My officially unreleased personal growth book was assigned to my English composition courses as a class text. I’ll be inviting my students in the class to write an honest review of the book for extra credit on my Goodreads page (soon to be created). Any guidelines I should give them to not raise any red flags with Goodreads or Amazon? Thank you so much for your time and feedback.

Hello Friends, My release date is April 25, but with so many unexpected things that have come up, I lost sight of my exact strategy. Please give me some feedback on the points below. Here is my plan for now. 1. I will set a release date on Ingram and Amazon for end of April. It will be available on my website too through Lulu. 2. I plan to make it available for a 50% discount for the first month to motivate people to buy it and to ask for reviews. I have already updated my website, gotten a few proofs of the book in print and ebook to see if I have to make corrections, reinvigorated my social media, and have done some speaking engagements to tease the book release. I’m finding the pre-sale strategy confusing at the moment because I don’t like that you can’t do one through Amazon for print. Thanks so much in advance for any thoughts that you can share 🙏🏽

Your constructive criticism is most welcome on this press release. Thank you. HAWAII, August 27, 2026 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Authorized Biography of Arlinda Willis Published on Her 75th Birthday, the Anniversary of “I Have a Dream” For Once in My Life chronicles a Black woman who spends a lifetime proving her worth to the world, her family, and herself, only to find that she is enough just as she is. HAWAII — On what would have been her 75th birthday, and the 63rd anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the authorized biography of Arlinda Willis is published today. For Once in My Life: The Life of Arlinda Willis, written by Rob Cole and published by Margot Erickson Publishing, Inc., is the culmination of research and interviews that has taught a privileged white man about the disparities of the color and gender lines in America. Arlinda Willis was born on August 27, 1951, in Toxey, Alabama, an agricultural turned textile manufacturing town. She came of age under Jim Crow, and joined the Great Migration that carried millions of Black Americans northward to reunite with her mother, who had abandoned her a decade prior. Arriving in Cleveland, Ohio, she vied for her mother’s attention by becoming a professional dancer on television, a model, and a pageant queen. She moved to San Francisco, got married and quickly divorced, and suffered through lackluster office jobs and a non-existant love life, using alcohol as a coping mechanism. A co-worker, Rob, helped her overcome alcoholism, only for her to develop cancer a few months later. Illness made professional achievement impossible and she discovered, at last, that the love and approval she had been seeking all of her life had been there with Rob. It was a personal achievement she could still win. “Arlinda wanted to be recognized,” says Rob, who spent nearly two decades as Willis’s close friend and caregiver during her final years. “She asked me to write her biography so people would understand the barriers that Black women must scale for success.”

I am getting book club offers that ask for a payment in order to have my book as a highlighted topic for their club. Often this involves a Q&A session virtually and some marketing materials. Is there any benefit to these and how do you delineate between reliable ones and scams?

Hi everyone, and thanks to Shane for letting me post this here. I’m looking for ARC readers for my upcoming indie nonfiction book, Stop Selling to Dead Markets.It’s my first book, and I’d love to find a few thoughtful early readers. It’s for founders, marketers, consultants, and operators who want a better way to understand why some offers take off, why others stall, and what is actually blocking the buy.The core idea came from a question I kept running into over the years: why do some products move fast while others, which look just as viable on paper, go nowhere? That question eventually became the 6-Node Method, the framework behind the book. This is not a just a cozy business read. Alongside the theory and cases, the book includes a practical diagnostic workflow, AI prompts, and templates designed to help readers run the method on a real problem. If you’d be open to reading an advance copy and sharing feedback, comment below, send me a DM, or email me at [email protected] and I’ll reply with the PDF. Thanks so much.