Joey Benun
Joey Benun (b. September 9, 1997) is an American author and Amazon account manager.[1]
His first children’s book, Pebbles and the Biggest Number[2], was published in January 2023.
Contents
Education
Benun attended a private Jewish K–8 school, where he graduated as salutatorian. After high school, he spent a year at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY). He then studied at Mikdash Melech, a Yeshiva in Israel. Upon his return to the United States, Benun spent two years studying the Talmud at Bnei Binyamin Torah Center.
Personal Life
Benun grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where he currently lives and works. He is the son of Morris and Michele and has a twin brother, Sonny, and three older sisters: Frieda, Sylvia, and Lauren. For over eight years, Benun has been employed at the Bentex Group, a family-owned group of affiliated companies specializing in the design, production, and sale of apparel, home décor, electronic products, and pet products. His father is a partner in the company.
Benun’s online selling journey began at age 15 when his uncle taught him how to sell on eBay. Starting with handbags and clothing samples, he quickly moved on to video games, luxury goods, and more. He joined Bentex the following summer as a Sales Associate.
When Bentex launched its online division, Benun progressed to become an Ecommerce Specialist. As the business grew, he found himself balancing his demanding workload with the need to train new employees. Impressed with his ability to juggle these competing demands, the company’s management team approached him with a plan to expand internationally. This led to him becoming an international sales manager, dealing with accounts in Canada, Europe, Japan and the UAE.
This new role involved liaising with multiple departments and gave Benun a broad range of experience spanning compliance, tax, licensing, merchandising, advertising and logistics. It also saw him utilize Fiverr for the first time, when he hired a translator to convert product listings into Italian. This led to the use of more Fiverr freelancers for a variety of services, including translations, photo shoots, product videos, and more.
Once again, Benun found himself juggling multiple responsibilities. In addition to managing international accounts and training new employees, he had to deal with pressing issues as they arose. These included reactivating suspended accounts and appealing false reports of intellectual property infringement. Due to Benun's unsustainable workload, Bentex redirected his efforts to Account Health, which was deemed a top priority.
As an Amazon Account Health Manager, Benun is responsible for addressing critical issues that arise during business operations in a vast online marketplace. These include a massive glitch, where Amazon’s brand protection software took down over 4,500 products across the company’s accounts. Upon opening a Seller Forum thread on the issue, Benun discovered that it was a system-wide problem affecting many other sellers. The thread gained popularity and appeared on Amazon's front page, grabbing the attention of moderators. However, Benun was able to resolve the issue through his interaction with his Premium Support account manager, to the benefit of all.
In another incident, Amazon miscategorized around 1,000 children's apparel products as costumes, triggering a requirement for toy testing. As the required standards were not present on the test reports, the products were removed from the platform. Attempts to appeal for reinstatement proved challenging due to automated bot responses and outsourced representatives. Fortunately, Benun successfully negotiated for the products to be reclassified, resulting in the reinstatement of all impacted products.
One of the most taxing and high-stakes issues that Benun managed to resolve was a web of deactivated accounts. Amazon closes accounts that violate its guidelines, in this instance an account with incomplete registration information. When the system identifies a ‘bad’ account, it searches its database for ‘linked’ accounts. As a result, unrelated selling accounts can be erroneously linked and deactivated, leading to a ripple effect that can quickly impact numerous other sellers. After the deactivation of a personal account owned by an individual with close ties to the Bentex Group, there was concern it could potentially link to all Bentex accounts. Benun worked tirelessly, exploring every angle to resolve the issue. Ultimately, he filed a successful BBB claim against Amazon, safeguarding the accounts and preventing a potentially huge loss in sales.
Benun’s free time has been focused on the development of Pebbles and the Biggest Number. This has allowed him to explore his lighthearted and creative side and provided a refreshing contrast from the seriousness of his day-to-day role.
Writing Process
Rather than developing the manuscript in a linear fashion, Benun prefers to write as ideas come to him, adding embellishments and interesting facts while jumping back and forth between pages. He keeps his concepts scattered across his Apple notes and Google Sheets apps, sticky notes by his bedside, and in his mind. He is a self-admitted procrastinator, often waiting until a deadline to complete tasks. However, he says, his creativity peaks under pressure, a concept supported by Grant in his TED Talk: “The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers.”
