I Got My Book Deal! But Here’s Why It Felt Hard to Celebrate

[00:00:00] I can barely believe that I’m even able to share this with you at this point in time. It has been, seven years in the making. Seven years. That just blows my mind even just mentioning it just now. I am so beyond excited to share with you today that I successfully landed a traditional book publishing deal with an amazing publisher. I’m gonna be publishing with HCI, who’s best known for publishing the Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

So great, large, independent publisher. It’s been such a wild ride to get here and what’s even crazier is the wild ride that’s happened since the deal. I overall had some very unexpected emotional responses after it was all said and done. And I really wanted to take this opportunity to get to share with you, what that looked like.

in this [00:01:00] episode today, I’m going to take you along my entire journey. From where it started, to how I made it happen, to the unanticipated emotional responses I had after it was official. So stick around, this is one that you’re not going to want to miss.

You’re listening to The Next Step with Corrie Lo, where we transform overwhelm into confident action. I’m Corrie LoGiudice, keynote speaker, coach, and working mama of four here to help ambitious women just like you take the next step, whether that be leadership at work, at home, or in your community. Let’s get started. 

So back when I started my business, this was, I want to say late 2018, very early 2019. I kind of always knew my goal. I wanted to be a coach first and foremost, would love to get into speaking. And I also wanted to be an author. To the point where in my email signature I would write coach, author, and speaker and that was before I was any of those things.

So talk about manifestation at its finest. I’m going to talk a lot about manifestation [00:02:00] today because it is wild the way all this unfolded. But I had put on my original vision board, which I’ll make sure that we show here, that I wanted to be a New York Times bestselling author, at some point.

So this like seed was planted back when I first started my business and every single year since then. It has been a goal of mine, you know, an achievement that I’ve carried over to the following year, but never really happened. So first priority was me, obviously, generating revenue as a coach, which I did very well, and I did easily.

Eventually, along the lines, I met mentors who saw in me that I could be a good, great speaker. One that comes to mind that I definitely want to give credit to is Shannon Kaiser. I worked with Shannon initially when I had first started my business and she was one of the first people to say, ” Hey, you’ve got a great story.

Have you ever thought of doing a TEDx?” And I thought she was nuts because I had never been on a stage to [00:03:00] speak anything, nevermind TEDx. So long story short, like these other people are showing up and encouraging me to try new things. So I started off as a speaker. I landed TEDx within, four months of starting to speak seriously and my business kind of takes off from there.

And while I’m speaking, oftentimes I would give my signature keynote and I would come off stage and I started getting requests where people were literally asking for a book. They were like, “Hey, do you have something I could take home with me? Following this talk, I want to be able to reference the Overwhelm Culprit framework.”

So this is maybe, I want to say three or four years ago where I put it on, from the back burner to the front burner and knew, okay it’s time for me to really start to entertain this. So I didn’t know where to start. That’s what happens when you’re overwhelmed. You have no idea where to start.

So the very first place I looked at was closing the knowledge gap [00:04:00] Now, I had initially signed up for Gabby Bernstein’s Best Seller Masterclass, which is a great online course, by the way. Went through the modules, went through the steps, got to the point where I had written a book proposal.

All right, and I felt okay about it, but I kind of like just let it sit there until once again, I get signs from the universe where I have like my therapist mentioned to me “Hey, have you ever thought of writing a book?” Like everybody at that point was asking me, “Corrie have you ever thought of writing a book?”

So while I hadn’t seriously prioritized the manuscript before that I really started to at this point. This was about three years ago so finished my book proposal sent it out to, I don’t know, maybe 20, 20 to 30 different literary agents. I got nothing. And then I sat on it for a while more. And again, year to year, every year the write a book would then show back up on my vision board for the next year.

So going into 2024, I decided, you know what, [00:05:00] enough’s enough I finally need to get this book thing done. And that’s when I really started to analyze “Corrie, why is it every single year you’re kicking the can down the road with this book thing? What is it that’s holding you back? Because if you’re able to land a TEDx within a couple of months of trying what’s the hold up with the book thing?”

