One Year of Flawless! What I've Learned [#23]

Reflections and gratitude, a year in. Also, for those who were following, our team won the Literary Death Match.

Annyeong from LA,

Tonight I’ll be joining the therapists Soo Jin Lee and Linda Yoon, who authored the valuable new book Where I Belong: Healing Trauma and Embracing Asian American Identity, at Vroman’s in Pasadena to talk through the ways AAPI identities, culture and history can make being confident in our bodies uniquely complex. It happens on the one year anniversary of Flawless! I still can’t believe I got to write a book and have it published. So I wanted to reach out to thank you 1000x for all your support and word-spreading and online reviewing and party hosting and love, which made putting this book out one of the truly most gratifying experiences of my adult life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Now that some time has passed, I can also take stock of what I’ve learned along the way, which is so useful for the future because, well, I will have forgotten these things. I know a lot of you are creative people putting things into the world, so hopefully they can be helpful for you, too.

Takeaways for When You Launch Your Thing

Your inner circle is where to go to make direct asks. They do things like host a party. Order the wine. Send their go-to bartenders.

Weak ties show up in surprising ways, so write to your broad list when sharing news. My tax accountant showed up. So did my high school prom date, who I think I ditched the night of prom and hadn’t seen since.

On not wanting to seem self-aggrandizing, center the ideas that were your reason for writing in the first place. Dan Pink said to me, if you have an idea you are putting out there in the world, and that idea could be liberating or enlightening or help someone in their life, don’t you have a moral imperative to get it out as widely as possible?

I remember author (and now friend)

Virginia Sole-Smith

giving me the really sage advice that you won’t know how your book really changed the trajectory of your life for another three and a half years after it launches. So many connections and synchronicities come out of putting out a book and most of them are not linear and measurable in the way book sales are.

Cultivate booksellers, who can be your biggest champions.

Build a community as early on as possible, be transparent with them about what you’re going through, and ask for help.

You don’t have to be on every social platform, but a book launch is a great excuse to try stuff out. I was not a TikToker before the book promotion period and I’m so glad I became one as I was getting close to launch. I learned so much and now use TikTok regularly, just for fun and community. I recommend the children’s book author Jarret Krosoczka as someone whose Instagram and TikTok are worth watching and learning from. I paid $25 for his webinar, TikTok for KidLit and learned a lot. ​

A social media talent created a really useful checklist for me that I followed, and created a social kit with all the links in one place, and I can’t recommend having the book cover photo, and your short bio, and all the links you want people to use, in one single place.

Regrets Inventory: What I Should Have Done…

Should have gone to more festivals and conferences to get in the conversation and meet other authors who could offer advice. I loved going to the Texas Book Festival and think just hanging out at book festivals would be a rad life.

Should have deliberately targeted bookstagrammers and book clubs. Around Christmas, I visited an in-person book club of UCLA women doctors, and made so many new friends and really wanted in on that club. I also visited the American Women in Korea book club via zoom, and these were more fun than some of the huge book events in theaters.

Should have brought my girls on tour! They came to a Barnes and Noble signing nearby, but it was only a signing and not a talk, so none of them actually went to a Flawless book event! Big regret.

At a Barnes and Noble signing with the two turkeys born in Korea, Isa and Luna

Updates

A lot of updates because I have to close loops from my last post:

Literary Death Match is a wild and wonderful event that celebrates books and reading and OUR TEAM WON! The judges were hilarious, especially the historian/author Simon Montefiore, who has penned approximately 17 books on Stalin, and Young Stalin. But not middle-aged Stalin, apparently.

Flawless was optioned for film by a producing team including Janet Yang, best known for being Oliver Stone’s longtime producer, turning The Joy Luck Club into a film, and currently the president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. To that end, I finished writing the first film treatment of Flawless, in February! These Hollywood things have many ways to die in development, but the challenge of learning how to write for the screen stretched me in new ways and I’m energized by the opportunity. The next step is writing the scene-by-scene outline, which is going to be way harder. Fingers crossed.

Chatting with the wise and witty producer Janet Yang, who optioned Flawless for film

The Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong and Women in Publishing HK hosted me for a delicious four-course book lunch when I was in Asia over the holidays, and I cannot believe it even happened because my flight was late and then we had to go through immigration and customs, grab bags, and make the drive into Central Hong Kong just in the nick of time. My eyes were like road maps but what a thrill to get there and see my HIGH SCHOOL BEST FRIEND FROM TEXAS, Wade, seated at a table, because he happened to be spending Christmas in Hong Kong with his in-laws. Incredible.

WADE! On the right, when I first got to the event in Hong Kong.

This week I’m a guest on one of the most brilliant podcasts in the game, Normal Gossip. It’s an anonymous morsel of real gossip, told by the host Kelsey to a guest. We had So. Much. Fun. I won’t spoil it. Take a listen.

Thank Yous

So many organizations, brands, and friends new and old supported this book with their time, talent, spaces, sharing, writing, hosting, amplifying, in-kind donations, cooking, pouring, and on and on and on. The launch party alone had something like 16 woman-founded companies sponsoring it. But the true backbone of the publishing industry are readers, librarians and booksellers, especially the indie ones. Some of my faves, and they all hosted and supported Flawless tremendously this past year:

Bel Canto Books in Long Beach

Village Well in Culver City

Skylight Books in Hollywood

Loyalty Books in DC

Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle

Sausalito Books by the Bay in the Bay Area

Brazos Books in Houston

Interabang Books in Dallas

Yu and Me Books in New York

Possible Futures in New Haven

Ooooh also, before I go, I started a Bookshop.org collection of all the books I’ve read in 2024 so far, so we can read together and you can support independent bookstores with a purchase. Check it out. Have you read a book recently that you can’t stop talking about? Let me know in the comments!

And again, I can’t send enough gratitude to you, and every reader. Thank you from my whole heart.

See you tonight, for those of you who can make it to Vroman’s!

E