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What’s the story you can’t stop telling? Fran and Bethany are here to help you write, sell, and launch it.
Literary agent Bethany Saltman and bookstore owner Fran Hauser—also both critically acclaimed authors—host Bookbound, the podcast for non-fiction writers who want to learn how to transform their ideas, expertise, and obsessions into successful books and publishing deals. Fran and Bethany interview accomplished authors who share the strategies and surprises behind their bookbound journeys. These how-I-did-it conversations will inspire listeners to claim their own “author-ity” mindset and turn the story they can’t stop telling into a book the world needs to read.
To connect with the hosts and more, go to www.bookboundpodcast.com/
[00:00:00] Haley Cohen Gilliland: This story is so hard to believe. It is a true story, but it is hard to believe that just 50 years ago, something this terrible happened and that in many places in the world, the fact that this happened is not very well known.
[00:00:16] Bethany Saltman: Hi, I’m Bethany Saltman, a literary agent and award-winning author. And I’m Fran Hauser, a bestselling author and independent bookstore owner. And this is the Bookbound podcast. On this podcast, we talk to women writers about their nonfiction books, but instead of talking about what their book is about, we focus on the process of getting their book into the world. These how I Did it, conversations will help you pitch your big idea, write killer proposals, find the right agent and publisher, and live an amazing book bound life.
[00:00:54] Bethany Saltman: Welcome to the show everyone. I’m so excited to introduce you to our guest, Haley Cohen Gilliland. Haley is a journalist and the director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. She previously worked at The Economist for seven years, and her long form journalism has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, and many more. A Flower Traveled in My Blood is her first book and has received so many well-deserved star reviews and accolades. In this inspiring conversation, Haley shared how she turned her obsession into a book, how emotion and clarity shaped her title and subtitle, how she found her narrative, and how perfectionism showed up, especially during the marketing phase. Her reflections on what books mean in the world had us all in tears. We loved this conversation and know you will too. Haley, welcome to the podcast. We are so excited to have this conversation with you.
[00:01:49] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:51] Bethany Saltman: So, Haley, you have been a long form journalist for a long time. You’ve written incredible pieces for all kinds of amazing outlets. What was it about this story that rose up to meet you as a book as opposed to yet another one of your incredible pieces?
[00:02:10] Haley Cohen Gilliland: That’s such a great question, and I’m going to try to articulate the answer in language, but the truth of it is that it was a really visceral feeling, and I am quite an analytical person, often get stuck in my head, but occasionally will have these really strong gut impulses that are impossible to ignore. And that was the case with this idea, although it didn’t happen right away. So I moved to Argentina in 2011, shortly after graduating college, and I knew a little bit about the dictatorship moving down. I knew that the Argentine military during a period in the 1970s and 80s had disappeared thousands of Argentines. But I really shocked to learn the extent of the brutality that had taken place during that time. And the thing that shocked me most was learning that among those thousands of Argentines were hundreds of pregnant women and that they were taken to clandestine detention centers and held there until giving birth and then separated from their babies and quietly killed, and their babies were placed often with military and police families to raise under false identities.
[00:03:27] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And I immediately became obsessed with this group of amazing grandmas that banded together in order to find those stolen babies, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, who are the subject of my book. But I lived in Argentina for four years, and during that time got lulled into this false sense that everybody in the world already knew about the abuelas and the incredible things that they’d done because in Argentina, their story was very well-known and they’re iconic as they should be. So it wasn’t until returning to the states many years later and actually getting pregnant myself, that this story really came flooding back to me. And I began talking to friends about it and realizing that even my best educated friends who had studied history in college had no idea that this had happened. And at that point, that was when I got this incredibly physiological reaction and compulsion to tell this story. I mean, I was nauseous. I felt like a sense of urgency. My hands were sweaty. I just had to start working on it as soon as I could. And that happened in about 2021.
[00:04:37] Bethany Saltman: Wow. Was that a moment where you got nauseous and your hands were sweating? Or was it like–
[00:04:42] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yeah, I was also pregnant at the time, so it was nauseous. It was hard to place. I was nauseous a lot, but it was sustained. I think oftentimes before I start a project that I’m really excited about, and I recently was able to put words to this, I was talking to my husband about it. I have to go into coil mode. I have to kind of bunch up and get really anxious about my ability to tell the story in the way that I want, and I kind of have to coil and clench. And then there’s this release that comes from just starting the process of research of writing. And so I think that that process of clenching was even more intense in this case because I knew that it deserved to be a book and a really deeply researched and compellingly told narrative book. And so the clenching phase was even greater in this case.
