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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/
Neha Ruch (00:00):
I think everyone needs to know why they're writing this book and what they want out of it. Motherhood in America gets dumbed down, stay at home motherhood. It gets laughed out of most formal conversations, and I needed it to be taken seriously and to catalyze sort of the level of press that I wanted to change headlines. It needed a very specific track and that was my goal from day one.
Bethany Saltman (00:26):
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
Fran Hauser (00:40):
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.
Fran Hauser (00:49):
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 Bookbound life.
Bethany Saltman (01:05):
Welcome to the show everyone. Neha Ruch is the founder of The Power Pause, the leading platform for ambitious women leaning into family life, a thought leader, influencer and sought after speaker focusing on women work, parenting, and identity. NEEA's work is catalyzing a shift in how society views stay at home. Motherhood quotes her USA Today bestseller, The Power Pause, how to Plan a Career Break After Kids and Come Back Stronger than Ever Was published with Putnam in January, 2025. In our conversation with Neha, we covered the difference between a ghost writer and a developmental editor. How your book's purpose will shape your publishing path, how to approach publisher meetings. Hint, you're in pitch mode, the perfect time to launch your pre-order campaign and so much more. We love this conversation and think you will too hang the hat. Thank you so much for joining us today on Bookbound.
Neha Ruch (02:01):
Thank you for having me. This will be fun.
Bethany Saltman (02:04):
Yeah, yeah, we're really excited. So we like to start every episode asking authors the same basic question, which is about how did you know that you had been in this work for some time? How did you know that it wasn't just a community, a platform, but a book?
Neha Ruch (02:26):
Well, it's interesting. I wrote the one pager, which for context, a one pager is what you send your agent when you're sort of courting an agent as to what is this book concept? I'd written it in 2018, just on the back of it in a Google doc. I had just been about a year and a half into building what was then a blog and an Instagram, but it all had the same mission and it all sort of saw the same gap in the market, which was there were so much great digital content blogs and communities for the traditional working parent and how to climb in the workforce, how to parent a child, but there was nothing about how do you strategically walk through a career pause and how do you feel ambitious and connected. So it was the same sort of gap I saw online.
(03:16):
I saw it in the book world and how do you sort of reclaim this idea of stay-at-home motherhood as something that can be empowering and just for chapter and it doesn't have to be finite. And so I was lucky enough to have that idea early, but timing is everything. My kids were still little in 2018, I was still on a pause planting the seeds for this and then post pandemic when the kids aged into school, culture was also much more ready for the conversation, which is interesting. When I was connected to my agent, I had been running brand at a tech company and then I had my first child and I chose to
Bethany Saltman (03:53):
Downshift
Neha Ruch (03:54):
My career and then pause. And then I started this as sort of a side project to motherhood, but I was fully on pause with my kids. And so I was really growing the platform and the community during naps and night times till about 20, 21, 20 22 when my kids aged into school. And it was like, I think I always like to bring that up because I think you see the book now and you see the platform, but that was nine years in the making. It was 2022. And I had been going out with friends saying, well now I'm ready to take this thing to the next level. And I was thinking about do I create a community membership? Do I build up physical space like a literal clubhouse for women to come together in the gray area of stay at home and working to carve out physical space to grow alongside Brentwood or do I go the book route and be able to sort of catalyze the message further?
(04:49):
And at that time it was 2022, it was post pandemic, it was what everyone was calling the great resignation. I thought of it as the great reexamination and someone, because I'd been doing this for so long, someone reached out to me for an Oprah daily feature. Actually Fran, you might know her, Julia Edelstein, she's a phenomenal journalist, amazing. And she included me in an article for Oprah Daily. And then we went had coffee for that interview and I told her I'm thinking about this book, and she connected me to her former boss, who is my agent, and said, I think you should talk to her. And I did not look for an agent. I was lucky enough to be connected to an agent. I took that same one-pager that I'd been sitting on for four years and I said, this was the thesis I've had for a long time. And Kristen really took me under her wing.
