Oct 22nd, 2024, 01:50:38
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Getting a book deal is a dream for many writers. Getting a book deal on a story you first published a decade ago feels even more magical. But that’s exactly what happened to Ximena Vengoechea, writer, illustrator, and user researcher.
The short version of Vengoechea’s story is this: in 2014, she came up with a cool, new idea — the Life Audit. She tried it on herself. She wrote about her experience. The story found a huge audience on Medium, but also off Medium. It was shared over 100k times in emails, and on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, and X.
Her story caught the eye of an editor at Fast Company, who asked Vengoechea to become a contributor. From there, a literary agent found her work and worked with her to publish three books. One of those is The Life Audit, to be published October 15, 2024 by Chronicle Books.
I sat down (virtually) with Vengoechea to talk about:
How did she have the idea for this story?
How exactly did it turn into a book deal?
Why did she publish the story on Medium?
What have been some of the highs and lows of the whole process?
Here is an edited version of our conversation.
What exactly is a Life Audit?
Back in 2014, Vengoechea was at a crossroads. She’d just moved to a new city, started a new job, and wasn’t sure what her priorities should be. “I had all these hobbies that I was cultivating. I was interested in design. I was interested in illustration and writing. There was so much that I wanted to do more of,” she told me during our interview. “I would try to journal my way through that, or talk with friends about it, but I felt like I was getting a little stuck.”
She turned to her new job as a user researcher to find tools to help her understand her confusion. “I borrowed what I think of as the most useful tool from user research — asking probing questions without bias that allow somebody to open up. I also borrowed tools from cluster analysis, using sticky notes and brainstorming to make sense of all that data so that I could move from this place of information to insight. I just decided to see if this process would work for me. Like, I will be the prototype.”
The result was the Life Audit, a process of mapping out all your wishes and dreams onto sticky notes, clustered into themes, and stacked into an actual plan to change your life.
Her results, which you can read about in her Medium story “How and Why to do a life Audit,” were fascinating — drawing in over 230k readers over the years since it’s been published.
How did her story turn into a book deal?
How did the story, “How and Why to do a Life Audit: Architecting a life in 100 post-its & 1 Saturday Afternoon,” end up becoming the book, The Life Audit: A Step-By-Step Guide to Discovering Your Goals and Building the Life You Want — ten years later?
Shortly after she published her story on Medium, it was picked up by Fast Company, a business magazine, where she was asked to become a regular contributor. She began to regularly write for them, as well as a handful of other outlets like The Muse. Meanwhile, she was also busy establishing herself as a user researcher, pursuing a full-time career.
Three years later, her growing portfolio of writing work ended up catching the attention of an agent, who reached out to ask her to consider working on a book proposal.
“It was totally unexpected. And, yeah, it is every writer’s dream to just put the work out there and an agent finds you and says, ‘Hey. I wanna champion you,’” Vengoechea said.
But when the agent first reached out, Vengoechea turned her down. “I was writing a lot. I also had my 9 to 5, and I was going up the corporate ladder as a user researcher. I was really focused on that. And one day, I got an email from my agent, Leila at Stonesong. She said she admired my work and wanted to know if I’d ever thought about writing a book. Of course I had.”
Naturally, Vengoechea was thrilled — show me one writer who wouldn’t be! — but that didn’t change the fact that it just wasn’t the right time for her.
“I didn’t have the head space to think about that. It’s something that every writer wants, but that doesn’t mean that you are ready when somebody else is ready. I ended up candidly telling her that I thought it sounded great, but I had too much other stuff going on, which I think was the right move.”
For many writers, that kind of delay would feel risky. What if the agent changed her mind? But Vengoechea had no regrets. “I’m glad that I gave myself the gift of time. Because two years later, when things had calmed down at my 9 to 5, I had the mental space to think about these things. Then I reached back out, ready to talk.”
Vengoechea and her agent discussed various ideas, including the Life Audit, but her first book with that agent ended up something else, a concept she’d shared on LinkedIn originally. “I wrote a blog post about how to be a better listener, which went viral. That was another area where it was clear that people were interested in that topic, and that I had a lot to say about it given my background.” That book, Listen Like You Mean It, came out in March 2021.
Her second book, Rest Easy, came out last year. “That one is all about why we don’t get the rest we need and how we can get more of it. That did not stem from a blog post, that stemmed from me being exhausted from writing my first book, while at the same time keeping my 9 to 5, it being the pandemic and starting a family all at the same time. No blog post for that one. Just a lot of tired days. The lived experience,” she explained.
It wasn’t until her third book that she was ready to come back to the Life Audit, a story that had continued getting readers throughout its lifespan and which was still a project near and dear to her.
