I Am Making This Publication Smaller. Here's Why.

When I started writing here in April, I wrote about everything I care about.

Books. Parenting. Wellness. Time. The way a life gets built.

I care about all of it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But something has been bothering me, and I want to be honest with you about it.

If you found me last week, you would have had no idea what this publication is for.

One week I am writing about a book tour. The next about what our children remember.

The next about weight, and what it is really about.

Every one of those pieces is true. Together they are a fog.

And after thirty years of telling authors that a book has to be for someone specific before

it can be for anyone at all, I noticed I was not doing it here.

So I am narrowing.

From today, this publication is about one thing:

What happens to your book after it is published.

If you are still writing, stay. This is the part you will need next, and knowing it early will change what you write.

If you came for the parenting essays or the pieces on time, I understand. Those posts are still here and I will still write them somewhere. But they will not be here every week, and I would rather tell you plainly than let you work it out from my silence.

Here is what I have learned that makes this worth narrowing for:

Most authors believe the launch is the moment. They pour everything into a single week,

and when that week passes, they stop talking about it.

The book does not stop waiting. It sits there, still true, still needed by someone who has not found it yet.

I have watched books come back to life six years after publication. My own included. I am taking Generation Why Not® back on tour right now, and people keep telling me it is too late.

It is not too late. Great ideas do not expire. They just need new opportunities to be found.

That is what I am going to write about here, every week, and I am going to be far more useful to you by writing about one thing well than four things occasionally.

One more thing.

On Wednesday I am going to ask you five questions about where you are with your book. It will take two minutes. I will read every answer myself, and what I write for the rest of this year will be built from what you tell me.

So watch for it.

And in the meantime, I would love to know something.

What is the one thing about getting your book into the world that you most wish

someone would just explain to you?

Tell me in the comments. I will answer every single one.

Warmly,

Ruth