[00:05:44] Fran Hauser: It’s such a great way to articulate it. I could totally picture that, but so once you decided this is a book, what was the first thing that you did after that? Did you go right into research and writing mode? Did you think like, oh, maybe I should get an agent? Take us through that process?
[00:06:01] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Well, I was very lucky. I originated this idea alongside, or I shouldn’t say originated. This is a story that existed and also that had lived in my heart and mind for a long time. But I was constantly talking to an agent while coming up with this idea. And I can tell you the backstory. I know that this show, one thing that I love about it is it goes into backstories and all the nitty gritty of how books get made. But the very short story is I had been working with a different agent for several years on a different book project that unfortunately didn’t come to fruition. And then she put me in touch with a colleague within her agency because she knew that I was passionate about Argentina. I had lived there for four years, I’d worked there, and my agent will also had experience there.
[00:06:53] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And so she thought that we would be a really good fit, and she put us in touch. And so as this idea kind of flooded back to me, I was talking to Will all the time, and he was such a pivotal and important person in bringing this idea into reality and grounding it in something. So I was constantly talking to Will, but the first thing that I did was start to reach out to people as I do with most projects. I also did background reading so that I could reach out to people in a way that was respectful so that I had read most of the things that they had said publicly and was not reaching out blind and asking them to repeat themselves. But I started to reach out to people to gauge, okay, who is open to sharing their story with me? And for a book project, the level of commitment is also very different than for the magazine stories that I’d done before.
[00:07:47] Haley Cohen Gilliland: It wasn’t only looking for people who are willing to share their story, but who’s willing to put up with me for what might be years of frequent conversations and fact-checking. And of course, I didn’t volunteer that right at the, it would be very, it might scare some people away, but the first thing I did was just reach out to dozens of people to see who might be willing to talk and how I might be able to ground this incredibly rich but broad story in certain people in order to carry the reader through via a narrative. So that was my first step.
[00:08:28] Fran Hauser: Am I remembering this correctly? Did you read something like 150 books?
[00:08:34] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I did. I did. And I was so lucky. So I also work for Yale, and so I have access to their library system. And I know it was 150 books, a because I had to make the bibliography at the end, but also because most of them were library books. And just recently, a couple of months ago, I had to return all of them and they didn’t even fit in my largest duffel bag. I couldn’t lift it into my car. There were so many, but I was very lucky to have access to that resource because some of the books that I was looking for were rare Spanish language books, and somehow the Yale Sterling Library system had them. So I was incredibly fortunate in that regard. But yeah, a ton of books, the brunt of research, I would say more so than books. Although, I mean books were very pivotal as well, a ton of archival research. I was very lucky that there was a robust amount of archival material available both from one of the main subjects, Rosa Royce and BL from the grandmothers themselves. They kept very careful records. And then also from the state, which I wasn’t expecting because the dictatorship itself destroyed most of its records upon leaving power. So archives were really a really important source. And then of course, original reporting. But the book is a combination of all those
[00:09:55] Fran Hauser: Different, and the grandmothers kept all of that detail. I mean handwritten. I’m trying to picture,
[00:10:02] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes. So one of my most welcome surprises was that the grandmothers very meticulously and carefully documented all of their work. And this was, I mean, such an immense help to me and a joy to find out that this was the case. And it was also so special because I think oftentimes, at least I have found, and I found in the course of this project with other people, the people who are making history don’t always recognize that they’re doing so and so. They don’t always record what they’re doing. They don’t take photos carefully. They might not write everything down. And the abuelas seem to recognize that they were doing something historic and that people would want to know about it. And they did. They kept very careful records at a time when doing that was very dangerous. They might’ve been disappeared just for documenting what they were doing if those records were found. So this was both an act of extreme courage and prescient, and I’m so grateful that they had both.
[00:11:09] Bethany Saltman: I’m so eager to ask you about how you developed the narrative, but first I really want to go back to that book that never happened. Yes. Really want to hear about that?
