Anna David's Blog

When I lived in San Francisco, all the women said, “Dating in San Francisco sucks.”

When I moved to LA, all the women said, “Dating in LA sucks.”

When I moved to New York, all the women said, “Dating in New York sucks.”

I believed them every time, as I bounced between those three cities, trying to determine which one sucked the least when it came to dating.

Eventually I discovered that the Erewohn smoothie drinkers were right: reality truly is what we make it. Since we’re the ones with the narrator in our head telling us what’s going on, it’s up to us to determine whether our life is a rom-com, horror movie or some other genre entirely.

Once I realized this (and was back living in LA, where people said dating sucked with even more vehemence than they said it in San Francisco and New York), I came up with a response to anyone who started talking about dating with that familiar “oh, it sucks” sigh. My response became a bit of a mantra. It went like this:

Dating is fun.

Did I think dating was fun? God, no. It was mostly horrific with a smattering of fun. But I knew that if I told myself that dating was fun, it would keep me from misery bonding with the rest of my single friends. I thought this attitude would eventually help bring about the result I wanted: to not have to date.

This means when I went out with the guy who claimed to be 47 and revealed at dinner he was 60 but it was okay because he “looked” 471, I told myself, “Dating is fun.”

When I went out with the guy who sat in silence for so long that I eventually felt compelled to tell him that it was his responsibility to at least try to contribute to the conversation: dating is fun.

When I went out with the guy who accidentally revealed he had a date later that night with a friend of mine: dating is fun.

(Every now and then it was fun but…well, you know that expression about stopped clocks isn’t just true when it comes to stopped clocks.)

My point—almost seven years into my relationship, when all those years of horrific and occasionally glorious dating seem like a bit of a fever dream—is that we get the results we tell ourselves we will. I firmly believe I got what I wanted in the end because I refused to believe what could have been my point of view: dating sucked and I’d be stuck in sucky land forever. I told myself a different story and by doing that, I created a different story.

And that’s what I’m doing with AI now. I simply refuse to buy into the “AI is coming for all of our jobs” fear-mongering. Yes, I know there are AI-written books being released as I write this. And yes, I have witnessed firsthand how much more time and money I can save by having AI do something I used to ask another human (or myself) to do. Yes, AI’s ability to produce is astounding and occasionally terrifying. But I also believe that if I tell myself AI is coming for my job, I can bring about that reality.

I’m not saying that AI isn’t coming for a lot of our jobs. It already has. But you want to know whose jobs it’s coming for now? The ones held by people who have been setting themselves up for it by constantly proclaiming that it will happen.

You know who will be last victims (if indeed they end up up being victims at all)? The people who didn’t drink the misery Kool Aid, who decided once they saw how mammoth AI was that they were going to use it rather than be used by it. The people who set out to master these new tools rather than spend all their energy fighting them, or just yelling about how bad they are.

I understand how Polyanna-ish or out of touch this point of view may seem when there’s already so much proof that AI is taking away people’s jobs. But new developments are always taking away people’s jobs. In the early 2000s, I got very comfortable making $2 a word writing for magazines when the Huffington Post came along and showed that lots of people were writing for free. Then places like Forbes and Fast Company one-upped that and started inviting people to pay to write for them.

The entire industry I’d built my career around was gone. So I had to starve or figure something else out and my biggest regret is that I didn’t wake up and start finding my new path sooner. I spent years pitching articles to make a few hundred dollars and trying to make a living off of running websites when dynamic ads had decimated the web business, rather than looking at the new options out there.

That means that if you’ve been pounding the drum of AI despair, it’s time to stop. You don’t need to become a big fan of it but you do need to learn about it before you become the parent who needs their kid to show them how to text.

Maybe today is the day you…

Revise your website so that it’s more AI-friendly. Or upload your book to an LLM to have it select the most compelling quotes for you to use to promote your book on social media. Or ask AI to proofread the copy on your site. Or use it to help you brainstorm titles for your next book.

But don’t confuse educating yourself with surrendering to the lowest common denominator. Don’t go and have AI write your book or use a schlocky AI book publishing company to publish your book. Don’t let an AI bot sell you on bogus book marketing services.2

But most of all, don’t freak out about AI stealing your work. Instead start focusing on not being left behind. 

 

I was reared to be competitive.

From the moment I was born, I was taught to compete with my brother, who was 2.5 years older—that is, someone with not only a head start but also a gender advantage, especially by 70s standards.

I was also told I could never measure up to him (see: age and gender advantage; also being the Black Sheep to his Golden Child).

I was taught to ski by being dragged to the top of black diamond runs and then having to listen to my dad cackle when I would instead throw my poles down and cry.

I did not, to put it mildly, develop a healthy form of competitiveness—if such a thing even exists.

When I first became a professional writer…

I had insane success right out of the gate. Of course, it didn’t seem insane at the time. It just seemed like I could finally declare my family wrong and relish in the fact that the world now saw my greatness.

I was wooed by multiple agents.

My first book, Party Girl, sold in a bidding war.

My agent submitted an essay I’d dashed off in a half hour to the New York Times and it was accepted as a “Modern Love.” I didn’t even know what the column was at the time.

But, rather suddenly, everyone seemed to catch up—and veer ahead.

A year before Party Girl came out, a friend of a friend asked me if I wanted to join a group blog. It was called The Debutante Ball1 and it was written by women who were all releasing their first books that year.

In my delusion, I felt massively superior to the rest of the Debs. Their books weren’t being released by famed publisher Judith Regan or already getting press or attracting movie offers, like mine.

Then the Deb dynamic started to shift.

One of them would email the group that Barnes & Noble had just placed a massive order for her book and another would reply that B&N had just placed an order that size for her book, too!

I reached out to my publisher to ask about book orders but never heard back.

In their emails, the Debs talked about a woman named Sessalee Hensley2 as if she were God. A former Barnes & Noble clerk who had worked her way up to being the person who decided which novels B&N would order (and how many), she had the sort of power I could barely comprehend at the time.

And apparently Sessalee loved a few of the books in our Debutante group.

Mine was not one of them. I didn’t think? I seemed to be having trouble reaching anyone at Regan Books.

I imagined Sessalee as a stern woman in a pinafore who would most definitely not be drawn to a book that featured a threesome as an opening scene. I assumed that because my fellow Debs were attracting her attention and I was not, my book was DOA.

As it turned out, I was right—Party Girl was DOA but for reasons that had nothing to do with Sessalee. I hadn’t been able to find out about book orders or anything else because a few months before my launch date, my famous publisher Judith Regan was fired in the biggest scandal to hit publishing and her entire imprint dissolved in a day. My book that had all the hype in the world was launched under a fake imprint HarperCollins made up a few months later. How could I ask anyone if Sessalee liked my book when there was no one to ask?

My fellow Debs, meanwhile, all seemed giddy about their launches.

We stayed on a group email chain post-release and when one would share about the multi-thousand order a bookstore had placed for her book, the others would chime in about how happy they were for her.

Whoever she was, I was not happy for her. Were the other Debs better people or just better at pretending? I don’t know. I don’t even remember the names of any of those women or their books.