Fran Hauser (05:44):
So it really started. So you had this Instagram and you had the blog, you had created a platform, the mother entitled platform. It's so interesting that I was looking, preparing for this interview. I was going through your Instagram and there was this incredible New York Times article that recently ran, I think it was called From Girl Boss to No Boss that you were featured in. And in your Instagram post you said something about how people were referring to like, oh, this little Instagram thing that Neha is doing, or Oh, this little blog that she has going on. But you had this inner knowing that this was going to be something bigger, that this platform was going to be something bigger. Can you talk to us about that? Did you always know that from the beginning?
Neha Ruch (06:34):
I did. I think I should mention, I came from sort of a brand and strategy background and I love research. And so when I took my foot off the gas, which I often talk about in the context of women in our community when they're pausing, you do have time. You don't necessarily have a lot of time, but you have time to sort of think outside of the box. And you're also absorbing a lot of new data about how the world works in new spaces, whether it's playgrounds or play spaces. And I had my first son in 2016 and it was the height of the lean in movement and the height of the Girl boss era and all of the data. And I was kind of looking, I was listening to myself thinking, wait a second, why when I'm sharing that I want to take a beat to raise my son and I know that I'm pretty accomplished.
(07:29):
I know I can get back to the paid work for I can freelance, I can consult. I find ways to stay connected. By the way, I don't think my brain's going to go die. Actually it's waking up in new ways. Why does everyone else seem, and I was hearing, are you giving up? Are you going to be bored all day? Did you waste that spot at business school? So I was sitting there listening to all the feedback I was getting, but meanwhile I was meeting other women who are shifting into freelance or consulting where they were taking a full pause, but they'd had 10 years of education and work experience and none of it matched the old stereotype. But in content at that moment, we were getting inundated with all these incredible images of what the working parent looked like and it looked like Sheryl Sandberg and it looked like Michelle Obama and it looked like who was the other one that always comes up, Beyonce, that's what you thought of was a working parent.
(08:22):
But it seemed to count everyone else out, including myself. And when I looked in the research, it said that our generation, the millennial generation had sort of aged into a lot of identity in the professional space, but now suddenly they were identifying with parenthood too. So that that's a clash. So I was sitting with that. I was sitting with my own experience and I went for a walk with my dad. I was also in venture Fran, and I said, I'm thinking about this thing. I really want to solve it. I really want to dig into it and create a new narrative for women who want to take a pause. And I said, what if I go build a physical spaces because the wing was blowing up at the time The wing was a women's workspace. I said, what if I do that, but for mothers who are growing alongside their kids, how can we shift the narrative that way?
(09:15):
He was like, I love that for you except you still want to be at home with your kids. And he was like, what if you start small and online? You've always loved content. And so I started it and if you look at the first newsletter I sent on January 10th and I sent it to 500 people in my Rolodex, and if you look at it, it had the exact Satan language I'm using now. So it was always a big mission and a big problem that we wanted to solve for and create new language around. But it had to start in a small way. I do think, I mean it's Jeff Bezos for whatever, we want to think about Jeff Bezos right now. He did say if you're starting something, you have to be willing to be misunderstood for a long time. And I think the thing about women's projects is you have to, I think we as a culture diminish, just like we diminish caregiving, we diminish projects as the little blog or the little Instagram. So you have to, I think that was the hardest part to reconcile was the ego around that. But I'm glad I stuck with it because I think you plant seeds for it and then when the time is right, it was ready
Fran Hauser (10:27):
Because you validated that there was this need and you did that by building this incredible community. And I think it's just really important for our listeners when you're thinking about what is the central idea of your book, especially in prescriptive nonfiction, there really has to be a pain point that you're solving. And that's what you did with this book. And I have to tell you, Neha, you came and did an author talk at the bookstore. You were one of our first events after we opened the store and your event literally sold out in two seconds. And I think again, it's just proving that women and men too really needed this book. So I just want to make sure that that really comes across and you leaned on your intuition. You also leaned on data to prove that there was a real market for this.