[00:11:21] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Oh, man. Okay, so I wrote a magazine story. I forget what year it was now, but I can look it up or you can put it in the show notes for 1843, which is The Economist’s long form sort of more lifestyle magazine. It’s wonderful. It’s a really great magazine. At this point, I was working for The Economist, so that was the main place that I could do long form narrative nonfiction. And it was a piece about a program at a prison in Arizona that paired incarcerated men with horses that had been rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management. So wild horses and the incarcerated men were taught how to tame the wild horses using what’s called natural horsemanship, which is a method that is completely reliant on psychology, and there’s no, there is physical touch involved, but no physical violence. So it’s in great contrast to traditional methods of horse breaking, which is as brutal as it sounds.
[00:12:29] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And this program has been shown to actually reduce recidivism because it involves a lot of impulse control and a lot of patience. And you have to really learn how to control your emotions in order to connect with a horse, which is a prey animal. So they’re very, very attuned to the energy of whoever is around them. And if you’re the least bit frustrated or aggressive, they spook. So it has been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism. And the twist with this particular program that was really interesting to me was that the horses in this case are sometimes sold to the border patrol once they’re trained. So it’s this very
[00:13:12] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Incredible cycle of a wild animal and a person who has made mistakes in their lives working together. And then that animal being sold to be a law enforcement tool. And the director of this program was really incredible. And his life contained a lot of the same themes that I was really excited about exploring in the prison. And basically what happened was the director of the prison thought that he had the ultimate control over what journalists came in and what projects they did. And so he didn’t dissuade me, but he said it wasn’t important for me to get formal approval from the Arizona Department of Corrections until I had worked up a formal proposal. And so I spent several months working on a book proposal that came out of the magazine article, and then of course, I went to the Arizona Department of Corrections to get just what I thought was cursory formal approval. And they said, absolutely not. You’re not embedding in our prison for nine months to a year. There’s no way. And so I couldn’t get the access, but I still think it’s an incredible story, and maybe at some point I’ll return to it. These programs are mostly in the west, but there are some on the East coast as well.
[00:14:26] Bethany Saltman: Wow. Wow.
[00:14:28] Fran Hauser: Wait, so Haley, okay. My gosh. So many questions. But first of all, you were so born to be a journalist. Let’s just say that the fact that you uncover these incredible stories and then your excitement and your passion and how you want to dig in and go deeper, and it’s just so inspiring to watch and to hear you talk about these incredible stories. So with that first book, can you take us through how you got to the agent? Because this is something that our listeners really care about. It’s something that’s really hard to do, right? To find the right agent. So we’d love to hear a little bit more about that.
[00:15:05] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Absolutely. So I began reaching out to agents when I lived in Argentina, and I was really young and probably had no business reaching out to agents or writing a book at that point because I just didn’t have much experience. But I did have redemption, I guess. And I just reached out cold to about 10 agents whose names I’d seen in the acknowledgements section of books that I admired. And not everyone responded, but a couple did and said, when you’re in New York, let’s meet for a coffee low stakes. So I did end up meeting with a couple of agents when I came home to New York and for several years worked with an amazing agent named Becky Swer, and I was constantly pitching her projects that she didn’t think would work, but she was very patient, and when we came upon this horse story, she decided we could work together more formally.
[00:16:03] Fran Hauser: So you just reached out. You didn’t have a specific book in mind at that point. You just knew at some point you wanted to write a book?
[00:16:10] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I would have to look back at the emails. This is over 10 years ago now, so I forget what the context was that compelled me to reach out. But I think I maybe threw out two or three very roughly huge book ideas. So there were ideas in the email. I wasn’t just introducing myself, but they were incredibly half-baked, very gooey.
[00:16:33] Bethany Saltman: Well, and because you were a professional writer, an agent, if you came into my email, into my inbox, I’d be delighted because you can see so much potential. And I love that you talked about your current agent working with you on developing the book idea. I think that’s something that people don’t understand or appreciate, that an agent doesn’t just sell a book. An agent helps develop the
[00:16:56] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Book. So my agent is Will Lipincott, and I cannot speak highly enough of him. He is at Avidas Creative, and he didn’t just help formulate and finesse the idea, but we worked very intimately on the proposal for upwards of a year. I had a baby during that time, so I took a little bit of time off. I mean, the proposal would not have been half of what it was if it weren’t for him. And the same goes for the book. I mean, he has been such an important thought partner in this whole process. So I think that’s one thing that I was so excited and grateful to find out through this process is that I really did feel like I was on a team throughout the process. And that’s in large part thanks to Will. Yay agents. Yay, Bethany.
