Just Be Bloody Good: Lessons From Our April 2025 Community Book Launch

How our Community Book Launches work

A Community Book Launch is a free Zoom panel, open to anyone wondering whether they have a book in them.

The format has one rule we love.

Each author reads a fellow panellist's book and shares what stayed with them. Then the chat fills with questions about writing, publishing and launching.

This launch was co-hosted by Karen Stein and Jacqui Clarke, two community authors who have walked the same road, with Kelly Irving opening and closing the session. Our panel:

• Worthy and Wealthy by Emma Lagerlow
• The Professional by Tony Frost
• Rollercoaster by Salli Cohen

Watch the full launch

Worthy and Wealthy by Emma Lagerlow

Salli reviewed Emma's book, and she started with the person before the pages.

"Emma is kind, she's generous and she's caring. And after reading Worthy and Wealthy, I can tell you she's a sensational author."

Emma spent 25 years in finance and marketing, and now blends that experience with personal development in her coaching. She also hosts the podcast It's a Mindset.

Worthy and Wealthy is built around what Emma calls life's three biggest questions: who you are, what you want and how you'll get it. The reader follows a fictional protagonist, Jules, across about 10 years, because "It's not a quick fix".

Salli was struck by the structure. Seven parts, with a butterfly motif running through the book and onto its cover.

"So it's a book that in some ways we need to lose ourselves to find ourselves."

What impressed her most was the layering. Alongside Jules sit the stories of five other women.

"But your magic, Emma Lagerlow extraordinaire, is that you have stories within stories... there are layers of your stories and there's a depth to them."

Emma's road to this book started a long time ago.

"I wanted to be a fiction writer. So when I was 25, I started writing a book and I got to a certain point and then all of a sudden I thought, oh, I need more life experience. And it took me nearly 25 years to get that life experience."

That love of fiction shaped the book. Jules let Emma avoid "tell, tell, tell".

The butterfly nearly didn't make it. When Emma raised it in a coaching call, Kelly told her to "be very careful about doing that because it can actually steal away from the message of the book". So Emma played it down.

Then her Grammar Factory editor saw it differently. In Emma's words, "she said, I love this butterfly. I think we can really work with that. And so then we really married it back in".

The Professional by Tony Frost

Emma reviewed Tony's book, and admitted the author surprised her.

"I really didn't picture you to be a tax accountant and a lawyer to be honest."

Tony spent more than two decades at partner level in law and accounting, and co-authored a 773-page tax guide he cheerfully calls the "second most boring" book. Today he is an executive coach, mentor, lecturer, keynote speaker and company director.

The Professional is a playbook for people at any stage of a professional career. Emma called it "powerful, practical, and a timely guide for anyone who... is in or is considering a professional career."

She loved that Tony features members of our community in the book, which she called "beautifully collaborative and community minded".

Jacqui, who also read it, added: "Tony's got this really lovely self-deprecation... it's not dry at all."

Tony wrote the book over seven years. He never had writer's block. His problem was the opposite.

"It was Kelly's curriculum eventually made me realise I had way too much."

After joining the community, he restructured a manuscript he thought was "nailed" to follow "Kelly's... awesome formula".

When someone in the chat asked whether the book was funny, Tony settled on "quirky". He had braced himself for his publisher to strip that out.

"I was worried they were going to sort of weed out the quirky bits... and they didn't, which is great."

Rollercoaster by Salli Cohen

Rollercoaster is Salli's guide to being a good policy officer, and Karen described it as "witty, wise and no nonsense". Salli has spent more than two decades in policy, across three levels of government, the Aboriginal community sector, the for-purpose sector and the private sector. She founded The Policy Room.

Tony reviewed it, and he came with history. His first career meant dealing with policy officers and policymakers.

"I'm not aware of any other book like this. It is remarkable. It's fresh, it's a breath of fresh air full of so many personal stories."

His only complaint was timing. Salli, he said, "should have written this 40 years ago."