Neha Ruch (11:23):
And I think the time I remember feeling for anyone who's sort of sitting with a big idea, but they can only do it in a small way at this moment, I do feel grateful that I didn't write that book in 2018 or build that space because I needed to live it more, right? I needed to live what it felt like to work through. How do you say what do you do? Answer that question. I needed to have to word vomit my way through that I needed to have someone, my husband tell me that staying at home was a luxury to find my own language around, wait a second, it's a luxury for you to go to work and have a security blanket, get at home to manage. We had to work through how we were going to communicate around that or how I was going to figure out how to make my kids not my success metric and find my own goals or network and tinker with ideas I needed to live my own power pause before I could really think about presenting that language. So the slow seasons do pay off. If you can find a little way to nurture with that idea and use the time to just develop it.
Fran Hauser (12:35):
Yeah, I love that. Now let's go back to your meeting with Kristen, the agent Kristen Mantro who's amazing. You had this meeting with her. What were the next steps that came out of that meeting?
Neha Ruch (12:48):
That meeting was, let's see, I had coffee in May and then Julia connected me to Kristen and I was sitting on the phone with Kristen and she said, you have something, this really, this is interesting. I want to dig in more. And we got on probably two or three phone calls where I think she wanted to vet that I was the right person to deliver
Bethany Saltman (13:14):
Yes
Neha Ruch (13:14):
Message, right? Because I don't think it's just about, I think the book publishing industry and Kristen for context comes from decades of running real Simple magazine, which by the way was my favorite magazine when I was in my twenties. I always thought I was 40 when I was 20. And so I think book Christian knows what sells and I think her job as an agent is not to help create a great book to help get the book sold to a publisher that will bring that book out into the world. And she needed to know that I had it in me to deliver a best in class proposal and she needed to know I would be able to sell the publishers on a topic that is highly nuanced. I think for context, again, this is 2022, and while the market was shifting because of the pandemic and women were sort of recalibrating around work, she knew and she said to me, this book is going to land on the deaths of women who are about 50 or so.
(14:36):
And really were raised at a time where there was a binary around stay at home and working, and they probably never took their foot off the gas. They had to stay in the publishing industry. And so that's the context of who you're, so there's need to be a lot of convincing and education. And so I would say we had a couple phone calls in Zooms for her to know that I was the right person. And then once we decided that, she said, I think you would benefit, and Bethany will resonate with this, with having a coach or a developmental editor, some people, the agent works really well. I think we made a really great trifecta, a developmental editor to work with you on the proposal because you have a really strong idea. You have a lot of research and literature because remember, I've been planting the seeds for this at that point, let's say five, six years.
(15:32):
So I'd written a lot of content and I knew the arc of the book already and I knew the chapters. She said, but you need something to help poke the holes and make sure there's enough research and make sure it reads like a prescriptive nonfiction book. And we thought, put our heads together. And I said, well, Julia was the one who interviewed me for the future. She connected us. You've worked with her. So Julia Edelstein worked as my developmental editor or book coach on the proposal process. And I think that that was a real asset for someone like me who does like to write, who has a pretty clear voice, and I've been in this work for so long that I also know what to say and what not to say around tricky topics like privilege or help. But still my weak spot is how do you make this appeal? How do you make sure that for whom this topic is new, it needed to be pressure tested. And so that was a great resource. So we set a start date and an end date. We decided we were going to start at back to school. I was going to sort of write as much as I could until then, and then we were going to workshop it over the course of the fall and deliver it in January to the publishers. And how was that process for you?
(16:50):
I thought it was the most stressful process. I really did. I proposal, I'm trying to remember. So I had two, what Kristen. Kristen was able to pull up within inkwell, which is the agency she was at, she pulled up two great points of reference. One of them was that Drop your ball proposal, drop your ball by Tiffany. And so we sort of had how do you put together a great, we had a couple great examples, which I would encourage everyone if you have a friend or your agent connects you to a proposal. I thought the proposal, and you guys have gone through this so it have probably spoken about it, but why now was easy for me to write, why is this, what is this book? Why now and why am I the right person? Was easy because it was well researched, but I wrote that over the summer.