[00:17:49] Fran Hauser: Yay agents. Yeah. Well, and in your acknowledgements, you said picking an editor is picking a spouse. So speaking about your team, you’ve got your agent, and then you need to kind of figure out, okay, who’s going to publish this book? So take us through the pitch process and how you got to the publishing house and the editor that you ultimately ended up working with.
[00:18:14] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes. So as I said, Will and I worked on the proposal for a little bit over a year, I think, because as I said, I had a baby during that time and took some time away from it, and then he sent it out. And we were very lucky in that it went to an auction process. So there were multiple editors interested, and I was very nervous because I’ve been very lucky in my experience as a journalist and a magazine writer to have very close editing relationships where I have built extreme trust and rapport with the editors that I’ve worked with. And the process of interviews with an auction is very quick. Basically, the way that my auction worked, it was still, first of all, I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and most of the editors were in New York, but it was also still fairly COVID-y.
[00:19:10] Haley Cohen Gilliland: So there was less in-person interaction going on. And so it was all on Zoom, and these were generally 20 to 30 minute Zooms with the editorial teams. And that just felt incredibly fast to try to suss out who I wanted to be my partner on this project that meant so much to me and was so much at such a greater scale than anything I’d ever done. So I was very intimidated going into the process of trying to figure out who to work with, and Will, wise sage wizard that he is, said when you know, you’ll know. And I was like, Ugh, yeah, sure, whatever. There’s no way. And then he was completely right. I really enjoyed talking to all the editors that I talked to during the auction process, and I’m sure I could have been really happy working with any of them. But I did just have a special rapport with who ended up being my editor, Juliana Haner at Avid Reader Press. And the whole team was really enthusiastic and brought a lot of energy to the call, and then of course, I’d be remiss, but the numbers also help you make your decision because there was a grand disparity in the offers between publishing houses, and that of course helped make the decision.
[00:20:32] Haley Cohen Gilliland: But I think honestly, even if the numbers had been different, I still would’ve wanted to work with the team that I ultimately did.
[00:20:39] Bethany Saltman: Well, congratulations. That’s so
[00:20:41] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Exciting
[00:20:41] Bethany Saltman: And so well deserved and very, very, very lucky. Hey there, Book Bound friends, if you’re a fan of this podcast, you’ve definitely heard us talk about the agony and the ecstasy of the nonfiction book proposal. Yes, proposals are challenging, and yes, they can take a while, but we truly believe that for nonfiction writers mastering the art of the book proposal, and we really do think it’s an art isn’t just necessary to land a book deal, it’s one of the best ways to become the expert of your own topic and to sharpen your craft. That’s why Fran and I wrote our ebook. It’s called Book Bound, A Tried and True Method for Turning Your Great Idea Into a Standout Book Proposal. It’s available now at bookboundpodcast.com/ebook for just $19.99. So if you’re serious about your idea, but not quite ready to invest in coaching or courses, this is the perfect place to start. Download our ebook today and take the first real step toward writing the book only you can write.
[00:21:46] Fran Hauser: It’s such a great reminder that if you do have multiple offers, that it’s not just about the money, it’s not just about the advance, which I know can be, obviously it’s a huge part of the consideration, but when you think about the editor, this is the person that you are going to be working with for at least a year to actually write the book, and then even longer to get it through production, three years, three years, three
[00:22:20] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Years from sale to publication, a little bit over three.
[00:22:24] Fran Hauser: Yeah, it’s a long-term commitment, and there has to be a level of trust too, right? Absolutely. So I’m so glad that you found that.
[00:22:34] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes, I feel incredibly lucky. I should also say, so Juliana was offered an amazing job. She couldn’t turn down at another publishing house right before our final, I turned in the book for it to be passed to press, and I missed her dearly, but I was really lucky to then work with Joie Ferrari Adler and Carolyn Kelly, who are two other amazing editors at Avid Reader. So I got a huge team and family in the course of writing this book.
[00:23:05] Bethany Saltman: So tell us a little bit about how you found the narrative. I mean, reading the book, it’s so obvious, right? It’s like, oh, but I can only imagine that that took some doing to find the thread and figure out who your main character was going to be and how that all worked out.