But my experience with them was definitely a precursor to the sort of jealousy I’d experience the whole time I was in the traditional publishing world.

To be fair, traditional publishing is a breeding ground for jealousy.

The pie is so very small, the pieces even smaller and the successes so rare that one person’s book getting a New York Times feature or a big order from a bookstore means there isn’t room for that to happen to you.

I didn’t care that the odds of success were bad. I thought I should defy the odds. Unfortunately, every traditionally published author feels the same, or else they’d never sell a book to a traditional publisher.

My jealousy grew with each book deal I got.

The main reason for this was basic math: as a published author, I met more published authors.

If you buy into Freud’s theory about the narcissism of small differences, we are only jealous of people who achieve something we feel we could. So as my world of colleagues grew beyond my fellow debs, the more women I had to be jealous of.

And then my jealousy abated.

It happened when I created and then began producing a live storytelling show called True Tales of Lust and Love3. I started the show because I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to promote my second book, Bought. But when it became surprisingly popular, I had to start inviting other authors to read from their books and tell their stories.

I had to, in other words, invite women I’d been jealous of to walk onto a stage—and then watch them shine.

In the act of doing that, I saw that they weren’t glittery lottery winners who were joyous all the time because of their great luck but real, complicated and talented women who were, like me, trying to carve out creative careers.

But then that show ended and a few years passed. My jealousy kicked in again when, out of nowhere, recovering from addiction became trendy and a few women who’d never written anything other than Instagram captions started releasing memoirs about their recovery from addiction.

They were heralded for launching the “Quit Lit” movement.

Um? Hadn’t my book come out more than a decade earlier? And hadn’t I waited until I was over five years sober to write it, while these women seemed to be about 30 seconds sober but were somehow being considered recovery role models? Also, hadn’t I been a professional writer since college while these were just people who were good at coming up with Instagram captions?

Yes, yes and yes. See, these women had understood early on how important Instagram was while I had dismissed it as something for shallow people. It somehow hadn’t occurred to me when Instagram popped up in 2010 that followers could turn into readers.

I’d love to say that it was amazing spiritual growth that led to me getting over my jealousy.

But that would be a lie. I got over my jealousy by exiting the traditional publishing game.

Chasing sales metrics as a writer, no matter who you are or how successful your first book, is a battle you’ll lose. If your first book sells a boatload of copies, your second book will look like a failure in comparison. So you do a third and a fourth or maybe you don’t but you are still caught on a treadmill that seems to go in a circle.

There is no winning.

There is only stepping off.

Or becoming so spiritually healthy that you don’t care about playing a game you can’t win.

Instead of going the spiritual route, I stepped off the traditional publishing merry-go-round.

I decided to approach book publishing differently.

I realized that if I sold a book to a traditional publisher, I would lose all control. I saw that I could do everything they could—and do it better because I’d seen the business from the other side.

I started looking at publishing strategically: I decided that I’d write some books for authority-building (showcasing all that I know about book publishing and thus inspiring readers to want to work with my company) and others for fun. If I did the authority-building books effectively, I’d be more than able to support my habit of writing books for fun.

Is that selling out?

It doesn’t feel like it to me. I love writing books about book publishing—shattering delusions so that others don’t have to get on that circular treadmill and wonder why they feel like a failure.

And I love to write for sheer love of the sport, which is why I’ve been working on a novel over the past year.

When I’m done with the novel, I won’t need to have my agent submit it to a bunch of publishing houses in the hopes that someone who can’t do what I can will deem it worthy. I can publish it myself and not care about how it does, instead focusing on who it pleases.

Honestly, this approach has been a game changer. Aside from the Glennon-sized thorn in my side, I almost never feel jealous of other writers these days.

Usually I just hope that they can learn what I have without needing to go through all those crushing years of trying and resenting. I hope that I can save them from wanting to create voodoo dolls of a woman named Sessalee who they don’t even know.

And OMG guess what I learned just now when I Googled her?

Good old Sessalee was ultimately fired. Even Gods have to learn, I guess, that publishing is a fickle mistress.

Now that those of us who celebrate Traylor-related holidays have wound down from The Interview and absorbed the various sub-Reddit Swiftie theories1, I find myself thinking about one of her much-discussed pearls dropped during the interview more than any of the others. No, not one of the pearls about bread or otters or sparkles but this one:

You should think of your energy as if it's expensive, as if it's like a luxury item. Not everyone can afford it.

Of course, we’ve all experienced giving our energy to those not deserving of it, probably even in the last day. I’m not just talking about those people who live rent-free in ours brains because we’re convinced they did something terrible days or weeks or years ago but also the woman who doesn’t thank you when you let her in front of you in the security line or the TSA person who treats you like you’re a criminal because you haven’t gotten your Real ID yet.

When you’re writing and then publishing a book, the opportunities you have to give your energy away are endless. Here are just a few of the energy vampires I’ve fed that I’d urge you to avoid:

Other authors releasing books at the same time. This topic comes up at LLP whenever we’re discussing a client’s book launch release date. We’ll say something like, “We think January (or May or December or fill in the blank) is the best time to release your book.” They will come back with, “But I’ve heard that January (or May or December or fill in the blank) is the worst time to launch a book” or “I heard James Clear (or Tim Ferriss or fill in the blank) is releasing their book then.” I always go through the same spiel, explaining that the month you release doesn’t matter—that the reason traditional publishers are so focused on launch timing is that their entire business model is based on the success of a launch. In other words, if a book is successful the day it launches, they know that they should invest more of their energy or resources in it. If not (and most are not), they know not to think about it again. But Legacy Launch Pad’s model isn’t at all focused on the launch. To us, the launch is just another day in what will be the full life of your book. I released a book on writing in July of 2020—aka the worst time ever in that the world was coming to grips with being in the midst of a global pandemic and not remotely interested in learning about how to make their mess their memoir. And yet I got a five-minute segment on Good Morning America promoting the book. My point is: don’t worry about when your book is coming out, what other books will be competing against it and whether the attention given to those books will take away from the attention that may be given to yours. There’s enough pieces of pie for all of us.

Feedback from people who are not your ideal readers. This also comes up with clients; we will work with them on crafting the most exquisite book for their perfect reader. We will all agree we love it. Then they will give it to their friend from college who, despite not really being a reader, knows “what works”—and this doesn’t. You can’t imagine the number of people out there who, when presented with a book in progress, suddenly fancy themselves an editor. It is your job to ignore them, or not to share your book with them in the first place. When I was working on On Good Authority, I joined this group for aspiring writers who could all use a software the group leader had created to give feedback on each other’s books in progress. Now, this was not a good group for me since I wasn’t an aspiring writer—I was working on my eighth book and had been in publishing for decades—but I wanted to use the software and I figured (naively) that the people in this group would appreciate the work of a wizened elder. Oh my God you guys, their feedback was so mean. This one woman told me that my book was trite and her opinions only got worse from there. I was deeply discouraged and may have even cried. Then I looked at her profile on the aspiring author site and learned she was a British graphic designer who was convinced that she’d sell her book on graphic design to a top publisher who would then launch her career as a speaker, despite the fact that she didn’t have a following or compelling topic. The book I was writing was for successful entrepreneurs who were looking to forgo traditional publishing and choose themselves because traditional publishing wasn’t available to them and besides, would only break their heart. No wonder my book inspired vitriol—it was basically telling her that she was delusional. I vowed from that moment on to never go to the hardware store for milk again3. Now, if I get feedback while writing, I only get it from my ideal reader—or from other professionals.

