Behind the Book (Part 1)

When I announced Your Home Playbook last week, my inbox filled with questions. Some of you wanted to know how I got a book deal. Others wanted to know how much authors make, how book tours get planned, and how it all works in the wild west of publishing.

I thought it would be fun to spend the next few Wednesdays taking you behind the scenes. There are so many parts of publishing that I knew absolutely nothing about before this experience, and I have a feeling a lot of you are just as curious as I was.

But before we get into advances, royalties, book tours, and all of that, we need to rewind to 2013…

In 2013, Bridget and I had just started The DIY Playbook. We were both working full-time, squeezing blog posts into nights and weekends, and honestly had no idea what we were doing.

We certainly weren’t sitting around saying, “One day we’ll have a million people following along.” We were just excited that anyone was reading.

A couple of years into blogging, we started tossing around the idea of writing a book. I don’t even remember who brought it up first. Writing a book felt like the ultimate dream. It was the kind of thing we joked about, but secretly hoped might actually happen someday.

The funny part is that we had absolutely no idea what our book should be.

Somehow (and I still don’t entirely know how!) we landed a literary agent. Looking back, that feels like one of the craziest parts of this whole story. Two twenty-something bloggers with a fairly new website somehow convinced someone in New York to represent us. We even grabbed coffee with her while we were in New York for a work trip. I remember sitting there trying to act like this was all perfectly normal, while internally thinking, How is this actually happening?

Once we signed with her, we got to work.

The other day I dug out one of our old proposals. It had been years since I'd looked at it, and reading through it felt like opening a time capsule.

The Busy Girl’s DIY Playbook: Adding Personality to Your Home in 30 Minutes or Less.

The whole concept was built around the idea that young women were busy. We wrote about balancing full-time jobs, relationships, friends, and trying to decorate our first apartments without spending much money. We promised readers they could transform their homes in just 30 minutes.

Every few pages there was something that made me laugh. We were so optimistic. So convinced that if we worked hard enough, we could figure it out.

We described ourselves as “DIY rookies.” We created a project difficulty scale based on coffee sizes…Tall Latte, Grande Latte, and Venti Latte. We dreamed about bookstore signings, television appearances, partnerships with Lowe’s and Michaels, and speaking engagements.

Reading that list was surreal. Bookstore events. Television. Lowe’s. Speaking engagements. At the time, those were just ideas we threw into a proposal because they sounded exciting. Years later, I found myself checking almost every one of them off.

Looking back, I don’t think it was a bad proposal. And I don’t even think it was the wrong book.

I think it was the right book for the season of life we were in.

But I hadn’t owned a home. I’d never renovated a kitchen. I hadn’t lived through replacing furnaces, hiring contractors, discovering surprise plumbing leaks, or learning that homeownership isn’t really about decorating.

I simply hadn’t lived enough yet.

That’s the part that strikes me most when I read this proposal now. It wasn’t missing effort. We poured ourselves into it. It was missing experience.

Nothing ever came of that proposal. We kicked around a few other ideas, but nothing really stuck. I was disappointed.

Then life happened, the way it tends to.

Bridget stepped away from the business in 2019, but thankfully she never stepped out of my life. She’s still one of my closest friends.

Finn and I bought our condo. Then, a few years later, our current home. I had Rory. Then Ellis. And somewhere along the way, my content started to change, too.

I found myself talking less about decorating and more about maintenance. Less about making a home look pretty and more about helping people understand how their homes actually worked.

I made plenty of mistakes. I learned things the hard way. I tackled projects I never thought I’d be capable of doing.

Without realizing it, I was becoming the person who could eventually write Your Home Playbook.

I’m so grateful The Busy Girl’s DIY Playbook never became a real book. If it had, I don’t think Your Home Playbook would exist.

The book I wanted to write in my twenties was about making a home look beautiful. The book I ended up writing in my thirties is about helping people understand, maintain, improve, and truly love their homes.

Those are two very different books.

Looking back now, I don’t think I missed my chance to write a book. I think life was quietly preparing me to write the right one.

And then, just when I'd stopped chasing the idea of writing a book...

I got an email that changed everything.

• The unexpected email from a publisher

• The 40-page proposal that determined everything

• What actually happens when a publisher wants your book

• Why it still took months before I officially had a book deal