[00:23:23] Haley Cohen Gilliland: When I was starting my research, I felt a lot of conviction around the idea that I needed to find one family to ground this story in. And that was because this story is so hard to believe. It is a true story, but it is hard to believe that just 50 years ago, something this terrible happened, and we don’t really, in many places in the world, the fact that this happened is not very well known. So I wanted to find one family that readers could really invest in and get to know in order to help guide them through the terrible history that impacted the family’s lives. Because family, we can all relate to being in a family. Thankfully, not many of us can relate to the horrible things that happened in Argentina in the 1970s and 80s. But by telling that history through the lens of a unit that is so familiar and comforting to many of us, I just thought that it would compel people to keep reading even though the material is really difficult and might otherwise inspire some people to shut the book just too much.
[00:24:41] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And so then it was a matter of finding the family that I wanted to focus on. And I think I was looking for a couple of things. One, I wanted to find a grandmother who had been really central to the AIS movement because I knew this is a book about a family, but it is also a story about the AIS movement. And their movement was so predicated on collective action and working together. And I wanted to tell that history, and so I needed someone who was really in the middle of it. And so that narrowed things down some. And then I also wanted to, and this is a bit of a spoiler alert, but once again, these are true events, so I’m not sure that that even really applies. But I wanted to find a grandmother who had found her, found her grandchild, because the reunions that these grandmothers went through were often incredibly fraught and in surprising ways.
[00:25:45] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And I wanted to give space and explore those dynamics as well. And then of course, I needed to find people who were willing to speak with me and to invest in this project, and also ideally, who had robust personal records, because by the time I began working on this project in 2021, the Abuelas ranged in age from their late 80s to a whopping 102, which is how old Rosa Royce, but the main subject of this book was when I started reporting it. And so I knew that in order to find out some of the more granular details that I wanted to, I would need to look to records in addition to doing original reporting. And that combination of things was how I landed with the Roy and but family. And I’m so grateful that I did.
[00:26:36] Bethany Saltman: Yeah, that’s such a great way to learn history because I have always known just about that basic period in the world in Argentina, but I really didn’t know much about it. And you did such a great job of teaching without teaching because it’s one thing to sit down and say, okay, I’m going to learn about Argentina in history today. It’s another to learn about it vis-a-vis a story. And you were so good at that, it was really skillful.
[00:27:05] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s honestly just how my brain works. I have these great aspirations to read thick history tomes, but are very dry. And then I often can’t get through them unless I’m reading them for a research purpose and I’m going to use them in my own work, but I need a story. I need a story to invest in. I need people, I need emotion. And so I think I’ve always gravitated towards those types of books in my reading life, and I’m really glad that you think that was your experience of
[00:27:41] Bethany Saltman: Oh, a hundred percent. That was riveted. Could not put
[00:27:44] Fran Hauser: It. I know. I mean, it really does read fiction. Everyone says that. I think that’s the ultimate compliment. It’s just so riveting. Speaking of emotion, I feel like there’s so much emotion in the title A Flower Traveled in My Blood, and you have such a great story about how that title came to be. Can you share that with everyone?
[00:28:04] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Absolutely. Yes. When I was trying to figure out what to title the proposal, I turned to Argentine poetry because poetry is often such a rich source of concise but really meaningful phrases. And I focused on one Argentine poet in particular. His name is Juan Gelman. And I did that because Juan Gelman, his path collided with the Abuelas in an unexpected and tragic way when in 1976, his son and daughter-in-law who was pregnant were abducted by the military and his daughter-in-law’s mother became really active members of the Abuela. So he had this direct connection to the Abuela that I found meaningful. And so I read a lot of his poetry and stumbled on this poem called Epí, which actually he wrote in the 1950s. So it was not about this time period, not about his experience of losing his son and daughter-in-law and his unborn grandchild, but I found so much meaning in it that felt very apt for this book.
[00:29:17] Haley Cohen Gilliland: The poem starts in English, “A bird lived in me, a flower traveled in my blood.” And so much of this book focuses on genetics and the way that the Abuelas harnessed genetics in order to uncover the truths that the military tried to conceal and in order to reunite with their grandchildren who had been taken from them. And so I love this idea of something beautiful and indelible that lives within all of us, that no matter where we’re taken, remains the same and unchanged and allows us to be found. And so just again, when I have these visceral feelings, they’re rare enough that I feel like I have to listen to them. And that was the case with this title. And it’s funny because not everyone loved it right away. It’s long.