Nasty Amazon and Goodreads reviewers. I’m not going to lie; nasty reviews hurt. While sometimes I’ve found the hostility amusing enough to compile a video of the meanest reviews, other times it’s felt like a punch in the gut. When I wrote a children’s book for my son, I thought it was the sweetest little love letter I could have come up with. An Amazon customer named Alisa Robin did not. Her review made clear that she would passionately “not recommend this book to anyone.” I’m not going to lie: Alisa Robin definitely made me cry. Whether that was new mom sensitivity or the fact that it practically felt like she attacking my son, I have no idea. But I now understand that Alisa was not a luxury worth splurging on.

Friends and family who don’t care. Releasing your first book is so exciting that it can be confusing when the people closest to you don’t care. While my family has always been fairly indifferent to what I do, I’m lucky enough to have a slew of friends that really showed up for me on my first book. You should have seen the crowd we gathered at events for Party Girl! Book number two—well, it was less exciting. Half the crowd. On books three, four and five, I felt lucky if I could even get a friend to acknowledge anything was happening in my life at all. My best advice is to keep your expectations in this area very low. Your family may not care. Your friends who say they’ll review your book on Amazon may not. The truth is they don’t get how important it is because they’re probably not creatives who understand what a difference their one Amazon review would make. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people or don’t love you the way you deserve to be loved. They just don’t get it. Rather than resenting them, shower the ones who do come through with gratitude.

The people who ask, “How is your book doing?” When your book is published traditionally, hearing this question is torturous since your publisher tells you nothing but gives you the distinct feeling all the time that It Is Not Going Well and It Is Somehow Your Fault. I remember after Party Girl came out, this guy I knew kept asking me “how it was doing.” I’d say, “Well,” and he’d ask me what that meant. And I didn’t know because my publisher had never even told me what “well” would look or smell or feel like. Now that I publish my own books and can focus on the things I can control (like doing the best book possible and getting it in front of my ideal reader), I can finally answer, “It’s doing everything it’s supposed to do and more” and mean it. 

 

When I first heard and saw that Google results were starting with AI summaries, I was as horrified as everyone else. I giggled and shook my head at the stories about how AI was recommending glue pizza and rock eating. I pitied a civilization that now wouldn’t have the freedom to find what they were seeking online.

And then I thought: when was the last time Google actually showed me what I was looking for? 2001? I’d grown so accustomed to Google not showing me what I was seeking that it had become the equivalent of that bookcase in your house that’s got a kid’s brush, an unused diaper, books on guitars and Winston Churchill, a screen cleaner, a random letter from Chase and a The Joy of Cooking on top of it): you stop noticing it until the day when you do see it and wonder how everything has suddenly gotten to be so messy under your watchful eye.

Then I started looking at the AI results I was getting from the Google machine and realized they were infinitely more helpful than when they were just companies and people that were paying astronomical amounts to come up first. While not a perfect display of democracy, I realized this was at least a step in the direction of not continuing to line Sergei and Larry’s pockets with more cash, not to mention allowing those who spent the most to dominate.

If there’s anything I find more delightful than discovering a More Efficient Way to Do Something, it’s finding a way to personally benefit from discovering that More Efficient Way to Do Something. And that led me down a rabbit hole of figuring out the best way to optimize an author site (or any site) so that it doesn’t get left behind in our AI searching world.

Here are the main things I’ve learned and already applied to both my personal and company website—and IMO you should think about implementing ASAP:

If you’re an author, create an ABOUT page for your book that includes a hi-res cover image, book description, a list of themes, ISBN/publisher/date/country, bio (with image), reviews, discussion questions and a press release. (If we’re talking about the site for your company, make sure your ABOUT page includes the equivalent for your company, including—crucially—success stories.) Why all these things? Because you want your site to be able to “speak” AI—to, in other words, for it to be quickly understood in LLM language. You (or your site designer) were probably already doing at least some of these things but I know very few (if any) people who were listing their ISBN/ASIN and country on their book or author site. As for discussion questions, I remember my editor at HarperCollins having me come up with those for my first few books because, she assured me, “It will help make book clubs want to read it.” I naively believed everything my publisher told me back then so I came up with super unnatural, awkward questions like, “How did the protagonist Amelia change over the course of the book?” I did this even though, in all my (inadvertent) conversations about book clubs over the previous few decades, I’d never once heard someone say, “Well, I would pick this for my book club but it didn’t come with discussion questions so let’s pick another.” I’d also never heard of a book club actually using discussion questions created by the author. Anyway, now there’s finally a reason to create discussion questions and I can guarantee that none of the Big Five publishers are telling their writers to do it since they’re allergic to learning anything new about publishing. Now let’s talk about themes. Themes aren’t keywords or categories—they’re the literal themes of your book. You have to think the way a robot does when looking for the best material to serve people. People type things like “books about mom guilt” or “funny addiction books” and not “contemporary women’s fiction.” That’s why, when we created a site for a client whose book is for new moms who feel overwhelmed, we listed the following themes on her ABOUT page:

Overwhelmed mom

Mom guilt and self-care

Postpartum struggles

Sleep deprivation with babies

Mom comparison and judgment

Toddler tantrums and behavior

Working mom vs stay at home mom

Mom identity crisis

Practical mom survival tips

Honest motherhood experiences

If you want to see an example of an ABOUT page that has all these things, you can check out my Party Girl page.

Create a page specifically for LLMs where the URL actually ends with /llm.text. This is a page that, counter-intuitively, you don’t want people to see; it’s a robots-only club. Here’s a link to ours for Legacy Launch Pad but if you click there, you have to pretend you didn’t see it (or pretend you’re a robot, your choice). You can literally copy every header we have there and create the equivalent for your site. The headers make it so that you can actually control what LLMs will prioritize as well as provide specific instructions and content usage guidelines for them.

Add an FAQs page. Your business site may already have an FAQs page but you probably created it by thinking of, well, the questions you’re asked most frequently. Now you need to add questions and answers to things like: What would inspire someone to hire me or read my book? What makes them need or want this? Or: what objections would someone have? You need to phrase the questions in a way that your ideal client or reader would (and then answer them). You can check out the Legacy Launch Pad FAQs page for an example of a page that does this.

If you have an author site, you need for it to have a BUY page that has links to all retailers that sell your book (and not just Amazon) as well as a MEDIA page with links to all your media appearances. You also should have a chapter or two available for people to read before purchasing.

Whether it’s a business or book site, make sure every page has a CTA, whether that’s to buy your book, sign up for your list or schedule a call. If you’re going to work this hard to get people there, make sure you have something you want them to do! (This was relevant in our pre AI world too, of course.)

Pimp out your 404 page with CTAs as well. LLMs will definitely send people to 404 pages and you might as well take advantage of it. (This was also relevant pre AI revolution.)