Indeed, Benun's desire to maintain creative control of the book was one of the reasons why he chose to self-publish. It was crucial to him that not only the content of the book but also the final printed product meet his high standards for quality.
To ensure the accuracy of even the smallest details in the book, Benun enlisted the help of various freelancers sourced from Reedsy and Fiverr. By leveraging their individual talents, he assembled a team of collaborators that included an illustrator, designers, developmental editors, copy editors, proofreaders, and fact-checkers. He utilized their skills to hone the content and ensure that it resonated with his target audience. Through multiple rounds of beta reads and editing, Benun received a plethora of feedback, which he meticulously reviewed to refine the manuscript until he was satisfied with it.
Benun is no stranger to managing multiple contributors to create a cohesive end product. During his final year of school, with only a couple of months left and no progress made on the yearbook, his teacher asked if anyone was willing to take on the role of yearbook manager. Wanting to avoid a repeat of the previous year when graduates left with no yearbook, Benun raised his hand.
He quickly created a plan and assigned each classmate a different job to spread the workload. He wrote a variety of content for the yearbook and edited articles written by his classmates. He sourced and collated photos and worked with a graphic designer to arrange all the text and images into a print-ready file. After liaising with teachers to get the content approved, he submitted the files to the printer. Benun considered every detail, from the cover material to the foil stamping, but he didn't stop there. He helped fundraise $3,000 to cover the cost of the yearbooks and created personalized mugs and stickers to go along with them. The yearbook was a hit, with the principal praising it as the school's best in 30 years.
Benun's experience managing the yearbook project provided him with valuable skills and confidence, which he later applied to create a children's math book. The book quickly gained popularity, and within a month of its launch, it became Amazon's #1 new release in Children's Math Fiction.
Freelancers and Companies Utilized
Development
Benun has had a lifelong fascination with numbers. From a young age, he was drawn to big numbers and was particularly interested in learning what came after a trillion. As soon as he could, he turned to Google to satisfy his curiosity and discovered numbers such as quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, and beyond. Fascinated by his findings, Benun copied down the numbers, color-coded them, and arranged them by size, creating a rudimentary book.
His love for large numbers was further fueled at the age of 10, while watching the TV game show 1 vs. 100. While the contestant was unsure, Benun confidently identified "nonillion" as the correct number, not "dubrillion". His passion for numbers continued into adulthood. In the summer of 2022, while having lunch with his niece and nephews, he noticed their excitement while discussing the biggest numbers they knew. This sparked the idea for his debut book. Benun was aware that not many books existed on the topic and that research might be difficult, but he was up for a challenge. He looked for a fun, creative way to teach children about numbers in the world around them. To connect with young children, he decided to create a character that loved to learn and explore. Thus, Pebbles was born.
Benun’s inspiration for using a butterfly as the main character came from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. At the end of his journey counting small numbers, that caterpillar becomes a BIG, beautiful butterfly. Why can’t he continue to count big numbers? Benun thought. He had planned to contact the author, Eric Carle, to discuss a possible collaboration. Unfortunately, Carle passed away before they could connect.
Marketing
When it came to marketing Pebbles and the Biggest Number, Benun applied the same ‘Think Big’ philosophy. He once again turned to digital freelance marketplaces to source marketing and website development professionals. Thus, www.biggestnumber.com was established, allowing Benun to sell the book directly to customers. By self-publishing, Benun accessed the full proceeds of each sale instead of the 5% royalty offered by traditional publishing houses. Additionally, he retained ownership of the intellectual property, providing him with the opportunity to build the brand and expand his portfolio of offerings.
Given his extensive experience as an Amazon account manager (see Personal Life section), Benun understood the importance of making the book available for sale through Amazon.com. Although the online marketplace offers a print-on-demand service, Benun's desire to develop and market a premium product led him to source his own printing to ensure consistent quality.
Selected Works
Joey Benun’s book is available throughout the United States on Amazon and internationally through his website.
- 2023, Pebbles and the Biggest Number
External Links
Pebbles and the Biggest Number
Awards
- Literary Titan - Gold Award
- Booklife by Publishers Weekly - Editor’s pick
- Amazon - #1 New Release, Children’s Math Books
