Where's All the Red Pen? Lessons From Our October 2023 Community Book Launch

How our Community Book Launches work

Each Community Book Launch puts a panel of our newly published authors in the spotlight. Kelly Irving hosted this one on Zoom, and this time we opened the doors to the public.

The format comes with a twist.

The authors swap books. Each reviewer picks two pages that stood out and brings two questions for the author. Then the audience joins in, with books up for grabs for the best questions in the chat.

Here's who swapped with whom:

• Light It by Laetitia Andrac, reviewed by Karen
• Stop Worrying about Money by Jacqui Clarke, reviewed by Laetitia
• Be Your Own Leadership Coach by Karen Stein, reviewed by Jacqui

Watch the full launch

Light It by Laetitia Andrac

Laetitia Andrac is an author, speaker, podcaster and award-winning entrepreneur who works as an "energetics and strategy business mentor". Before that, she was a strategy consultant in France and a corporate general manager.

Light It is her guide to trusting your intuition and building a thriving business. Karen described it as a blend of business, spirituality, self-development and "a little bit of life".

Part 1 goes deep on burnout and moves the reader from disconnection to reconnection. Part 2 is Laetitia's LIGHT framework: Lean in, Illuminate, Gather, Honour, Transform. Case studies from entrepreneurs who have used the framework bring it to life.

Karen's take:

"I think it's a really practical, human-centred framework. Something that really is really easy to understand, very practical and easy to use."

Laetitia was clear it isn't a formula to follow in order. In her words, "it's not a blueprint, it's a framework, which means it's not a step-by-step."

When Karen asked how intuition shaped the writing, Laetitia described the moment the urge to write a book arrived, and the mental stories that followed close behind. She said that "straight away my brain was like, you're not a native English speaker. Why will you write a book? The second layer was like, you are not a literary person. You are a business mind."

Her answer was the first step of her own framework.

Lean in.

"I'm like, put your freaking all eggs in the same basket. You lean in fully. Okay? We're not talking about finance here."

It was a cheeky nod to Jacqui, whose money book she was reviewing next.

Stop Worrying about Money by Jacqui Clarke

Jacqui Clarke is an accountant, board member and veteran business executive. She and Karen worked together at Deloitte for 20 years.

Stop Worrying about Money, published by Wiley, helps readers understand their own finances so they don't hand all their power to someone else. Laetitia called it "not just a financial book, it's also a wellbeing book around money", with daily, weekly and monthly practices.

The book pairs practical tools with stories, including Jacqui rebuilding her own life and wealth after divorce. Laetitia found the exercises immediately useful, from deciding which expenses to close or open to working backwards from retirement.

She also found gaps she didn't know she had.

"I had my beautiful Excel spreadsheet. I thought I had visibility around everything, but as I always say, we always have blind spots. And this book will help you uncover some of the blind spots that you may have about money."

And for anyone who feels they've left it too late, Laetitia's reminder was that "it's never too late to plant a tree."

Jacqui said the hardest part of sharing her story was thinking about how it might affect other people. The writing itself surprised her.

"It's actually incredibly therapeutic to write about it."

In the Q&A, Kelly offered a money tip of her own: "Get a will and be that awkward person at a party who says, Sue, have you got a will".

Jacqui, who asks people that exact question, knows the reaction well. "It's amazing how quickly people run away".

She also discovered something about herself along the way. As Jacqui put it, "It's amazing how writing and learning to write makes you more creative than you realise you are. And I'm an accountant. Okay. So kind of the low bar."

Be Your Own Leadership Coach by Karen Stein

Jacqui opened her review by declaring a "conflict of interest". The two had worked side by side for 20 years.

Karen spent a long career in tax, then fell in love with coaching after being given a coach on a leadership program. She completed a master of science in coaching psychology and chose to "hang up my tax boots". She's a certified professional coach.

Jacqui has seen the results up close.

"I had people in my team espousing how amazing Karen has been, like the impact that she's had on them through her coaching."