Use alt text when uploading images. Alt text could be its own post so if you don’t know what that is, go find out. This is more important than ever!

Add a blog if you don’t already have one, then write posts that include information you want AI to find (say you wrote a book on negotation…you could write a post about how similar you are to Chris Voss so AI can start to associate your name with his when someone types “Who are some authors like Chris Voss?”)

If you, like me, think it’s exciting to be able to take advantage of getting in at the ground floor of AI search, I suggest you implement all of this now. If the thought of it overwhelms you—or, if you panic when you see a sentence like “put all your media appearances here” because you don’t have any media appearances, please write and let me know; Legacy Launch Pad can help with both of these things.

 

 

I think of myself as someone who’s tough to scam.

If I get a text from “Apple” or “Amazon” about a “suspicious purchase,” I google the exact phrasing and usually find that people on Reddit who have already written about how it’s a scam. I’ve never been catfished. I delete every email offer to grow my Instagram or buy my business. I can always tell when someone’s trying to send me into their funnel by offering me something too good to be true that I know will result in an aggressive sales campaign if I take them up on it.

But, oh Substack readers, I fell prey. And to a book “specialist,” no less! It’s not quite the NY Mag financial columnist falling for a $50k scam but it’s in the same stratosphere.

It all started with an email with a very savvy subject line: Why Party Girl Still Deserves the Spotlight.

Coming at me with my favorite book I wrote that I felt never got the spotlight it deserved? She had my attention! Plus she offered GoodReads promo, which I know is more important than ever because AI crawlers love it so it’s something I’ve been wanting to add as a service for Legacy Launch Pad clients. (Since I’m lucky to employ a publishing guinea pig—myself—I always try something myself before sharing it with clients.)

In addition to GoodReads promo, she was offering SEO work for the book, as well as efforts to align the book with other Quit Lit memoirs. I wrote her that I was not only in but also, if things worked out, I could potentially hire her to do this for Legacy Launch Pad books.

She said great, she’d send me a detailed breakdown. Which was weird. I mean, hadn’t her email been a detailed breakdown? But I said sure. She broke it down again. I asked for more info. Another email and finally I got the price: between $274-$774, depending on the package I chose. Even though I was recognizing all the tactics of manipulative marketers—namely, get the person to commit a few times before telling them the price so that they’re emotionally involved (and also ending prices in $4 though why that works, I have no idea)—I signed up for the middle package. But I really should have jumped ship after the next email, where she (Traci B. Johnson and yes, Traci with an i, yes) wrote:

Rachael just sent over the Upwork contract for the plan we discussed.

And indeed Rachael had indeed sent it over.

Um, Rachael (with an ae)? Upwork?

I wrote Traci back and said I didn’t want to do this through Upwork and that if I hired her to work for my company, I would never do that. She assured me that we would just do this “first one” through Upwork.

I did not ask who Rachael was; Traci was throwing too much information by me for me to ask. I think that was the point.

I asked Traci if she had a website and she sent me a link to this—a free Wordpress site with a foreign phone number and dorismhert@gmail.com as the email address (ie, neither Traci with an i nor Rachael with an ae).

The Upwork contract stipulated that I pay the entire fee upfront. Because every Upwork contract I’ve had before involved paying through milestones, I wrote Traci back and asked about it. She wrote: Thanks for checking! I usually structure this as full payment upfront so I can prioritize the project fully and focus on delivering high-quality work without delays.

Traci was starting to sound kinda AI-esque. I noticed every email started with a very grateful first line, even if what I was asking was something like, “Why are you asking me to pay you upfront when I don’t even know you?” Instead of confronting her about how weird she was sounding, I asked if she could at least break it into two payments, so she changed the first payment to $350 (three-quarters up front also seemed strange but whatever, I just wanted to get started). I told her I thought this whole thing was weird and she thanked me for my honesty, apologized for any confusion and told me how much she wanted to support my books in a way that “aligned with my values.”

Finally we got to the work and I realized when she sent me the “keyword optimized” book description for Party Girl that she had in no way read the book. I didn’t really care; I’ve been interviewed on the Today show about my books with full awareness that the host hadn’t read it. But I also know a lot about keyword research for books so I tried to get Traci to explain what her keyword research process was and/or the software she’d used to come up with the keywords. I figured if it was good, I could incorporate it into how we do it at LLP. But she was vague in her response so I just figured, whatever, let’s get onto the Goodreads part.

She then wrote me that she needed my “Fiction Flick.” I’d never heard of a Fiction Flick so after googling and finding nothing, I asked her what it was. She explained that it was a 15-second video teaser.

I said I could have my team create one and she thanked me for my “thoughtful response” and said that to “simplify things,” she’d be happy to do it for me.

I thanked her. Then she sent me an email breaking down what she would do—for an additional $521. But, she explained, she wasn’t offering just a basic video—she was offering “a targeted visual marketing asset, crafted specifically for reader engagement, scroll-stopping impact, and conversion-driven promotion.” She talked about how she’d worked with over 55 authors and “if timing or budget is a concern, no worries delays [sic], you’re welcome to pay part of the amount upfront, and I’ll get started right away.”

What’s below is the video she sent me as an example of what she could do. I’m entirely serious.

 

 

I said I’d pass and she wrote me, I’m ready to begin the full fiction flick and thumbnail mockup design without delay. You’ll receive a preview of the creative direction tomorrow so you can see the quality and vision firsthand. Feel free to fund Rachael on Upwork at your earliest convenience so we can officially get started.

I asked if she was reading my emails because I’d explained I didn’t want her to do a Fiction Flick for me. She responded of course but she’d already started working on my Fiction Flick since the category and keyword research for my book was so “time-sensitive and crucial to its visibility.”

I asked her what was so time-sensitive about category and keyword research. She responded with some nonsense about “key timing windows.”

Finally I’d had it. I told her that all I’d really wanted was the GoodReads promo. I also said that I found her emails confusing and I was wondering if we could jump on Zoom. That way, I added, we could discuss how she could work with my company. (Yes, I hate Zoom but I knew she would dodge it.) She responded with a lot of gratitude for my request but explained that she was “unable to accommodate Zoom calls due to my current location and project commitments.” She added that she stays focused on “delivering in-depth, strategic work through written communication so as to maintain quality and consistency across all active campaigns.”

That’s when I straight out asked her if she was AI. Seeming offended, she said no, she was a “real publishing professional.” I told her that one minute on Zoom would make me believe her and she responded that we could schedule one for the next day.

I wrote back to schedule a time and she responded: I’m currently in a meeting with an authors am [sic] working with and won’t be able to talk just yet. I truly appreciate your patience and understanding. I’ll be giving you a call in the next 1 hour as scheduled. Looking forward to speaking with you then!

“As scheduled”? Also, um, how was she going to call someone whose number she didn’t have? Plus, as someone who stays focused on “written communication,” how could she be in a meeting with “an authors” she was working with?

Only THEN did I look at her/Rachael’s Upwork reviews. Four reviews total and one says “1 star: I di [sic] not know the relationship between Rachael and my main contact "Debra" but one or both of them are not who they say they are.