(17:46):
I think the chapter summaries right? Because then let's say I have a nine chapter book, the chapter summaries and really hashing out for the publisher and putting it on the page that there are real women that I will be interviewing across the country. I had to do a lot of those interviews in the fall. So again, I don't know if part of this was because we wanted to make sure this was an ironclad proposal because it was sort of a new, it's such a new, it was at the time a very new concept. It was considered, Kristen was a little worried at the time that it was controversial. So I did a lot of the interviews that I think a lot of authors would do in the writing the book,
Bethany Saltman (18:31):
In
Neha Ruch (18:32):
The proposal phase
(18:33):
And a lot of the research, I commissioned a survey, a lot of that planning. But the tricky part, and this is just brutally honest, and I think this is where Kristen shines, she knew what would sell, she knew what the holes were and she said, not only are we going to deliver this proposal, but at the time now we have sort of an audience of 300,000 women, but at the time I had, I just started growing again. My kids had just aged, so I was probably at like 25,000 Instagram followers and maybe 10,000 newsletter subscribers, something like that. And she was like, we need to grow. You need to be focused on growth, like active growth this year. So I think that combination was hard. The ongoing to write this proposal and write out this book and do these interviews and conduct the research so that no one can say that this isn't a valid thesis and I'm going to pull every lever in terms of Instagram collaborations and daily posting and optimizing for the algorithm to grow to, we had a number I wasn't going to submit until I had 50,000 followers. And so that was the target and it was Target's help. They really, it put something on your back to get to, and I was lucky enough to meet that threshold.
Fran Hauser (20:00):
It's a lot when you're writing the proposal and you're growing the platform at the same time. I get that.
Neha Ruch (20:05):
And during the press, I think that was the other piece we wanted to drum up. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just the Oprah daily piece that we could move to the sort of 10 publishers that I met with, that this is in the vernacular and I am the thought leader being asked to speak on it.
Bethany Saltman (20:28):
Hey there, Bookbound friends, if you're loving this interview, we've got something special for you. Our Read Like a Writer Book Club is back and we'd love for you to join us. This isn't your typical book club. Each month we'll gather on Zoom to study one of the books we'll talk about here on the podcast, not just what we liked but how it's written and it works. In other words, we'll help you read like a writer, so you can write and publish your own book. It's $179 for five monthly sessions. You'll get the book list related podcast episodes, a simple reading guide and then meet to discuss. That's it. We're so excited to dive in with you because we love books, we love you, and we really love doing this amazing work with other women like you. Sign up today at bookboundpodcast.com/club. We can't wait to see you there.
(21:21):
I want to make sure, because our listeners are very worried about platform and for you to say, I started with this and I had to get to that, that could really send shutters through a lot of our listeners. And I just want to say that that is one angle. I'm an action agent now, so I know that some publishers are really looking for that. A lot aren't, and platform actually comes in three distinct ways. You can be an influencer, you can be a practitioner, and you can be an expert. So you were going on all cylinders, but it's really important for our listeners to know that this is one path and you really only need two out of those three to be considered viable in a trade like a big five publishing. And for people who don't want to publish in the Big five, there are lots of independent publishers that can do an amazing job with your book. So I just want to make sure that our listeners are getting that message.
Neha Ruch (22:22):
Yeah. Hundred. I would also say I think everyone needs to know why they're writing this book and what they want out of it.
Bethany Saltman (22:30):
Yes,
Neha Ruch (22:30):
Very specific goal
Bethany Saltman (22:32):
Here.
Neha Ruch (22:33):
And it was to change a very big piece of culture and that means this conversation stay at home, motherhood in America, motherhood in America gets dumbed down, stay at home motherhood is like, it gets laughed out of most formal conversations, and I needed it to be taken seriously and to be taken seriously. I felt like, and to catalyze sort of the level of press that I wanted to change headlines, it needed a very specific track and that was my goal from day one. I think there are many different goals people have for absolutely approaching books. For some it's they want to get their story heard, they have something inside of them, they want to put it on the page and circulate it, which is so important. I do not have that. I think for other people it's to help bolster and validate their practice. I have a number of friends who are therapists and they want to be able to add this into their portfolio work. I think that the track that I put this on was very specific
Bethany Saltman (23:43):
At the beginning of our ebook and when we work with people, we always have people decide what is the goal? Is it craft? Like you said, that drive where you just absolutely have to get that thing on the page, your content, because you're a thought leader and you want to develop the content or credibility, and you really needed that credibility to get the message out to the people who you felt needed to hear it to change the conversation. So I think it's really important to just make sure everybody understands that.
