Episode #060
The Week Before My First Book Comes Out
I wrote a book about the messy middle and I'm still deeply in it. The messy middle, that is.
Two years of writing, rewriting, second-guessing, and figuring things out, and suddenly, my first book is about to be in people's hands.
I decided to document the final days before publishing The Multi-Hyphenate Dilemma through a series of unfiltered voice memos on my morning walks. What I captured was the strange emotions of watching preorder numbers, the fear of what people will think, unexpected support, publishing mishaps, and the uncomfortable realization that I'm releasing a book about career uncertainty while navigating plenty of my own.
Consider this a real-time look at what happens in the days leading up to a milestone you've spent years working toward.
Two Years at the Computer With Nothing to Show
Two years ago I sat down to write a business book about living a nonlinear career, how to make decisions inside one, with a clear structure and a repeatable framework. This, I imagined, was the kind of book I'd read by people with platforms in business and professional development.
It changed direction more times than I can count. With four different titles and somewhere between thirty and forty subtitle options, it was clearly a process to finalize. It was only later that I made myself sit with the questions I'd been avoiding: who is this for, and why would they care?
What came out was a memoir.
The daily reality of that was my husband leaving for work, my kids leaving for school, and me in front of the computer rearranging chapters. That's been my life for 2 years. And there's been nothing to show for it.
That's the part I didn't anticipate. If you don't count another revision, there's no substantial progress to report at dinner, no artifact to hold up, nothing that answers the question of what you've been doing all this time. People aren't comfortable with that. I'm not comfortable with that.
Deciding Success Meant Writing It for Myself
As anyone in the publishing field would recommend, before launching I had to get clear with myself about what success meant for me. The answer I landed on early was simple and almost embarrassingly small: "I am writing this book because it has to come out of me, because I need to make sense of it." I had to return to that sentence every single time I got stuck and wanted to quit.
It helps that I've been warned. I've listened to enough people talk about launching and marketing books to absorb the message about tempering what you expect a book to do for you. The book as a business card. The speaking fee. The wholesale orders to companies. All of it possible. But are these the most likely outcome?
What draws me is having a body of work in one place. No blog over the last fifteen years, no podcast over the last ten collecting my thinking on any of this. So finally when someone asks what I do, this book can land in their hands and answer it.
I did go searching for the standard advice in other podcasts—how to host a launch event, how to market, whether to offer preorder freebies. And the way I'm launching this book into the world is not like that. It's relational. Sending texts and personal emails inviting people to purchase and show up. One by one.
What Self-Publishing Actually Asked of Me
Self-publishing means every decision lands on me. I hired the people, wrote the thing, approved the cover art, asked for the edits, and built the mood board the art came from in the first place. The marketing is mine too, and marketing the ideas takes a completely different brain than writing them.
The pre-order number was hidden from me until the just over a week before launch, the morning my firewall finally let go and I switched to cellular data. Thirty. I've said sales aren't my metric, and I've also been more visible about this book than anything I've sold before. Though, I'd be lying if I didn't use that to evaluate some of the success of my launch of this book.
Five days out, Amazon started shipping to people who had ordered. The files had been a mess at one point, so I spent the day worrying that strangers were opening the wrong book. Then a UPS driver brought me my copy, and the cover was wrong. After two years of working on the thing, it's heartbreaking to realize that what's being delivered—what most people judge a book by—isn't how I planned. And if that wasn't a lesson in control, I'm not sure what is.
By Friday I hit 50 pre-sales, the number I'd told a friend weeks ago would thrill me. Instead of celebrating, I started wondering whether I could get to 60 or 70. Classic overachiever.
What Writing This Book Cost Me
Sitting with my own beliefs and thoughts long enough to find out whether I actually held them was the work at this stage. Writing alone has profoundly changed me in a way that I never could have gotten to by hiring a ghostwriter or writing a book with AI. That should be enough, and I'm sure a year from now I'll realize it was.
A year ago I wouldn't have been willing to put parts of my story on the page that center on other people, because I was too afraid of what they'd think of me for telling it even though it's my story. I went back through old emails and texts to get it right and changed names wherever I didn't have consent, just in case it upset someone.
Then there's marketing it, which means being seen on purpose. I knew going in that I'd have to be cringe and talk about myself, and that the tape would run: why did she think this was a good idea? Look at her promoting herself.
At this moment, I have two fears about how it lands. The first is someone reading it and thinking this is what I spent two years on, that they could do better. I can live with that one.
But the second fear is that nothing will happen, nothing at all.
Applying for Jobs Four Days Before My Book Comes Out
Four days out from publishing a book for women asking what's next, I applied for two full-time jobs. In the same week I let go of the behind-the-scenes support in my business. There's a chapter in the book called "Untethered," and that is precisely where I'm standing.
I've certainly shed a lot from the last year and my skin hasn't quite grown back yet.
Meanwhile people keep showing up. When I insisted on handling every chair and every detail of an event myself, my co-host stopped me and asked whether I could just accept help. I've been unaccustomed enough to receiving it that it registers as being a burden.
I never bought the narrative that a woman who takes time for her family or her creative work falls behind. As the months pass and the phone rings less, I've started to wonder whether I made a mistake.
I'm fumbling to fill this open crevice with something that will make me sure. Every previous time I've done that, I've bypassed what my gut was telling me were red flags. I don't want to rush a decision just to have one made. Whatever unfolds, this is the time where I need to allow the book to live in the world. Maybe it will open opportunities for me. Maybe it needed to get out so I can approach the next thing . . . whatever that is. Probably both.
