the ecosystem of a career

and the no-book-launch book launch

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the marketing department at Broadleaf made this snazzy image of my book!

When My Body and Other Crumbling Empires came out a year ago, it presented me with a conundrum. How do you grow a career without building an empire?

My publisher took a chance on me and my first traditionally-published book.¹ If it flops, it could be significantly harder than it was the first time to ever convince a publisher to work with me again. The incentives are to hustle hungry in order to singlehandedly sell thousands of copies, thus proving to everyone that my publisher’s bet was worth it.

If you follow lots of authors, you’ve probably heard by now that the job has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. Once, writers wrote, and if they wrote well enough to get a book deal, a marketer marketed the book for them. Today, publishers expect authors to both write books and amass a reliable book-buying audience.²

It would be easier than you might think to strain, strive, and overachieve after the goal of proving my worth for months on end—in order to try and sell you a memoir about unlearning burnout.

Instead, before I made a single launch plan, I made a decision: If I have to burn myself out at every book launch in order to have a career as an author, I don’t want a career as an author.
Even if I could somehow parlay book sales into actually getting paid.³
Even if some kind and/or flattering people tell me my work matters in the world.
Even if sales and fame could buy me security in a fundamentally insecure hypercapitalist economy⁴ or fill the gaping hole in my heart that needs to be constantly affirmed in order to shore up my sense of self-worth along with my very identity.⁵
The costs to my body, mind, family, and integrity are just not worth it.⁶ Being complicit with my own exploitation⁷ is not worth it.

Oh, also: when the book came out I was four months pregnant.

Now, “working hard” is not the same thing as burning myself out. Working hard for something you care about feels good! Neither is “wanting to succeed” the same thing as trying to fill the gaping hole in my heart. Desire and ambition tell us that we’re alive, and they help point us where we’re meant to go. But, no matter how much I succeed, there will always be someone doing better than me, making it seem like I haven’t made it yet. And there will always be someone standing by to congratulate me for my hard work and ambition. I, on the other hand, am the only person available to keep track of my rest, my softness, my health, relationships, generosity, margin, sense of perspective, and joy.

Paradoxes and pitfalls abound in trying to make money and impact from a creative pursuit. In the Internet era, they multiply, divide, become contagious, hide behind the guise of “data” and rumors about algorithms, and then they perpetually crouch, tormenting us, in our pockets. I think it’s easy to get caught up in all the details, the flood of conflicting information and advice, and despair.

Or we can start with what we’re actually trying to do and relentlessly cull everything that doesn’t contribute to the experience we want to have. Not to the publisher’s bottom line, not to some vague sense that we have worked “hard enough,” not to the inflation of numbers that don’t actually measure our creative careers,⁸ but to our lives.

A lot of authors seem to feel that zero marketing efforts could possibly contribute to their lives, and I think that sounds sad. You don’t like talking about the topic of your book?!⁹ You don’t care even a tiny bit about your readers?¹⁰ You don’t want to share anything about celebrating your book with anyone? You don’t like…writing??

It’s true that all of these are very different activities from the months of solitude and deep work that constitute writing a book. But I think they’ve turned into horrible chores for so many writers because they get embroiled in the high-pressure, no-rest cauldron of the dreaded “book launch.”

I also decided to start from the premise that the book launch model itself is not sustainable—but it’s also not strictly necessary. It’s a blueprint for generating enough sales to land on a bestseller list, which has somehow trickled down to all the non-bestselling authors to try to emulate in their…free time? Garnering preorders (fueled by the semi-fake scarcity of the “preorder bonus”) and manufacturing buzz is a really great strategy for selling books. But it’s not the only strategy. In fact, the worse you are at marketing, the less useful—or necessary!—it will be, because your book is probably actually good and thus will not expire. You are not selling ripe avocados or “congrats grad 2024!” napkins. You can share about a topic you love and about something you worked hard to make for a long, long time—if you don’t spend 12-24 weeks on the greased and lonely hamster wheel of “self-promotion,” causing yourself to loathe the very thought of ever mentioning your book again.

You’ll also have the advantage of the very best publicity money can’t buy—word-of-mouth recommendations—if you stop hawking your wares and start finding ways to let readers and other authors know you care about them. And if you’re building these connections over time (which—bombshell!—is the only way to build them), the best part is you won’t have to start over from scratch on the next book launch. Celebrating your books becomes a little more of a group project and a little less special-order personal-monogrammed all-your-deepest-fears hypercapitalist torture chamber.

So, with a bit of a foundation laid—and in hopes something in here is applicable to your career, even if it’s not a career in publishing—here is what I actually did:

1. I wanted to live out the Wholeness I wrote about in the book: being in right/joyful/abundant relationship with others and with myself (body, mind, spirit). This meant I considered getting lots of sleep, plenty of time outside and on my yoga mat, and taking breaks to be present with family and friends to be part of the book launch. My body belongs. My limitations are neither good nor bad. And drawing from a place of health, generosity, and care inevitably makes the work better. I tried to be in place early for every podcast interview so I could center and pray. I went for lots of walks without my phone.

2. I wanted my “book launch” to contribute to the ecosystem of my wider/longer career. I don’t just write books so I can have the pleasure of trying to sell them. I write lots of things so we can all learn stuff and feel less alone. So I prioritized stuff that could help me connect with more readers over the long term—specifically via this Substack.¹¹ Selling lots of books one time doesn’t make a career. Being a reliable source of help, inspiration, entertainment, information, perspective, or joy does. So how can any book launch activities slot into the pursuit of the latter?
   