And. It was interesting because, truth was, I was sabotaging myself when I look back at it now. I had so many, I guess you could say, fear of success beliefs. A great one, for example, that I had to do things like EFT tapping and create different affirmations for myself to learn to rewire and unpattern, was I was terrified that my kids would read the book and know about my past life.

Cause I left an abusive scenario and I was really afraid that my son’s going to read that and see it. I was afraid of what my family and friends would think. I had all these different fears surrounding like [00:06:00] what would happen if I actually told the story without actually recognizing the fact that I am literally telling the same story on stages and getting paid for it.

So it did not compute, so that said I had to really learn to repattern some of my negative thinking when it came to it .It really kind of pushed through fear and one of the things that I’ve learned over the years that’s really helpful for me in particular is if there’s something I really kind of want to break through and keep myself committed to that I hire a coach or a mentor. So reason I mentioned Shannon before is you know, initially when I started my business, I work with Shannon on the coaching side more.

So she had helped me, launch, learn how to do press and media and basically build up a coaching business. And then I dabbled in speaking for a little bit. But by the time I had stopped working with her, I’d built a pretty large platform as a coach and then hadn’t really thought about it for several years after until I decided I was gonna look for a coach in the author space.

And then I remembered, “Oh [00:07:00] wait, Shannon’s an author.” That’s like her number one thing that she does. So I reached out to her and I signed up for author mentorship. And she helped me go through, it’s over the course of three or four months, we completely cut apart my book proposal.

So what I thought was great. Actually, I still had a lot of things that I was unaware of when it came to the publishing industry on how the way I worded it came across. So things that like, you don’t know if you don’t know. So hiring, a professional who’s in the space and does this as her like full time career was really helpful for me in getting that kind of perspective and knowing what changes I needed to make.

Now this is where it gets like crazy. So from there, at that point, I created a new list of different literary agents that I should be pitching. And Shannon included a few on there that she felt that I should reach out to . So there’s like a handful on there. And this was about August of 2024.

I finally had the brand new [00:08:00] proposal. It looks great. This is pretty much a year to the day after I had sent out the last batch of literary agents queries. It’s called a literary query and I make time that morning because during the summer I try not to work. I hang out with my kids. So I work a very limited schedule in the summer.

So I wake up really early in the morning to get admin work and stuff done so that then I can hang out with them and go to the pool or whatever. So that morning, I’ll never forget it, I set the intention that I was going to send out two, two queries a day. So I sent out two queries and within five minutes I get a response from an agent who then later that day called me on the phone and then set up a meeting and then I can’t even make this up.

Later that evening, he offered me representation. And I’m very spiritual in a way I do believe in the universe and us each having a purpose and I’m agnostic though, so I refer to God as like the universe, but [00:09:00] I really believe in signs and knowing when you’re on the right path. 

So the fact that this happened so quickly, I viewed as a great sign that I had the right guidance. So signed with my agent in August, we had gone out with our first round of proposals. I went on submission is what they call it in the literary world in September of 2024.

So the first round we did great. I make it through to acquisitions with one publisher and ultimately it falls flat, which is just part of the deal. So, for anybody who’s never been on submissions with traditional publishers, you’re basically getting rejected left and right.

So first round was around 13 publishers, all rejections. So this happened, luckily in nonfiction works a lot faster than fiction, so it was pretty quick with the deadlines and whatnot. So we knew we had passes on all of them right before the holidays. So at that point in time, I had spoken to my agent.

Okay I’m going to take the feedback that [00:10:00] everybody gave me, on the proposal. I’m going to rework some things and we’ll go back out in January. And that’s exactly what we did. So we went back out in January 2025. I’m recording this right now in March of 2025. And went out on another round, about 13 publishers.

And this go around, considering all of the changes that were made went very positive. We had, I think it was like four or five that had either taken it to submissions or taken it to second reads. I had one big five publisher asked for a revise and resubmit, so I actually took the whole book and I reformatted it.

It was originally formatted as a memoir and redid it as a self-help. Just very traditional prescriptive self help. And through the end of that, I ended up with my deal with HCI. Now the reason that I share all that backstory is it’s interesting in how I handled everything after getting that news.