Fran Hauser (24:13):
I love that. I love that. Neha, I'm curious, when you and Kristen started going out with the book to different publishers, were there objections that you heard pretty consistently from editors at publishing houses or did everybody just get it and they were really excited about it?
Neha Ruch (24:32):
So I thought what was interesting for people, so now you're kind of tracking this timeline. So seven years ago or however many years was sort of building the platform, met the agent, started the proposal, went out. So really formally started the proposal over that fall of 2022. We went out on January 13th, no, January 18th. By January 25th, I had every single meeting. It went out to 12 publishers. A lot of them, I did not understand this. I remember reading about the publishing and the monopoly. I did not understand that it really, there's very few houses. A number of them were within imprints within Penguin Random House, and then there was sort of one or two from Harper Collins and someone else. But the turnaround time, after you've been building for so long, you think, oh, it's very fast. You really get a pretty immediate reaction. And we were really excited about the response.
(25:32):
I think the response pretty right away, pretty immediately was strong. It felt fresh, felt like the first, it felt like there was some excitement around that. So I had that in my favor. The meetings, the only thing I wish I'd done differently in those meetings was really prepped for it. I think we thought, oh, well, these meetings are going to be like a showin. I thought they've seen the proposal, I've delivered the work. And the meetings as a venture capitalist fan are really much more like a vc. They're really vetting you in a way similar to those meetings I described with my agent, but they're sort of contained to 45 minutes an hour. They really bring this sort of full court press. I had five or six people showing up from these houses. So they bring their internal people. And I don't think that the first one, I don't think I was prepared for that sort of level of back and forth around data and timeline in the marketing.
(26:37):
You knew there was a big, and I come from a marketing background, that was the part of the proposal I loved writing was like, how am I going to bring this book out to the world? I did have someone, Bethany, I think it was double day who said, but how are you going to grow to a hundred thousand followers? And there was that. There was some pressure around how are you going to grow to be able to deliver this? And I wish I'd known that going into the first meeting. It ended up working out. And I was lucky enough that, so for those of you who don't know the process, if there were a number of imprints within Penguin who wanted the book and then they internally come together, so it was sort of for they decide who wants it the most and who would be best served to deliver it.
Fran Hauser (27:22):
That's actually really interesting. I don't think that's ever come up in any of the interviews that we've done where it's multiple imprints within a publisher. So they don't, each bid on the book, they come together and they decide the one imprint.
Neha Ruch (27:37):
So they called Kristen and said, what's her number? And so they did ask me what I wanted because they recognized the reality of that situation because the book was not going to go to auction because it was within the same house. So they did and they very generously met that number and then it was taken. I
Fran Hauser (28:02):
Love that you brought up though the fact that you're going into these meetings. First of all, the fact that you had these meetings a week after, I've never heard of that happening, which means you had people that were really excited about this idea because usually they take their time, they read the proposal in detail. But so you had these meetings really quickly, and I would imagine going into those meetings feeling maybe a little bit overconfident like this is just to check the box. I don't need to be in pitch mode. So really approaching it as you are still in pitch mode. Yes, they read your proposal and they're interested, but you are still pitching. And I think that mindset is a really important one.
Neha Ruch (28:45):
As our listeners, they're not
Fran Hauser (28:47):
Wooing. You
Neha Ruch (28:49):
Are still wooing them. Yes.
Fran Hauser (28:51):
Yeah. So interesting. Okay, you ended up going with the Penguin Random House imprint. Remind us, who did you go with?