   I also didn’t put a beginning and end date on “launch season,” particularly given the constraints of my pregnancy. That might sound like a recipe for exhaustion—selling a book indefinitely. But it could also be a recipe for experimenting with what makes a marketing rhythm that’s sustainable by removing the temptation to overdo everything in the name of “it’s just until _____!”
   Launch season, then, is still now. I have a short, sweet, and not-dreadful list of things I can go back to doing any time I want to refocus on “launching” the book, i.e. reaching new readers.
   

3. I wanted to have fun. If you Google “how to launch a book” you will have a list of 500 things to do in ten minutes or less. No one can do all of these things! Also, most of these things are totally ineffective. I decided to go all the way in on the things I liked doing¹² and just say no as much as possible to everything else.¹³ If 20% of your efforts typically generate 80% of your results, double down on the 20% and skip the nonsense! Likely, the 20% is some sweet spot between stuff that works and stuff you enjoy.

4. I wanted to connect with other authors and readers. This part in particular does not fit into the “book launch” model. In the end, what really drives book sales is often the strength of these relationships.¹⁴ But you can’t drum up a bunch of warm good will and generous favors from other people in three months, or even six. If it’s going to be authentic, it begins ASAP and never ends. Which is great news because being a writer gets lonely fast! It just makes sense to prioritize connecting with others and helping them out as a regular part of the job. I try to be helpful and kind. I try to work at improving my podcast guesting skills. And I send a lot of thank you notes.¹⁵

5. I wanted to sell some books.¹⁶ There are a few things I thought would be fun to do, but there wasn’t much evidence they’d actually move the needle on book sales, so I skipped them. And, of course, there were days I wanted to play hooky, but I didn’t, because I do have real career goals besides “feel good right this second.” Honestly, I do think I could have can follow a bit more of a straightforward sales playbook in terms of just…asking people to buy my book. Readers are busy! It takes a lot of reminders before we actually hit “purchase.”
   

In today’s final fit of honesty—I don’t know exactly how well I did on that last part. It became a little difficult to set goals and pursue them after a few months, what with the whole birthing a child thing that happened last year. There was a long pause, but this book launch is far from over! Once I get my next royalty statement in the next few months, I plan to do an even more detailed follow-up with as many juicy numbers as I can find.

For some people, my inconclusive results render this entire post moot. But for me, I succeeded. I worked hard and got the word out about my book in a way that I’m really proud of—particularly given the time and energy I had. Would I be willing to step back, look at what could be improved, and make some changes going forward in order to have greater commercial success? Of course! Would I be willing to suffer through a soulless gauntlet for months at a time in exchange for (some) money, prestige (within a very small circle), and a long career (of soulless gauntlets)? thank u, next! Given that that seems to be the model, maybe publishing is broken. I don’t feel any need to further prove it by letting publishing break me.

Most of all, I succeeded because writing and publishing a book has brought me a connection—however strong or casual—with you. If you’ve bought a copy, shared these posts with a friend, subscribed to Creaturely, or just offered an encouraging word, you’ve helped make the day-to-day reality of this very weird career one of immense joy. Thank you so much! You are a treasure. Whether you’re in publishing or not, you deserve to do whatever it is you work at with dignity, love, integrity, and fair compensation bb.

Let’s talk y’all! Ask me anything.

peace, love, bread, and wine,
Lyndsey

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1. I self-published a guided journal in 2019, which was terribly exhausting. It’s not currently available for sale.

2. People at my publisher helped me with marketing and publicity!! They also helped many other people with those things at the same time. And in the end I heard a lot of “this podcaster/publication/blog might respond better if the pitch came from the author.” These fields themselves are just hard and keep getting wonkier in the digital age.

3. Authors get paid a lump sum, half up front, and half when the manuscript is delivered. We get a book advance, and a percentage goes to our agent, and a percentage goes to taxes. This is an advance on royalties, meaning we will never receive any more money until the total royalties from book sales (approximately 15% of each hard copy sale, slightly more per ebook and audiobook) exceed the amount of the advance. I can’t even begin to calculate an hourly rate for the six months spent writing and editing and the six months spent launching, but it is…a bad hourly rate.

4. nope

5. of course I could write a whole post just about how to launch a book while leaving the heart-hole-filling to Jesus.

6. Given the payment structure outlined above, most people would argue it’s not worth it to begin with. Not even if you love it! Not even if “your message is so needed!” These dismal calculations are something of an overlooked reason publishing is so white, male, and upper-middle to upper-class. All creative industries have basically always been like this, and I for one do not have the solution.

7. by publishers, sure, but also by Amazon, and consumers themselves, and social media platforms, and whoever else gets a cut of the essentially free labor I expend marketing my work.

8. this right here is about social media likes and follower counts

9. thanks to

Tim Grahl

and

Dan Blank

for making this point a lot!

10. thanks to Seth Godin for always framing marketing this way!

11. There wasn’t a paid option yet. And I still always ask for both paid and free posts—are people going to be glad to open up their email inbox and find this?

12. podcasts, writing for friends’ Substacks, some fun things I did to celebrate on launch day that are definitely nowhere on the Google-able lists but made it a joyful experience for me.

13. a very intensive launch team experience, a self-funded book tour, way too much Instagram or EVER EVEN DOWNLOADING TIKTOK

14. frankly, right now the big winners in publishing are super-charismatic people who have developed a parasocial influencer relationship with their followers. Those people are working hard at a very different game than the one I can play, and I have to work hard to ignore the pressure to try and be like them. Some of them are also (somehow!) doing great work (i.e. Brene Brown) and some of them are…cashing in via rather mediocre books.

15. in the actual mail when I can!

16. when I get my next royalty statement, I hope to do a “by the numbers” post breaking down money and sales a LOT more. It will almost definitely be for paid subscribers!