[00:30:10] Bethany Saltman: I was wondering about that.
[00:30:11] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes. And I remember actually during the auction process, a couple of editors, including I think the editor that I ended up working with, kind of were like, so how married are we to the title? And I said, I really love it. It feels perfect to me, but I’m willing to explore other options. And then I think it was a slow burn for people, and they really grew to appreciate it once they understood the meaning behind it. So yeah, I had to fight a little bit for it, but it has been the title since I wrote the proposal. I
[00:30:48] Fran Hauser: Love it. That’s amazing that the title didn’t change at all. That’s incredible. But also, the subtitle is so clear about what the story is about. The subtitle is The Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children. So you have this amazing,
[00:31:09] Bethany Saltman: Lyrical,
[00:31:10] Fran Hauser: Right, lyrical emotional title, and then pairing that with this subtitle that tells the reader exactly what they’re going to get. And that was so smart. Perfect. In that way, smarts. Perfect.
[00:31:22] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I can’t take as much credit for the subtitle because that was something that was very much a collaboration with the publishing house and a shared Google Doc.
[00:31:32] Bethany Saltman: Yes. Oh, I can imagine. But I just want to really kind of highlight this for our listeners, because the title is always such a big lift. Sometimes it comes right away in your case, but that process is a really interesting one, and I love that you went to poetry, that it was adjacent to your topic. That’s so smart, because oftentimes people just, they think that it’s going to just come to them, and so they keep just going through the same, turning the same wheel, and it just doesn’t really land. But I always tell people, go to a museum, look at a cookbook, just change it up a little bit. Get some sparks.
[00:32:12] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Totally. Yeah. I mean, maybe this is the nonfiction writer in me, but I don’t expect anything to come to me. I go external for everything. If I do have inspiration, I’m not just sitting waiting for a spark. I have to.
[00:32:27] Bethany Saltman: But inspiration comes when you read the thing. That’s perfect.
[00:32:31] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes.
[00:32:32] Bethany Saltman: Then you’re like, oh, oh, that’s it. I get the chills. I have the feelings. I got the clammy, whatever, nauseous if you’re pregnant. And it’s that combination of being smart enough to know when you need to look outside of yourself, but wise enough to trust the instinctive response that tells you, oh, that’s the right, that’s the title.
[00:32:52] Fran Hauser: It’s been so fun watching you promote this book. Bethany and I were saying just everything that you’re doing on Instagram, your media tour, I loved having you at the bookstore.
[00:33:06] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Oh, it was the greatest. Magical, magical night.
[00:33:08] Fran Hauser: Magical, magical. Just so everyone knows, Haley and I met through our husbands who are both volunteer firefighters crazy in Bedford, New York, which is where we both live. And I met Haley at the holiday party, at the fire department holiday party, and she’s like, oh, you’re opening a bookstore. I have a book coming out. And Haley is the most humble human being ever. She’s like, oh, I have a book coming out. So anyway, I ended up learning about the book and we worked together. We did a pre-order campaign for your book, which was incredible. We sold so many books through that pre-order campaign and just having you in the store and seeing your community and your family and your friends get behind you. It was just such a magical, magical evening. But it’s just also been so fun for me watching you grow through this process, marketing a book. We talk about this, it’s no joke. And especially as someone who is a writer, who is a journalist who’s like, you’ve been in your cave like writing this book, and now all of a sudden it’s out in the world and you need to be out in the world amplifying it. I mean, how has that felt for you?
[00:34:22] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes. That’s such a great question. I think, well, first of all, I just want to say thank you for all of your support during this process. Your warmth and encouragement have just meant the world as I’ve navigated this, and I should say, Fran is such a champion of community and especially women in our community. And so I’m so grateful, and this podcast is kind of a larger extension of that spreading your community building to readers, listeners far and wide. Yes, marketing the book, it’s brought up a real mix of feelings for me because on one hand, I love talking to people. I love interacting with people. That’s part of why I love journalism. I love the original reporting aspect and interviews, and I’m an extrovert. And so I think being out of my Heidi Hole and reemerging has felt wonderful on some level. And I think my favorite part of publishing the book has been connecting with independent booksellers, visiting independent bookstores, and then also the live events where once again, first of all, you hopefully feel support from your personal community when your family and friends show up to events.