Neha Ruch (29:01):
So I went with Putnam, and the reason we went with Putnam, I'm trying to remember. T Para was the other one. There was Putnam and Torture Par, and there were comps within each, right? So if you think of Tarcher, they had the Boundaries book by Nedra Twab, which was a great comp just because of the arc and the sort of prescriptive nonfiction and RA's platform. And I really loved the team at Tarcher. I think what stood out about Putnam was they had had Eve Brodsky's book a Fair Play, and Eve, as you know, is a friend, I think it's a mutual friend, right? Eve I think laid the groundwork for my book because Fair Play started a real dialogue in 2020 around the value of care. And so she sort of paved that sort of dialogue and that cultural shift. And I think what I appreciated about Eve's book, it was a real template for how a book, kind of like we were talking about, my goal, Bethany, my goal was to follow Fairplay template, which was
Bethany Saltman (30:08):
Really smart,
Neha Ruch (30:09):
Which was put a book out there to present a new cultural shift and let that catalyze, you need the book to catalyze the change in the media and the change in households and the change. So I felt, and I know that Putnam shared this, that it was the closest comp possibly.
Bethany Saltman (30:31):
So in the writing, did you actually use Fair Play as sort of a guide and a template?
Neha Ruch (30:37):
Not as much, no. I think that there's comps in terms of the way in which the book went to market. I think that mine was very specific to how do you prepare, how do you walk through a pause? How do you return? I sort of had that outline so long before because it was experience.
(31:02):
I think what, oh, I will tell you what I do think she has a very different writing style in that book. I think that she's much funnier than I am. But I did think, and this I would apply to all a lot of prescriptive nonfiction that is successful. I did use this idea of a combination of personal narrative with real women's stories and experts in data. That's those sort of four. And then each chapter ends with a power practice. So I think that that sort of combination is similar to, I think it's similar to RA's.
Bethany Saltman (31:42):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And did you work with Julia on the writing or did you go it alone?
Neha Ruch (31:47):
So Julia was, we initially were going to work together and she was going to stay on in that role, but I think it's very tricky when you've had your own thesis for a really long time, and I think you have a very specific way you want to bring the book out into the world. And so we ended up deciding that she was not going to work with me on the book, and I was going to continue to see it out. I did get another developmental editor of Recommend to everyone, and I thought she was phenomenal because I think a little bit differently than in working with Julia, where I think when you have two people who, Julia as a journalist, she has her way of approaching things. I think what Rachel is really Rachel Bhi, who has worked on some phenomenal books, I think where she's really strong.
(32:39):
I've heard she has worked also, she's worked as a ghost writer for some. She has worked as similar to me. She worked with Dr. Becky as a developmental editor and Dr. Becky Kennedy on her book, good Inside. And I think what she was really good at is I would write it and then she would read it and say, develop, you got to work on this section. This is missing. This section she would reach weak sections for that doesn't really make sense. So I think it really worked for someone like me to be able to preserve my voice and my arc of how I wanted it to present in my interviews. I think sometimes when you work with, my understanding is if you work with a ghost writer, they often will do the interviews, and I think interviews are sort of the bread and butter of this book. It's like the real women from my community that I want. So
Bethany Saltman (33:32):
I
Neha Ruch (33:32):
Think I recommend to anyone who really enjoys the writing and the interviewing and research to really consider
Bethany Saltman (33:39):
A
Neha Ruch (33:39):
Developmental editor as a nice middle ground.
Bethany Saltman (33:41):
Right, right. So you were first to the
Neha Ruch (33:43):
Page. You did the first. Yeah. Correct.
Fran Hauser (33:46):
That's great.
Neha Ruch (33:47):
Oh, that's a nice way of putting it. Yes, exactly.
Fran Hauser (33:48):
Yeah, I love it. So let's talk a little bit about just marketing. The book has done so well, Neha, congratulations. I feel like you had already started a movement before the book came out, but the book really amplified the movement. And tell us a little bit about the actual marketing of the book and what worked in your mind, what actually moved sales for the book?