I told her I was done wasting time, that she could just refund me for everything but the book description and she responded that she’d done three weeks of “consistent work, including my time, energy, and personal investment,” working “day and night to deliver value” and what’s more, she’d “already completed key deliverables.”

She went on: Requesting a refund at this point disregards the substantial time, effort, and money I’ve put into your project.

It went on from there. Then she sent another email that said in addition to the description, she had also completed:

10 targeted and curated Goodreads Listopia listings to increase your book’s discoverability

Comprehensive keyword research and analysis tailored to your genre and audience

Ongoing work on category optimization to improve your book’s visibility on Amazon

She went on…

I was also preparing to secure around 10 reader reviews on your Goodreads page, hence my request for the manuscript. That part of the work was already underway, though I hadn’t shared it yet as I was still waiting on the file.

She ended with:

Therefore, a refund will not be issued. The work has been delivered in full and with integrity.

I thought about explaining to her that completing work but not delivering it to me meant it didn’t count as “complete” but I was very tired of communicating with her.

Okay so…was she AI or just a scammer who writes like she is? Was doing all this to me worth $350? She certainly spent a lot of time on our communication (even copying and pasting AI prompts, given how much we emailed, would be time consuming.) On con artist podcasts, some expert or witness always says that if the con artist actually used their time and energy on legit things, they’d probably be quite successful. But it’s the thrill of getting away with it that they love.

So: was Traci/Rachael/dorismhert@gmail.com thrilled by this? She/he/they didn’t sound thrilled. She/he/they also didn’t refund my money. I chalk it up to a lesson well learned. It was $350. It could have been $3500. Or more. And the truth is, for all that I am in many ways a savvy publishing professional, I am also inherently gullible. When my brother told me when I was little that there was a guy on That’s Incredible!1 who had never been to the bathroom, I believed him for most of my childhood.

This whole experience only reinforced my belief that people need to work with true publishing professionals—those with credibility, those whose sites showcase that credibility, those who have worked in traditional publishing and, of course, those with one name and not three.

I recently put out a call for copy editors at Legacy Launch Pad by posting on my LinkedIn that I was looking for them.

I specifically asked people to DM me if they were interested.

Many lovely people did and when they did, I asked for their email addresses so I could have my Project Director email them a copy edit test.

Several people did not DM me on LinkedIn. Roughly five people emailed me on my personal email address which is not listed on LinkedIn; four of them suggested we jump on the phone to talk about the role.

Jump on the phone?!

Now, these people have no way of knowing just how Milenial I am when it comes to the phone.

But here’s the deal: I don’t answer it. Unless in emergencies. Even then I do it begrudgingly.

My outgoing message is to not leave a message because I won’t listen to it.

I’ve told my team members they can’t leave me voice notes because voice notes remind me too much of voicemails.

I’ve had potential clients who I thought might sign $100,000 contracts with us that I haven’t gotten on the phone with because I’d rather give away a huge percentage of that to my Sales Director than have another Zoom (I believe I’ve reached my Zoom Life Limit).

My point is that I’m not going to jump on a call or a Zoom to describe a freelance copy editor position to a stranger when the description is inherent in the name and anyone raising their hand to do it should know that.

Even crazier than the people who emailed me to ask if we could jump on the phone were the three men who texted me on my personal cell to discuss it.

On my number that I thought wasn’t listed.

I get that people want to stand out and that it’s tough out there and AI is replacing editorial jobs and all that but looking up someone’s personal number and texting them isn’t a way to stand out—unless you want to stand out as a creep.

If the goal was to get me to take action, I did: I blocked their numbers, signed up for one of those services that deletes your contact information (to the best of its ability) and updated my LinkedIn post with the PS that people who were interested should, as I stated, DM me.

I still received more emails and texts.

One person sent this seemingly AI-written email:

Beyond just grammar and punctuation, editing is really about clarity, structure, and voice. My goal is not only to polish your manuscript but to help it resonate with your readers in the most meaningful way. Whether it's developmental editing (helping shape the flow and big ideas) or line editing (refining tone, transitions, and language), I approach each project with both technical precision and creative care.

With years of experience across various genres, I’ve had the privilege of working with authors at different stages, from rough first drafts to nearly finished manuscripts. I also offer consultations throughout the editing process, where we can walk through things like:

Strengthening your message and narrative arc

Clarifying your audience and their needs

Ensuring consistency in style, tone, and voice

Navigating publishing options and preparing for launch

My process is collaborative, transparent, and tailored to your goals. Whether you’re looking for a single round of edits or ongoing feedback, I can adapt to what best supports your vision.

I’d love to hear more about your project, its purpose, its message, and where you see it going. Let me know a time that works for a quick call, and I’ll make myself available.

Looking forward to learning more and seeing how we can make this a success together.1

First of all, does this sound AI-written to you?

Secondly, when I didn’t respond, she followed up. Three times. After the third time, I wrote her: Hi - We gave edit tests to the people who followed the instructions by DMing once and hired from there. Thanks.

No response to that but then she wrote me: Just wanted to share a quick heads-up, our team is offering a 25% summer discount on service until EOD July 30th.

Her team? Whaa? Needless to say, I did not take advantage of said discount.

When my Project Director sent out the copy edit tests to the people who applied, we received dozens of responses—some from people who aced the test completely. Without exception, all the people who scored perfectly were gracious, thanked us for the opportunity and sounded thrilled when we reported back that we were adding them to our roster.

Some of the people who made many mistakes on their test did other things: one responded to the test to ask if she could be paid for taking it since it looked quite extensive (we told her no and she thought about it, then decided she would take it anyway) while another said she preferred a higher rate but perhaps we could “meet in the middle” (but then thought about it once we told her our rates were our rates; she also decided she would also take the test anyway). A third only did a third of the test because we “could clearly see her editing skills” from the part of the test she’d done.

So why is it that people who want to get paid to take a voluntary test for a job, balk at comparative rates and only complete a third of a test score badly and people who are lovely and gracious often score perfectly?

And why do people ignore a request for a LinkedIn DM and instead look up someone’s private number or asking them to get on the phone to discuss a job they don’t have yet?

I actually don’t know. Do you?

Here’s what I do know: how you interact with strangers when you want something dictates whether or not you will have success. The approach is more important than skill. It’s more important than experience. It’s more important than talent. It’s an ability to read the proverbial room and remain humble and show your value rather than asking for special treatment or trying to jump to the head of the line. As someone who spent a long time asking for special treatment and trying to jump to the head of the line, I can assure you that this kind of thing almost always backfires.

How does this apply to your book publishing experience? Well, your journey, if you do it right, will involve a lot of asking—asking for blurbs, asking for opinions, asking for Amazon reviews, asking to go on podcasts. And the way you ask is everything. I used to give our clients a document called GOOD AND BAD BLURB REQUESTS but I stopped giving it out because it seemed so obvious. Maybe it’s not?

I’ve had people reach out for blurbs with emails that have said things like “I know you love books so can you blurb this?” or “I think it would be a great opportunity for you to blurb this.” I had a man who pitched himself to be on my podcast who admitted in the pitch that he didn’t know if I interviewed men on my podcast—something he could have determined had he gone to the podcast page (answer: I did; just not him).