She explained that the reason she hadn’t chosen to go with that as her first book was because of the deep impact it had had on readers. “I had put the Life Audit out there because I thought it could help people. So the fact that people were responding to it meant that that was working. I had a contact form on my website, and so many readers found me and reached out to ask for advice. It was so flattering. But it was also completely unexpected. You know, I was in my mid-twenties and felt totally ill-equipped to handle a specific person’s very detailed situation.”
So, what changed when she felt ready to return to the Life Audit?
“I always knew that the Life Audit could be a book, but I wasn’t ready for it to be the first book. I I knew I would come back to it when I was ready. One of the things that made me ready was developing the sense that I don’t have to be personally responsible for every single person’s step-by-step experience. I can see that more clearly.”
Why did she publish the story on Medium?
When you’ve got the wide internet open and available to you, why come to Medium to publish your big idea?
“I think I was drawn to Medium because, in part, because I was making this pivot into the tech world,” Vengoechea said. “A lot of the early writing on Medium was about start-ups and products. It felt like there was a natural built-in audience for the themes that I was exploring in my life. I wanted to share and give back to that audience.”
Editor’s note: It’s worth noting that Medium’s readers still enjoy reading about startups and product development, but we’re also home to a wide readership in topics including data science, history, relationships, politics, personal development, and mental health.
Part of it was also how simple it was to get a story from an idea to publish. “It was just very easy to use,” she added. “I’m a researcher, so I care a lot about user experience. Especially at the time, Medium was very early in allowing people to show up, write, and publish.”
How can you write a story to get a book deal?
I was curious if, now that she’d had two blog posts turn into books, she felt like she could — or ever would — reverse-engineer the process and write a story with a potential book deal in mind.
“No. When I write, it’s less that I have a book in mind, and more that I’m exploring what’s interesting to me. I’m still trying to be helpful. I’m still trying to make an impact. But I will share that story really only when I feel like I’m meeting that bar.”
In other words, an idea has to be interesting to her for her to explore it in a story, and should also be a concept where she feels she’ll be able to make a difference to her readers in some way.
Vengoechea explained: “Writing is a bit of a test ground to see how your ideas land with people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the next piece that goes viral is the one that becomes the book, but it does give you some signal that readers are interested in what you have to say. But my criteria is less about whether the story could become a book, and more about whether I’m saying something useful. Even sending out a newsletter — it’s a privilege to be in somebody’s inbox, so I don’t take that lightly.”
This is a really good question to ask yourself when you’re writing, too, whether or not you’re writing with an aim to get a book deal at some point. Is this going to be useful? How is this going to help the person who ends up reading this or having it in their inbox?
Vengoechea didn’t set out with this master plan to get a book deal. She followed the themes in her life that were important to her, like sharing experiences, writing, and self-improvement — and those led to her book deal.
What’s the takeaway for writers on Medium?
First, if you’re interested in conducting a life audit of your own, get Vengoechea’s book! I’ve preordered it and I’m super excited to read it. You can also find more of her books and services on her website here.
Second, what I love about Vengoechea’s story is how she used Medium as a place to share her expertise and see how an idea would resonate with readers — and those readers were not just Medium readers. I know I personally sometimes forget that readers on Medium aren’t just my regular day-to-day readers, but also literary agents, Fast Company editors, and people who are interested in potentially hiring me to consult with them, as Vengoechea found.
TL;DR: When you write on Medium, there are a lot of benefits:
You can access an established audience here
You can write as regularly or irregularly as you want without needing to stick to a schedule
If you choose to paywall your story, you can earn money for your writing when you enroll in the Medium Partner Program
No matter if you paywall your writing or not, your work can still have a huge impact beyond earnings. Medium writers have gotten promotions, book deals, consulting gigs, and more from their work here
Beyond writing with that potential audience in mind, there are specific things you can do on Medium to make the most of that audience. I recommend you fill out your bio so your expertise is clear at a glance. You can go into more detail on your about page. If you have a book published already — self-published or traditionally published! — make sure you’re verified as an author.
Basically, ask yourself: if my future CEO/ best-paying client/literary agent read my post, would they have all the info they need to see that I know what I’m talking about, beyond the story they read? Do they know how to reach me? Can they decide whether I’m worth their time based on the information I have here?
When you write something, you’re building a relationship with your reader — even if it’s just a temporary, ephemeral one, and even if you never see each other’s faces. When you reach someone through your words, it can be a surprisingly intimate experience, even though you’re on opposite ends of a screen. That’s true no matter whether you’re writing a guide to audit your life, listen better, or rest when you’re burned out — or any of the other stories we read on Medium.