[00:35:38] Haley Cohen Gilliland: But also, I think I have had strangers show up to events that I’ve done, and that feels amazing. People that I don’t know that aren’t related to me are interested in this project, and that has been so gratifying. I mean, one of the things as I was listening to your so many episodes of your podcast that came up for me, and it has definitely come up in the promotional and marketing aspect, is that writing a book has really forced me to grapple with my relationship to perfectionism. And this has come up, I mean, certainly came up in the writing process, but even more intensely perhaps, has come up in the marketing and promotion process because I don’t have the luxury of sitting and mulling over my words. There are live events where I have to respond to questions that I didn’t know were coming, or podcasts that get recorded and enshrined for eternity.
[00:36:40] Haley Cohen Gilliland: And I didn’t have that luxury of sitting at my computer and mulling over exactly what I wanted to say and then revising it and cementing it. And so I think it has both been a really fulfilling and gratifying and fun process. And I have also had to pay attention and try to soothe my monkey mind where you all are so nice and warm and I feel so comfortable with you. Maybe this won’t happen. But I hang up a lot of podcasts being like, oh, I wish I would’ve said that thing. Why did I say that thing? And now it’s frozen in time and I can’t do anything about it. And so I think it’s a real mix. I feel so lucky to be at this stage in the process. This is a real fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me. I’ve always wanted to write a book, and for almost as long as I’ve wanted to write a book, I wanted to write this particular book.
[00:37:36] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I mean this book for me. And this story has percolated for 15 years. And so it’s a real fulfillment of a dream to be at this point. And it’s actually, it’s funny, I walk into bookstores now, Fran, yours included. And I get sort of emotional, and I don’t want to get emotional now, but I think I was worried that I would walk into a bookstore once I had a book out and be like, oh my God, my book is such a small fish in this large sea of other books, and it’s just going to get lost. And actually, when I walk into a bookstore, I get emotional at all of the dreams that were fulfilled, that are manifested in the form of these artifacts and all of the work. I mean, bookstores are just a temple to hard work and dreams. And I feel just so lucky to be a part of that ecosystem,
[00:38:27] Fran Hauser: Haley, now we’re all crying.
[00:38:29] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Now we’re all
[00:38:31] Fran Hauser: Crying.
[00:38:30] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yeah.
[00:38:31] Fran Hauser: So
[00:38:31] Bethany Saltman: Beautiful and so true. And what a great take on the I’m not enough.
[00:38:38] Fran Hauser: Yeah,
[00:38:39] Bethany Saltman: Totally.
[00:38:39] Fran Hauser: Well, and it’s also really interesting. I never thought about the whole perfectionism thing. When we’re writing our books, we have the time to go back and to edit our words, and when we’re doing these live interviews or podcast interviews or bookstore events with the Q and As, there is no editing. So that’s where I could really see the perfectionism
[00:39:06] Fran Hauser: Coming into play. And also with social media, we talked about this a little bit, Haley, when you came to the store. It’s putting ourselves out, doing these reels and doing these social media posts where you just kind of have to do it. You can’t spend a lot of time, you can’t, you know what I mean? But the perfectionism in us is like, I should rerecord that. That really didn’t come out the way that I wanted it. We’ve never talked about this on the podcast, and I think it’s really interesting. It’s like, how do we deal with perfectionism in the marketing phase of,
[00:39:39] Haley Cohen Gilliland: In my book in particular, I think it was sort of amplified because I’m not in my book. I wrote the author’s note and the author’s note and the acknowledgements feel very personal. But my book is the story of other people, and I very much want them to be front and center. And so just by nature of promoting the book and putting my face on it and my face out there, that does feel quite, in some ways, anathema to the project and a little bit vulnerable. I’m not used to being out there. I wrote at The Economist for seven years. They don’t want to even have bylines. I’m used to kind of being behind the curtain. And so, yeah, it’s definitely brought up those feelings, which were also present in the writing process. I, so I revere books. I think we all do. We’re in this profession, and I always viewed them as perfect artifacts.
[00:40:30] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Every word is perfectly chosen and frozen in time. And if there’s a word in the book, it’s because the author meant it to be there. And that’s true. But I think books are also a lot more human than I thought. And I think this came out, I was still catching typos in my page proofs until very, very late. And that was petrifying to me. I mean, you can ask my editorial team. I drove them crazy. I was very, very nervous about that and did a lot of proofreading. But I think, yeah, it has in a healthy way, I think helped me make peace with the fact that even books are artifacts of humans, and they reflect that, but they can still be revered in a different way.