I’ve also had people send some of the loveliest blurb requests you can imagine and in every one of those cases, I’ve said yes. No matter how busy I was. No matter what was going on. Because the way they asked was lovely.

So, whether it’s a freelance job or a blurb, ask with all the graciousness you can muster. Remember that people aren’t just there to meet your needs, whether it’s for employment or a blurb. Always think, in the words of my mentor, what’s in it for them. The more you do that, the more you’ll get what you want. Sometimes even when you’re not asking for it.

Case in point: today a teenager rang my doorbell. I was putting my son down for a nap and I’m about as into strangers ringing my doorbell as I am into getting on the phone with aspiring copy editors. And he was the second person to ring the doorbell today; the first was a guy who wanted to know if we needed our roof redone. (We did not.) I was very close to shutting the door on this kid but then he quickly said, “I’m not doing this for a school project. It’s self funding.”

This got my attention: honesty! I asked what he was offering.

“Black and white curb painting,” he said.

What? I pictured a checkered curb.

“The number on your curb is gone,” he said. “I can repaint it for you. It’s $30. I just did it for your neighbor. My name is Isiah and I live one street over.”

I was immediately won over. He was offering something I hadn’t known until that moment that I needed but it was for the right price. He showed me that he was trustworthy when he told me he was from the neighborhood. He even had social proof because my neighbor had already said yes.

A half hour later, the curb was painted, it looked fab and I was asking Isiah what else he was interested in doing. Turns out all kinds of stuff: errand running, gardening, pressure washer cleaning (which we randomly need). I basically hired a new assistant because he came to my door with an awesome offer at the right price and asked in a way that was direct and gracious.

It was inspiring, especially as the mother of a young boy. I want my son to be like that.

All of this is to say: think before you ask. Read the room. And channel Isiah before you make a move.

Precious and sensitive people can be so annoying—especially when we’re the precious and sensitive people in question…thinking how we feel is so important, getting all hurt when we’re rejected, threatening—to ourselves or whomever we’ve gotten wrapped up in our drama—that we’re done, we’ve had it, we’re never going to put ourselves out there again.

But guess what? I know the solution! You need to follow my just-created Taylor Swift Guide to Being an Authorpreneur. Here are the rules:

1) Take back your power.

When Taylor’s first producer royally screwed her over by selling her masters to her mortal enemy Scooter Braun, Taylor did not go off and cry. Or…well, she did cry—if “My Tears Ricochet” is indeed about that incident, she wept “in a sunlit room.” But she didn’t just cry. Instead, inspired by an idea Kelly Clarkson shared with her, she re-recorded every single song and released them to even greater success than the originals. This was all before May of this year, when she was able to actually get the rights to her first six albums back, forever changing the music business in the process. But she’d actually already won long before since the re-releases introduced her music to a whole new group of people who’d previously dismissed her as some teen country music girl with feathered hair (raises hand). In other words, if you’re feeling rejected by agents or publishers or reviewers or readers, maybe it’s time to take your power back.

2) Don’t be afraid to look ridiculous.

When Taylor announced at the 2024 Grammy’s that her next album was going to be called “The Tortured Poets Department,” everyone assumed it would be about her six-year relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn. There was even a whole theory going around about how it was named after some text thread that Alwyn had with Paul Mescal and some other hot British actor dudes that I would very much like to be accidentally included in, a la Jeffrey Goldberg. But then! The album came out and most of the songs were about Taylor’s much-ridiculed, very-much-not understood relationship with a musician named Matty Healy—a person whose charms are seemingly only visible to Taylor. Rather than hoping we’d all forget her romance with the sweaty weirdo or trashing him to remind us that he was way beneath her, she took a different approach: she released one brilliant song after another that seemed to delve into a two-week affair that left her bereft after he wooed and then dropped her. Her devotion to honesty—to sharing her pain no matter how silly it may make her look—is something every writer needs to remember when they question whether or not writing something is going to make them look stupid.

3) Show up no matter what.

Oh, so you have writer’s block? You’re not feeling inspired? Well, on “The Tortured Poets Department” album, Taylor told us about what it’s like to show up every day even when you feel like you want to die. We had no idea but when we were watching her during the post Matty Healy and pre Travis Kelce part of her Eras tour that she was actually dealing with the one-two punch of the Joe Alwyn relationship dissolution followed by Matty Healy whiplash. Turns out that even though all the pieces of her felt shattered, she was showing us what it’s like to smile through your tears. In other words, bed rotting isn’t going to help you get your mojo back. But creating and dancing on your own version of Taylor’s stage just may.

4) Be open-minded.

Truth: if I were Taylor Swift and I heard that some football player dude was trying to hand deliver me friendship bracelets with his number on them, I would probably have been concerned. If he was then talking about it on his podcast? I might have filed a restraining order. But hey, athletes have never been my thing. Besides, Taylor is apparently more open-minded than I am because she decided to open the door to this Travis Kelce guy and now years have passed and they are America’s most beloved couple of all time—such a part of the American Dream that Trump accused their relationship of being a Democratic plot to turn football fans against him. Does Taylor care that Travis doesn’t know how to spell the word squirrel while she’s a modern day wordsmith the likes of which we’ve almost never seen? Please! She’s too busy having fun with him. So if you’re committed to some idea you had ages ago about how your book publishing journey was supposed to go and you’re still refusing to look at other options, maybe it’s time to open your mind a bit?

5) Don’t get mad; get even.

They say that the best revenge is living well and Taylor is nothing if not an example of that. Also karma is her boyfriend, so if you’ve wronged her, I suggest you watch out. I mean, Kanye West humiliated her again and again, and look at him today. Scooter Braun stole her music and is now dealing with what he had coming. Oh and if karma doesn’t come for you, one of Taylor’s blistering takedowns might. Heaven help the playboys who seduced her when she was barely old enough to drive and then treated her like sh*t. Might they have thought twice about their behavior if they’d known it would inspire savagely brilliant songs that would end up providing catharsis for millions of women across the globe? Especially after Taylor pointed out to Hoda Kotb that if guys don’t want you to write bad songs about them, then maybe they shouldn’t do bad things? In other words, if a publisher or agent rejected you, maybe it’s time to exact revenge by showing them what they missed.

6) Don’t care about being cool.

If there’s anything less cool than being best friends with your mom when you’re a teenager, it’s going to the mall with your mom/best friend and discovering that your friends who told you they didn’t want to go with you are all there together. But Taylor not only did that—she also wrote a song about it! And she constantly reminds people that her mom is, as she said in Miss Americana, her “person.” Competing with this for uncoolness is putting a song about your grandmother smack in the middle of the biggest tour of all time. The point is this: don’t try to conform to what other people are doing. You do you. And if the world doesn’t get it, just wait for them to catch up.

7) Be grateful to your supporters and not your gatekeepers.