So in the limbo before [00:11:00] knowing whether or not I was going to get the official deal. I had, I don’t know what happened. I had this inspired thought to watch this documentary that I had watched back in 2018. And the documentary, I think it was called The Soul of Success. And it’s about Jack Canfield, who is the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

And I remembered watching it back in 2018, 2019, when I first started my business, and thinking ” Oh, this is a really cool business model. I like what he’s doing. That’s cool with the books.” I watched it, was inspired and never really thought much about it after. And it was interesting because while I was waiting for the official offer to come through.

I rewatched this documentary and I cannot make this up. Literally my editor is in that documentary and the publisher is in the documentary. So I’m like, this is insane. This is crazy. And even like this past [00:12:00] week now, I’m still waiting on the official contract to sign by the time this actually posts online, it will be done.

But that said, while I was waiting for all this, I dove back into Gabby Bernstein’s Best Seller Masterclass to refresh myself on a few of her marketing tips and things like that for the book when it comes out. And I went back to a section that she had in there on literary agents and publishers, and she straight out mentions my agent in it, which I never put two and two together back then.

But it’s really wild to think how it’s like all along the way there were signs on like the way it was supposed to play out and how it was supposed to happen. So it like gives me goosebumps even just thinking about it. So what is meant for you will happen, like when you set that intention and you watch, for the signs.

All that said I know what you’re thinking. You’re like, “Corrie, you’ve mentioned like we’re here waiting because we want to hear what was that unanticipated emotional response?” So I get the phone call from my agent [00:13:00] that, the deal happened, right? It’s happening. I’m waiting on a contract.

And the best way I could describe it is I just feel numb. Like I couldn’t process it. It was too much. I had a lot going on with work that week. It’s International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, which is always very busy for me with speaking so I have six gigs and I had a new talk that I was doing.

So that week was just like crazy. I didn’t have any time or space to really process it. And my husband comes home from work. So sweet. He brings home bottles of sparkling cider for us to break open with our kids to like toast and celebrate mommy’s big book deal. And still I couldn’t get myself excited over it to the point where he called me out on it.

” Corrie, what’s wrong? You should be really excited about this.” I’m like, “I am. I just don’t know why I’m not allowing myself to celebrate it.” Later on in the week, I make it a point to go out and do some yoga classes. It’s something I’m trying to have more hobbies and have more time and space to [00:14:00] think.

So I’m in this yoga class. It’s the latter part of the week that I got the offer it’s a yin yoga class. I’m sitting in this pose for what feels like five minutes and all of a sudden out of nowhere, I just start bawling. I’m crying hysterically and it hits me when the teacher had said something along the lines of, allowing an ease.

And I realized I wasn’t allowing myself to celebrate this. And the reason why was because I had never taken the time to grieve the version of me that’s in the book. So the version of me that’s in the book is who I’m ultimately writing this book for. I’m writing this book for women who are, working moms.

A lot of them are single moms. They’re overwhelmed trying to balance everything at work and at home while advancing their careers. And that was me, at this point, like 7 to 10 years ago, really [00:15:00] struggling, and having a really difficult time with it. And the milestone of having landed the book deal made it so obvious to me the transformation in me, right?

I hadn’t been able to see it until I saw it then and that’s, I’m getting emotional now even just thinking about it, and I hadn’t allowed myself time to grieve that version of myself and to, really send like love and affection and care to, it’s almost like thinking of your inner child in a way, that younger version of myself.

I had so many unprocessed emotions and feelings regarding that period of my life that will now be in this book that it was completely unanticipated. I’m in this yoga class, just like bawling. But the amazing part about it is after that emotional release, then I was excited. It was like that one last thing left I had to process and then I was able to go out and celebrate.

What do we do to [00:16:00] celebrate my, husband and my kids took me out for dinner at my absolute favorite place. The kids were all super excited. It’s funny that entire week they were telling everybody including their teachers, ” Mommy got a book deal. Mommy sold her book.” And we really try hard to model for our kids how to celebrate, how to be excited.

We talk through all of our goals. You know what it is we’re working towards. So my kids authentically really knew how much work I had put into the manuscript and the book proposal and trying to find the agent and they’ve celebrated with me every step along the way. It just took me a little bit of time surprisingly after receiving this news for me to be able to catch up and celebrate with them alright, so really when you break it down this entire process really highlighted for me the level of personal growth that I achieved in roughly a decade.

