art can do and why ‘diversity’ is important it becomes a very worthy discussion. But there’s a real business element to this as well: they’re not mutually exclusive, but often are spoken about as though they are and that perpetuates the problem.
I’d also say a huge benefit is our ability to adapt – we started off publishing books and making music, TV, film and animation projects, then a year ago we launched a book, film and TV agency. We did that first and foremost because there was such a demand for it, just as favours initially but then recognised that there was a commercial demand for it so we launched the agency. That made sense in terms of what was needed not only for the authors but also in terms of the business, because that is now another revenue stream that helps us sustain and grow and fulfil the vision to go in different directions.
'It’s quite hard standing out from the crowd and going it alone.'
How do you juggle the conflicts of being your own boss – that temptation to always be ‘on’ in work mode – with building in some balance to dedicate time to your passions?
Not very well! As well as being founders and directors of OWN IT!, we are also a husband and wife team, so it’s really important to have boundaries. Speaking honestly, it’s difficult because it’s not like we have a fixed salary or security in that way: our business runs when we ensure that we’re running it, and it’s still early stages, five years isn’t a lot in business terms. It’s hard because we have such ambitions for OWN IT! and we have such commitment to our authors, so all of that combined can sometimes make for the perfect storm in not achieving that work/life balance. But you have to be realistic. I think it’s really important for anyone who wants to start their own business that they know that to begin with there are sacrifices; you end up putting a lot of yourself into something, and that’s sometimes just an inevitable reality when you’re dealing with an independent self-funded business. Those realities are something that we speak less about.
The biggest challenge is keeping motivated when you’re constantly getting pushback. It’s quite hard standing out from the crowd and going it alone. Owning your own business is often romanticised, but it’s challenging on an emotional level because you have to have real strength to have a vision that is so different from what everyone else is doing, and to continue that when often the infrastructure and the support isn’t there – you’re creating it all from scratch whilst coming up against constant barriers. But I think the greatest challenge is also the biggest strength – it’s why we do what we do, because it doesn’t exist and there’s new ground to explore and new audiences to find and new voices and books to publish.
'I wanted to be myself in the way that I progress and contribute to the industry.'
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given in your career to date?
‘Be yourself’. I’ve been told so often not to be me in one way or another, whether it’s quite literally being told that the way I speak is a problem, that I have too much of a London accent, or being told by line managers that I’m aggressive, direct, bolshy and that I won’t progress with my ‘attitude’. Ultimately that is why OWN IT! exists; because I wanted to be me in the way that I progress and contribute to the industry. So when people have said to just be me, and that that’s what the industry needs, it has been the most beneficial advice to me and that’s definitely what I would say to anyone else. It’s hard to adhere to that sometimes when you’re not the same as everyone else, but ultimately it’s your USP that will help you stand out and get noticed, and make you happy in what you’re doing.
Finally, can you tell us about one other woman working in publishing who inspires you?
Gail Rebuck is inspirational to me. When I joined Random House it was as a contract administrator; Gail would hold a welcome breakfast with all the new joiners and from that moment I had a lot of respect for her. I found her very empowering because she was actually interested in what I had to say and my ideas and what I had to bring to the table, despite the fact that she was right at the top of the ladder and I was objectively at the bottom.
Crystal (left) says Gail (centre) is a huge inspiration to her. Photo @jreadsalot.
We interviewed Crystal just before a panel at FutureBook 2019. We asked the panelists for their top piece of advice, and wanted to share these with you too…
BARONESS GAIL REBUCK: Go for it. It's so easy to get sticky feet, to become comfortable with where you are and decide you don't want to be involved with the politics of being a senior leader. But once you're in that position, you can change things.
CRYSTAL MAHEY-MORGAN: Don't be afraid to fail. Fail hard, fail early, and you will learn from it.
THE FLIP: Curate your network, starting with the colleagues you admire and trust. Make sure you are nurturing and using this network, because if you have the right people around you you can do anything.