He loved the chapter of cameos from about 10 good policy officers, and wants every politician and staffer to own a copy. As he put it, "Seriously, we need to get this book in the hands of a policymaker in this country".

Then Tony read aloud a career-defining lesson from the book and asked Salli for the story behind it.

It became the most powerful moment of the night.

As Executive Director of Youth Justice in the Northern Territory, Salli blocked every suggestion that children as young as 10 be locked up. She still believes she did the right thing morally.

But not as a policy officer.

"My job wasn't to decide which information the decision makers got to make their decision. My job was to give them frank and fearless advice... but I wasn't prepared to give them the advice that I didn't want them to have."

"It's terrifyingly hard... there were lives at stake."

Chapter 10 introduces the policy phoropter, named after the optometrist's lens machine, with seven lenses for seeing policy, including curiosity, empathy and courage. Curiosity comes first for a reason.

"Yes, you need to be able to write, but man, you cannot write without first being curious. We need to have this insatiable curiosity."

What this panel taught us about writing a book

Your first draft is a starting point

Karen joined the community in 2022 with a book she thought was finished.

"It was through conversation with Kelly about what I thought was a fabulous book and asking Kelly to have a read of it and then realising perhaps it wasn't so fabulous."

Emma went further. Her structural edit came back at half the length.

"It came back to me with it chopped in half, literally it was half the word count... whole chapters were on the cutting room floor."

She could see why. "I was sort of dictating to my readers how they do it, how they transform, and it wasn't leaving them space to be the hero."

Her advice: "Do your very best on that first draft, but then surrender and be open to the experts..."

Tony did the same with his surplus: "I restructured, I took stuff out, put stuff for free on the website."

As Karen said, "one thing that I learned through this community is there's never a waste of words."

There's more than one road to the shelf

Three authors. Three routes.

Emma published with Grammar Factory, a choice that suited "being, I guess, fairly unknown really. And it's my first book." Tony went traditional with Wiley and praised their editing as "first class". Salli self-published with IngramSpark, and was candid about it: "I had no idea about publishing and I, after having only done it once, I've got about that much understanding of it."

Know what your book is for

Emma's business coach told her to build a platform before the book: "She said to me, start a podcast, it'll be great. And I'm like, but I wanna write a book. And she's like, do the podcast."

She now mentions the book in every intro and outro.

Tony's book is the front door to his masterclasses for young professionals. "I thought years ago I'd write some notes to hand out. Then I thought, I'll write a book that must be easier and quicker."

When an audience member suggested he start a podcast too, Tony was firm. "I'm never going to host a podcast."

Jacqui: "Don't say never, Tony."

Nobody writes alone

Jacqui put it plainly: "We all know being an author's a little bit lonely, and there's so many aspects to it."

For her, the answer was "incredible accountability to help me get those words down on paper or into my Mac computer."

Emma built her beta readers slowly, sharing her chapter outline in the community first and offering the manuscript rather than pushing it. "So then it becomes a little bit more of a relationship."

And Salli remembered the moment a book coach moved her away from academic referencing and towards her own voice: "What's your definition, Sal?... this is your book... remember you are the author." Kelly, she added, says that all the time.

Just be bloody good

Karen saved one question for last. Why "bloody good"?

Salli's early title was "Policy Kaleidoscope". The words that made it onto the cover came from rejecting two others.

"I don't believe we can be perfect 'cause it's no such thing as perfect policy. I don't think we can be brilliant. 'Cause if we start thinking about ourselves as being brilliant, well, we've lost it."

Karen called it "beautifully Australian".

It's good advice for authors too. Karen's fabulous book wasn't finished. Emma's manuscript lost half its words. Tony's first upload met silence.

None of them waited for perfect. They did the work, took the feedback and kept going.

"Just be bloody good at it."

Writing a book of your own? The Expert Author Community is where authors like Emma, Tony and Salli plan, write, publish and launch their books alongside each other. See how the community works.