[00:41:17] Fran Hauser: Yeah.
[00:41:17] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Well,
[00:41:18] Bethany Saltman: They’re alive,
[00:41:18] Fran Hauser: Right?
[00:41:19] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yeah.
[00:41:20] Fran Hauser: And they get reprinted. My first book went out with two typos that I know of. This is after going through, like you said, so many rounds of editing, copy, editing, proofreading. And we caught them when I was narrating the book for Right, because that’s what they always say. It’s when you read it out loud. And I remember I’m reading and I’m like, wait, I just said the word two twice. I remember emailing my editor right after that. I’m like, you’re not going to believe it. And he was just like, ah. It happens all the time. We will make it up. And when we go to reprint, I’m like, okay.
[00:41:53] Haley Cohen Gilliland: One of the reasons that I refuse to read my audiobook, but yeah. Oh
[00:41:58] Fran Hauser: My gosh. I know, right. Wait, so Haley, I have to ask as we start to wrap up, do you have another book in you?
[00:42:05] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I hope so. I hope so. I really loved this process. I mean, so much of it was so challenging, but such a good challenge. And I think this is my happy form. I feel so privileged to gotten to write at this length and with this depth and to really dig into the subject matter. And so, yes, if I’m lucky enough, I would love to write another book. I actually finished this one quite recently, so I finished page proofs on this book at the end of April, and it’s now July. And so I feel like people keep asking me, what are you working on now? And I’m like, please stop asking me that. I’m working on recovering from writing this book. But yes, I really, I do hope to write another book. I’m sure you will if not,
[00:42:54] Bethany Saltman: And we want you
[00:42:55] Fran Hauser: To.
[00:42:55] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Yes.
[00:42:56] Bethany Saltman: And this book has done so well and has been so well received and so well reviewed, and it’s so well deserved. So I’m just delighted for you. And yeah, do you have anything you’d like to say to our listeners before we hit off? Any advice or,
[00:43:13] Haley Cohen Gilliland: I guess one thing, and this came up a little bit when we were talking about finding an agent, but I am a huge proponent of the cold email. I think it’s a little bit of an investment of time. You want to make sure that if you’re sending a cold email, it’s sincere and that it is specific in what you’re asking for. But I think there’s only upside. The worst thing that happens is someone doesn’t respond, and that stings a little bit, but people are busy. And the best thing that happens is that you have a great conversation that yields great advice, or sometimes you might find an agent or an idea. And I just think, especially earlier on in my career, I was very bold about just cold emailing writers that I really admired to ask them to get coffee and share how they had gotten to where they were. And I was so hurt. I mean, so many people said yes, and just met me for a quick coffee, and we’re happy to share their experiences. I now work with one of those people, Susan Dominus, who’s wonderful. She has a book out as well called The Family Dynamic, which is incredible. But yeah, if there are authors that you admire whose careers you aspire to have, reach out to them. Reach out to agents, big fan of cold emailing. I guess that’s my parting words.
[00:44:37] Fran Hauser: That’s great advice. You have nothing to lose, nothing to lose and everything to gain. So Haley, thank you so much. This conversation was just so amazing and inspiring, and I’m so excited for our listeners to listen to this one. There’s so much to learn from you. We love you, and please let us know what’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you. Where should they follow you on
[00:45:02] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Social? Yeah. Well, I love you guys too. Thank you for having me. This was such a privilege to get to do. I am mostly just on Instagram when it comes to social media, and my Instagram is just my full name, all three of them. And I also have a website, and there’s a contact form here that goes straight to my email. So please do get in touch. I have been the beneficiary of reaching out cold for advice, and I’m very open to having those conversations if someone thinks that I can be useful. So yeah, do get in touch. Thank you so much,
[00:45:36] Fran Hauser: Haley. Amazing. Thank you, Haley.
[00:45:39] Haley Cohen Gilliland: Thank you, Fran. Thank you, Bethany. Bye. Thanks so much.
[00:45:44] Fran Hauser: We hope you enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving a rating or review to help other writers find us. And don’t forget to check out or read like a writer book club, and our downloadable book bound proposal guide, both designed to support you as you bring your book idea to life. You can also find us on Instagram at Bookbound podcast. Happy writing.