At award shows, movie stars tend to thank their agent, manager, publicist and God, in that order. You know who Taylor always and forever thanks? Her fans. She knows that agents and managers and publicists only want you if you don’t need them and the second you do need them, they’re onto another sure thing. She never forgets that without her fans, she’d still be that girl in Nashville hoping to be the next LeAnn Rimes. So remember: agents and publishers don’t make you legitimate. Readers do—and they’re never going to find you if your book stays on your computer. As a woman with numerous journals in her past but only one published book—which she of course published on her own—Taylor knows this truth perhaps better than anyone.

PS If you're one of those people who still says they don't like Taylor Swift, I'd venture to guess you just haven't heard the right song yet.

There’s something no one told me for the longest time. Learning it is so life-transforming that once you do, you almost can’t believe you ever lived another way.

Ready for it?

Things don’t need to be that hard.

That sounds ridiculous, of course. Life is hard; didn’t we all learn that growing up and don’t we learn it again every day? Isn’t that the point of that expression about how you should be nice to everyone you encounter because they have endured so much?

Okay, sure. Life gets life-y for sure. But for so long, I thought it had to be, like, really hard. If it was easy, clearly you weren’t doing it right.

I remember, over a decade into my sobriety, a good two decades into therapy, trying to describe the feeling I had to my then-therapist. I felt…empty. It was terrifying. Was it existential angst? The realization that life was meaningless?

Her theory was that I’d been operating for decades with a “war-time mentality.” She said something like, “You were in fight or flight for so long that now that you’ve learned to slow down and breathe, you don’t know how to feel. It will feel empty at times.”

I don’t know if those were her exact words. She was perhaps the most articulate human I’ve ever been around so she probably said it better. Another thing she said to me, which I’m also surely misquoting, was about work. At the time, I was working at a website for a man so abusive that even though I was simultaneously writing a book for an actor who threw his phone at me and called me a “dumb c*nt” regularly, I was more terrified of the website man. And this seemed normal. Working in media from the late 90s to the late 2010’s meant experiencing so much consistent abuse that you just got used to it1. Anyway, this one day, I was telling my therapist something about how I didn’t cry the day before when the actor called me names.

“You sound proud,” she said.

She was right; I was proud. I probably couldn’t admit that to her at the time. I think I said something about how the men in my family were such a-holes that I knew how to take it.

“But you shouldn’t have to ‘take it,’” she said. “Work doesn’t have to that way.”

“Yes, it does,” I told her. “If you work, you get abused. That’s the deal.”

I remember her glancing around her Larchmont Village office, which was empty except for us. “No one abuses me here,” she said.

I was silent. I saw she was telling the truth but I also didn’t believe that her experience would be possible for me.

I still had several abusive bosses to get through before coming out on the other side. Today I work for myself but, more relevantly, I don’t allow people in my professional or personal life to abuse me. If they do, I exit the relationship. No one abuses me here, I could say to someone, perhaps opening their eyes to the concept the way she opened mine.

While I wasn’t abused those years that I spent toiling in traditional publishing, it certainly wasn’t the easier, softer way. I killed myself on book proposals and then books and barely survived financially. I accepted dwindling advances—the final one being so low that if you count the food I had to eat to stay alive while writing it, I paid the publisher. I let people who can’t do what I can do tell me whether or not I was good enough. I accepted rejections and bad news as if it was my cross to bear.

Of course I still experience bad news and rejection today. We all do. But I don’t place myself at the mercy of it. I don’t let people who can’t do what I can tell me if I’m good enough. If I can remember, I choose myself, over and over again, and look at rejection as “God’s protection.” Meaning: when I don’t get something I want, I embrace the fact that the universe has something even better in store for me. The world can’t beat me down without my permission.

There’s that expression about how pain is inevitable but suffering is optional and I see so many people choosing to suffer in their book publishing journeys. They become fixated on being published by the Big Five. They meticulously craft proposals that get rejected by every agent until one says they’ll take it on as long as the person massively rewrites it. They rewrite it only for it to then get rejected by publishers and then the once-enthusiastic agent stops returning their emails. They take each gatekeeper’s voice as The Voice That Tells Them Their Worth. Several years and umpteen rejections later, they realize the traditional publishing deal isn’t going to happen and their creative spirit is broken in half.

It kills me because I know they could have avoided all that and just put their work out there.

Arguably even worse suffering comes from those I know whose books are accepted by publishers. I know one person who was so obsessed with having a publisher acquire her book that when it finally happened, she got her Publishers Weekly announcement printed on a t-shirt. Such a cute idea but when I saw it, I was reminded of why people in 12-step always say don’t get a tattoo of your sobriety date because there’s just too much wrapped up in such a declaration. Whether it’s superstition or just evidence of how the things we cling to the hardest are the ones that usually slip through our hands, I don’t know. But I do know how devastated that girl with the Pub Weekly announcement shirt was, years later, when her book came out…and nothing really happened.

I see it happening in real time with someone else I know. She’s an uber successful entrepreneur I had talked to years ago about working with my company. Last year, she told me she’d gotten a traditional deal. When I saw her six months later, she told me the deal fell through. A few months ago, she reached out about working together again but then last week she left me a voice note, sounding giddy, saying that she got a book deal and this new publisher was really behind her.

Look, I hope I’m wrong because this is an awesome woman. But after seeing so many people I know do this dance, I know how it almost always turns out. I want these people to choose themselves rather than waiting for a publisher to choose them but I also get that we don’t get there until we get there.

Turns out, there really is an easier, softer way. For everything. For example: after living, on and off, in Hollywood for 30 years, I moved with my boyfriend and son to the Valley in April. And I was shocked to discover how easy day-to-day life could be.

When you spend decades fighting for a parking space only to discover it might have a broken meter but it’s so filthy you actually can’t see so you accept the inevitable ticket, when you’re used to drivers and pedestrians yelling at you simply because they can and feel like it, when you need to avoid the homeless guy on meth swinging the machete dangerously close to your baby carriage, when you know that if you tell someone that story and call him “homeless” instead of “unhoused,” you may get cancelled…well, you will find day-to-day life stressful.

It’s not that nothing is hard in the Valley. But almost nothing. It’s what inspired this love letter I wrote to Burbank for Los Angeles magazine, which only somewhat does justice to how shocking it is to realize how long I’d spent fighting unnecessary battles.

The crazy thing about finding an easier way, whether in book publishing or living, is that the answers were right in front of me the whole time. Like, eight miles away. Or at my keyboard. It only took a few decades and countless emotional beat downs for me to see it.

If there’s one thing life today offers, it’s a lot of things to lament. I save the worldly and political laments for those more aware and involved than me but I have spent much time lamenting the fact that all the magazines I loved and longed to write for and eventually wrote for are now gone.

Meanwhile, Costco Connection has a circulation of over 15 million.

There’s no way to explain how bad this magazine is. And there’s also no way to explain what it was like to work in the magazine world in its 90s heyday. First of all, the words “magazine” and “world” could go next to each other in a sentence. Secondly, when I was an intern at the just-launched Entertainment Weekly in 1992, I was paid—not because they had to pay interns (no one paid interns in 1992 and few in 2025) but because they could.