The other thing that added to this too, the same week was also my son’s [00:17:00] 10 year birthday. And when I write in the book, he was only like five months old. So it just really highlighted the amount of time that’s passed, how much I grew personally and as well as how much of my identity has changed. And the unprocessed emotions that I had surrounding it, it’s so, so, so important that when we are working towards something and we achieve it, that we celebrate it, right? And if for some reason you’re not celebrating something, it’s time to unpack and understand and try to figure out why. Give yourself the time and the space to be able to do it. Some of the things that I did in this scenario was I knew that I was running on empty.

I was burnt out. I was overwhelmed, busy season at work. I was creating and carving space out of doing an activity that was in silence so that I would actually be forced to be present and doing yoga that allowed for that type of release. So it could be yoga, [00:18:00] it could be meditation, it could be speaking to a therapist, speaking to a friend, right?

Having the time and space to be able to talk through and process what it is you’re feeling is so important, especially if you find yourself having difficulty celebrating the milestone. And some of the ways that you can reflect on your journey and celebrate, and I mentioned a few of them today, we, a couple of things that we did for the book. Actually, I’ll tell you all along the way because we celebrated every single step.

So we went from when I had finished, my book proposal and was getting ready to go on submission we had a fancy dinner that we made at home. Then when I landed my literary agent that day, it happened, I signed the contract right before we went on vacation. So we were talking about it a lot while on vacation, we toasted it while on vacation with my entire family, which was pretty awesome.

Then when the book deal happened, we had the sparkling cider, with my kids, we went out for the special dinner. I took a day off from work to go and [00:19:00] do something that I really wanted to do, which for me was thrifting, which is really ironic, but that’s what I felt like doing.

So taking time to do things that feel good with either yourself, your family, and those that you care about that you want to celebrate it with. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. You don’t always have to toast with champagne or go out for meals. You don’t have to reward yourself with food. That’s what felt right for me in wanting to share that experience with my family.

But what’s most important is that you do something. Buy yourself a little gift, take a bubble bath, do anything that makes you feel good so you can lock in the frequency of achieving that, so it becomes normalized 

for the next thing that you go after.

All right. So, that about sums it up. This is a bit of a longer episode than I usually do.

It’s such a personal and professional milestone. I am so happy to be able to share it with you today. It would not have been possible without you, my supporters, [00:20:00] everybody, my audience, people who have stayed after my talks and, met me at the meet and greet and who have DM’d me online.

You have no idea how much I appreciate the support you’ve given me. Same thing for all of my mentors including, Shannon, my literary agent Steve my editor, that I’m excited to be working with. None of this would have been possible without you. Thank you for guiding me along the way each step of the way. I really appreciate it. This would not be possible without you. And if you’re interested in getting more updates on the book, join my email newsletter.

I’m going to make sure that we link to it in the show notes today. I will be sharing, updates like this as we go through the process. The next big milestone that I have that I need to meet is turning in my first draft manuscripts by July 1st is the date that I need to do that. So I will be sharing on social media the journey along the way.

Would love to have you with me on it. If you have any questions, let me know. I’ll be sharing a lot about the [00:21:00] process, and I am excited to have you along for this wild ride with me. In closing today, I did want to go ahead and share next time that you are feeling, you know, you accomplish something huge and you’re really hesitant on how to celebrate it.

Maybe you feel the same way that I did, that you feel a little bit numb or that you don’t want to, really call out to the world the amazingness that you just achieved, that there’s something holding you back. Remember that personal growth often means that we have to let go of the past versions of ourselves.

And that’s actually a positive thing. It’s not a negative thing. So create the time and space for you to grieve that version of yourself the same way that I did so that you could fully step into the version of you that you’re meant to be today. So thanks so much. If you love this show, go ahead, like, subscribe and I will see you on the next one.

Thanks for checking out the next step with Corrie Lo. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Together we’ll [00:22:00] transform overwhelm into action and we’ll keep taking the next step towards competent leadership. See you next time.