Be Your Own Leadership Coach fills a gap Jacqui named directly: "The reality is that you can't always access a coach when you need one."

That was the whole point for Karen. One-on-one coaching is a privilege, and it always ends. In her words, "my intention was to try and increase the equity of access to coaching strategies through the book".

So the book gives readers a backpack, not a toolkit. You fill it with self-coaching strategies and pull one out when you need it.

Why not a toolkit? Because "a toolkit's heavy... It doesn't fit on the bus, it takes up the seat."

The 12 practices sit in two parts. The first is about leading yourself: values, strengths, purpose, goals, motivation, energy and time. The second looks at your impact on others, which Jacqui compared to a "leadership shadow". She said the structure is a useful model for anyone planning a nonfiction book.

The kindness chapter was a favourite for both of them. Karen spent a year tracking a daily act of kindness, and it changed her.

What this panel taught us about writing a book

Your first draft is allowed to be a mess

Karen's first attempt had no clear shape. "I felt like I was on a bike and I was just riding my way through it and riding and riding and riding and riding".

The fix was changing who she wrote for. "I had to write for my reader".

"Kelly actually reassured me and she said, no word is ever wasted." Karen still keeps a folder of everything she cut.

Solving structure early paid off when her publisher's edits came through. "The edits weren't structural edits. It was more refining." Best of all, "it was able to allow me to keep my author's voice, which was really important to me."

Your first title probably won't make it

Jacqui's working title didn't survive her conversations with publishers.

"I think my first title was something like Living Your Best Life. And I don't know if people would've bought that."

Her test for a title is the airport shelf: "You're walking through the airport and you see the titles... is that talking to me".

Laetitia lost hers to Michelle Obama. Her working title was "Light Your Way", until "Michelle Obama released the book, the Light We Carry. And I was like, oh my gosh, I will never compete with Michelle Obama, so I need to change my title."

The community helped her land on Light It.

There's more than one road to a bookshop

Three authors. Three paths.

Jacqui wrote a couple of chapters, built a proposal with Kelly, secured Wiley, then wrote the rest to a deadline. It took about 10 months. "I didn't have the confidence to just go and write a whole book and then come and say, wave it around and say someone interested in this."

Karen finished the whole manuscript first, approached three publishers and signed with Major Street Publishing on 4 January. The book was on sale by 23 June, and Pan Macmillan India later contracted it. As Karen said, "you just don't know where it will take you".

Laetitia went a different way. Traditional publishers kept "trying to make my book fit in one box", and the rejections stung. "It's like, if I don't have a traditional publisher, then my book is not worth it."

She published without them, and her team approached bookshops directly. "[A bookshop] in Bondi Junction reordered, they had 12 and they reordered. So it can happen."

Lou Johnson, who had joined us as publisher expert in residence, put that "no" in context: "It doesn't mean that there isn't a really big place for your ideas. Right. Everybody else might just not have caught up with them yet."

Nobody writes a book alone

When the publisher rejections came, Laetitia didn't hide them. "I had shared vulnerably within the group when I had rejection from traditional publisher and the journey I went through."

Jacqui credited the community's writing sprints: "When I turned up to the book writing sprints, that was the best way apart from a cup of tea getting me to anchor down at my desk and write, it's my absolute saviour."

Karen and Jacqui reconnected on a community Zoom call. With Melo Calarco, they formed a friendship group that has outlasted publication. As Karen said, "the friendships that you form in this group are exceptional."

No word is ever wasted

Karen's car chapters. Jacqui's Living Your Best Life. Laetitia's Light Your Way and the publishers who said no.

None of it was wasted.

Each detour was part of the road to the book on the shelf. For Karen, it ended with a manuscript that came back without a single red mark.

One attendee summed up what connected all three books: "That's what I've taken away from all three of you is this incredible sense of get back to yourself so that you can engage and help others as well."

And if you'd like to help these authors in return, Kelly's advice is simple: "The most beneficial thing you can do for any author is buy a copy of their book".

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