They had staff parties at Limelight and day-long events at resorts upstate. The lobby had a row of movie theater seats. People went out for boozy lunches. Editorial Assistants were having affairs with married Senior Editors. It was glam, man! On my first week, I filled in for an Editorial Assistant who was out for the week, possibly on a romantic getaway with a married Senior Editor. I was opening her boss’ mail, which was premiere invite after premiere invite. One of them was for a movie premiere that very night. When the editor walked by my desk I showed it to her, pointing out that it started in a few hours. She shrugged and said, “Never heard of the movie. Want to go in my place?”

That premiere, my friends, was for Reservoir Dogs. I had never seen any movie like it; neither had anyone else. The day after that premiere, the movie no one had heard anything about became a sensation and the EW editor surely regretted giving her premiere ticket to a rando intern. The night of the premiere, I got wasted at the afterparty, ended up flirting all night with one of the producers and then went to an after-hour bars with said producer and the entire cast and crew.

My first week! As an intern!

 Now, of course, Entertainment Weekly is digital-only, interns don’t go to premieres if premieres even happen and the internet took down everything from Allure and Mademoiselle to Teen Vogue and Details to every random publication that ever employed me. I had a good run of it, doing reported stories, essays and celebrity profiles, where magazines like Cosmo would pay me $2k to go hang out with Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson or the like and then have a transcriber take whatever I’d recorded and make it into an article. I went to the Oscars, the Golden Globes and every premiere you can imagine. Missoni dressed me, a journalist, for the god-damn Oscars in 2001!

While some publications remain alive today (I will be a die-hard New York magazine stan until the day it stops printing), for the most part we’re left with, well, Costco Connection. The articles in CC, as some unfortunate souls who are so familiar with it that they have a nickname for it may call it, include “Would you rather eat a hot dog or hamburger?” and “Diverse and beautiful,” an article about the Pacific Northwest which begins “The Pacific Northwest is diverse and incredibly beautiful.

As a writer who’s been trashed online, I do my best not to trash talk other writers (or anyone) but doesn’t a publication that couldn’t be bothered to capitalize the word “beautiful” in a title or writes an article about hot dogs vs hamburgers that doesn’t even answer the damn question2 deserve it?

But what do I know? Apparently, CC nabs celebrities like Oprah and Jimmy Fallon for its cover. I, meanwhile, emailed a bunch of writer friends to ask if I could highlight them in this Substack and like three responded.

My point is this: it would be easy to expend a lot of energy lamenting how sad it is that instead of the sort of stories Lena Dunham listed in her exquisite newsletter Good Thing Going, we now have articles like “Juvenile arthritis” (about, well, juvenile arthritis) and “Sweet stuff” (about managing sugar intake). It’s easy to sigh about the fact that a magazine with an article called “Don’t get foiled” about what “business leaders can learn from the sport of fencing” is the third most popular publication in our nation while clever, brilliant magazines have been virtually erased from our consciousness.

But here’s thing: CC is outrageously popular because Costco members automatically receive it and also because there are a gajillion copies in their stores. In other words, it’s not so much liked or even read as it is distributed. It’s safe to say that no one has ever read an article in Costco Connection and felt moved, or had their life changed as a result. So, here’s a “would you rather” for you: Would you rather be everywhere and easy to ignore slash dismiss, or less ubiquitous but more impactful? It’s so easy to compare numbers and metrics and subscribers and likes and downloads and feel like you come up short. But isn’t Costco Connection all the proof we need that it really is about quality over quantity?

Tell me: if you had to pick between 14 million indifferent subscribers—13 million of whom probably never read you—and a few thousand or hundred or dozen people who are thrilled to see your name in their inbox, which would you choose?

Keep in mind: choosing the latter means never having to write about whether or not people prefer hot dogs or hamburgers.

In my day job as the founder of a ghostwriting and book publishing company for entrepreneurs, I work with some of the most successful people in the world.

Many are multi-millionaires, almost all of whom are self made, and a good number have built up their businesses from nothing.

They tend to have expansive mentalities and work with us on their books so that they can build their authority.

But now and then someone slips through our screening process who isn’t a fit, and those are the people that provide me with the best front-row seat I can get about how much a person can be their own worst enemy.

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For the past few months, we’ve had a client on our roster that I’ll call Sam Sabotage. He came to us because he released a book a few years ago that didn’t do anything for him. He complained about the company he’d worked with, saying that he believed if he invested with a higher caliber company on a relaunch, the book could actually transform his career and make him into an authority. He asked for a discount and we gave it to him.1

The first real red flag was when, a week after making his first payment, he wrote my right hand Kaitlin and said he wasn’t sure he wanted to proceed.

This was a new one. We’ve definitely had people verbally commit and then change their mind but we’d never had someone pay and then re-think it.

She told him that was fine, we could cancel the contract and refund the payment. But then he said he thought about it and did actually want to move forward.

The second red flag was when the cover design process went on and on and on and on, occupying so much of one of my Project Manager’s time that she began to neglect our biggest client of all. Every letter and color on the cover was discussed and analyzed and re-done until we ended up with something that wasn’t nearly as good as our initial designs.

At every stage after that—from edit to layout to gathering support for his Review Squad—we were met with resistance; we’re talking four or five follow-ups to get him to respond to a simple “Do you approve this layout?” email. Finally, when his delays were having a massive impact on our production schedule, preventing us from moving forward on other projects, his Project Manager reminded him that extensive delays can require a holding fee. His response to that email was to forward it to me and write, “Dear lord lol.”

Dear lord lol? For asking him to approve something?

When he stopped responding to the PM’s emails again and she again reminded him of the holding fee and asked if he wanted to move forward with the relaunch, he wrote, “LOL. Confirming my intent to proceed.”

Every response from him after that contained an LOL or a snarky comment about how he didn’t want to be “in breach” of his contract again.

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My Project Manager felt terrible that she seemed to be upsetting him but I reminded her of what I’m telling you: this person is his own worst enemy. He hired us to help him with something that didn’t work out the first time and has acted at every stage like we are annoying the hell out of him.

There’s nothing we can do to change how he approaches life. I can guarantee that he will be unhappy with the results, no matter how great they are, despite the fact that almost all our clients are thrilled. This is a person who can’t help but be disappointed because he sabotages himself at every step.

While in this case my company is caught in the winds of his self-sabotage, most writers who sabotage themselves do it in the privacy of their own personal hell. And in my experience, they don’t do it by putting their books out and flopping (if they put their books out and have the right attitude, they can’t flop).

They do it by working on their book for years, rewriting and reworking until they’ve written themselves into inescapable holes. They do it by asking for advice and then rejecting it or reacting defensively to it. They do it by antagonizing the people trying to help them. They do it, in short, by never actually trying. And they do it by lying to themselves that they are trying, setting themselves up to blame the world (or their publisher) when it doesn’t work out.

I recognize them because I was them. Like recognizes like. The difference is that I was lucky enough to realize I was bringing about the exact results I didn’t want by approaching the world with an “I’ll-punch-you-before-you-can-punch-me” attitude.

Don’t be the old me. Witness your inner saboteur (because we all have one—some of us just recognize that monsters can turn out to be just trees). When you recognize him or her or them or they, ignore them and move on.