Neha Ruch (34:14):
So this was the most fun part, right? Because I delivered the book in January of 2024. So I had an entire year to publish, I mean, to bring it to market. I will tell you that it was supposed to be nine months. It was supposed to be a fall of 2024 book, but because of the election, we moved it to January. So that's something to keep in mind and you can never plan. Just a quick thing on timing, I know Vanessa k Bennett is also a mutual friend. Friend who wrote, this is so awkward. She and Kara did a phenomenal job with that book, picked the perfect date just after the back to school craziness. And it ended up being right after the attacks. It was October. It was October 10th, 2023. You can never know. Similarly, we pushed it because of the election in the fall, and then it was, the wildfires in California are, you'll never know.
(35:09):
You can always, anyways, I had a year, it was the most fun because again, I came from a marketing background. So I was back in writing a marketing timeline for this. I will tell you that I think if I could do it all over again, the book became available for pre-orders in April of 2024, right? Nine months before the book came out. And everyone said pre-orders, pre-orders, pre-orders, focus on driving. So I made a big emotional appeal in April of October 7th, April of 2024. While I am glad I did that because the strategy was we would take the sort of a thousand people who did community members who did pre-order and put them in that month and put them in a special loyalist club to use them. Then later on as a street team, I feel like April was too far out because by the time then I got to September and then we were in that critical three month window where you're starting to build up your pre-order incentives. I'd already felt like I'd talked about it too much, and I don't think it felt that way to anyone in our community, but they were a little bit like, where's my book? And so you have to balance that. I would thread that needle well, and I would have probably focused intensely on the three month window before in the two month window after, and really concentrated the effort if I were to do it again
(36:51):
Instead of having a six to nine month timeline, which is what I had.
Bethany Saltman (36:54):
That makes sense. I
Neha Ruch (36:56):
Think that was what I did not do well, I think we did well was I was still building the platform and I had commissioned a survey around this time for the book I'd commissioned research. So that was giving us a lot of that was helping network the concept around the book. But in the three months leading up, we did a pre-order number of different pre-order incentives that are not at all unique. I feel like a lot. We did exclusive webinar, which was I did the corporate take on The Power Pause. So I had people in HR at large corporations, L'Oreal, Novartis, come in and talk about the book. And so that was interesting for our audience who wants to know, well, what's the flip side of this? So that was one month we did a Giving Tuesday for every book order we were going to do a donation.
(37:48):
So that was fun. I'm trying to think of what else we did. There were a number of them. We did the sort of exclusive guide, like a book club guide so people could do the journaling ahead of time almost as a sneak preview to the book. But I think that one thing that I did that I don't yet know, I'm still conflicted on this. I did these power pause popups essentially ahead of the tour. So the tour was going to be launch week and the tour went to eight major cities and it was all in that first week. It was just back to back to back to back. But before that, I wanted to do all of the flyover states, and I don't think I'm allowed to say flyover, but you get what I mean. It was like St. Louis, Detroit, the real Charlottesville, Virginia.
(38:35):
All of these women really live. But I wanted to create community around the power pos. So we did this thing where we asked the community what stops. We did 10, like Tri Georgia, Charlottesville, Virginia, somewhere in Bethesda, Maryland. And we asked people to pre-order the book in their local bookstore to essentially drive local book sales, diversify the book sales, because that also matters in terms of book rankings. And while I'm glad we did that, say there were probably 25 to 30 women at each of those 40, there was 75, sorry, there were anywhere between 30 to 75 depending on the region. This is where goals come in. Again, Bethany, if I was focused exclusively on the New York Times bestseller list, which I was, I would've done what other authors do, which is focus that time on doing speaking engagements and trading my speaking engagements for bulk book buys.
(39:44):
I did not do that. So basically I had a bowl, but I ended up optimizing for probably the goodness of creating a grassroots movement. And it's a very interesting thing to have had a big goal for the same reason because what the New York Times list does is it helps accelerate how bookstores are holding your books, where they're putting the books, what media is coming, knocking on your door. And we did not make that list. And I remember being really stunned because we'd made the USA today list earlier that day. I had been so focused on it, I had thought I'd done every, but if I were to look at sort of objectively speaking, what I did was I focused on the grassroots movement, Don say, and I didn't do sort of the other levers that might have helped get the pre-orders that would've driven that.
Fran Hauser (40:43):
I understand why you're conflicted though, because I do love the idea of you visiting these different states and then having the independent bookstores in those states now are generating sales. So you're diversifying, your sales are not just coming from east coast, west Coast, they're coming from all these different bookstores and you're really creating this grassroots movement. So these are people now word of mouth, they're going to be recommending your book. There's so much good to that. But then I also understand if you're looking at pure numbers, if you were to do more of these talks where you can sell 300 copies, 400 copies of the book per corporate talk, and that we all have limited time and energy. So these are the choices, the decisions that we're making all the time. Right.
Bethany Saltman (41:31):
And I'm thinking as we're reaching the end of our time, one of the things that's really coming up for me as I'm hearing is how does all of this work on the book coincide with your pause? Well,
Neha Ruch (41:44):
No, I'm not on pause anymore. No, it's a great point. So I think when I look, my kids were, before they were school aged, I was fully at home when they went back to school, when they were not back to school. When they started school in 2021, they were both in school. I started dialing up my work and I was sort of working. Or when I got my book deal, I brought on a babysitter for three afternoons a week. I think that's really important. I could not have done this without
(42:19):
Going back to work, be it for myself. And I've continued with that babysitter during the school year, three afternoons a week, and it lets me be able to work part-time for myself during the sprint around the book. And I mean, I talk about this in the book all the time. The whole point of pause is that it's not permanent, that it's ever shifting that you are. And it's not a life pause, it's a career pause. And the goal with all of this is never to say pausing is the right choice. It's to say that it's ever evolving and ever shifting. And to give people the tool to be able to step into whatever's right for right now and to also recalibrate often. And so in September, going into the book launch, my kids and my husband and I sat down and we had a conversation. I said, daddy's going to be doing more pickups. Our babysitter is going to be doing more pickups. She has the biggest thank you, by the way, in the acknowledgement section, and it's going to feel different. And I'm going to be going on this tour and that's going to feel different.
Bethany Saltman (43:16):
And
Neha Ruch (43:17):
In March of next year at spring break, we're all going to reevaluate how this works. And we did that. We took two weeks off in March, and now I would say I'm slower. Again, I'm trying to optimize for the things that really help move the message. So I'll take the bigger podcast or the bigger talks and the bigger events and try to continue to power the resources. I have a very small team of three moms who work 10 hours a week on the business. That helps hugely. And I think you can always think about how can you build a bigger platform? And I kind of think about how do I continue to see this work out into the world, but also go back to doing pickups again.
Fran Hauser (44:00):
I love that. That's
Neha Ruch (44:01):
Perfect.
Fran Hauser (44:02):
Oh, nah, we love you. This was such an incredible conversation. Thank you so much. Really,
Neha Ruch (44:08):
I'm so happy to do it. I do feel like I should send, I mean, when I tell you the number of checklists and project docs that we had for this, I do feel like I should put it in a folder and send it to you guys to give to all of your offers, please. Oh
Fran Hauser (44:24):
My gosh, that would be amazing.
Neha Ruch (44:26):
It was so fun. And I probably annoyed Penguin random. I mean, they're so done with me, so there you to
Fran Hauser (44:32):
It. Oh my God, I love it. I love the checklist and the Google Docs. I'm right there with you.
Bethany Saltman (44:37):
Yeah.
Fran Hauser (44:38):
Where
Neha Ruch (44:39):
Can our listeners find you? You can follow me at Neha roush on Instagram, or you can go to the power pos.com. There's so many great free resources to help women connect each other and connect to resources. And you could subscribe to the newsletter there. Amazing.
Fran Hauser (44:55):
Thank you so much, Naja.
Neha Ruch (44:57):
Oh, it was so nice spending time with you. Thank you for what you do.
Fran Hauser (45:03):
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 Bookbound proposal guide, both designed to support you as you bring your book idea to life. You can also find us on Instagram at Bookbound underscore podcast. Happy writing.