Author Henriette Ivanans talks with memoir coach Julie Artz about success of her debut memoir, In Pillness and in Health.
This post originally appeared on the Author Accelerator blog.
The year 2020 was a tough year to be a creative person, a sensitive person, a person in general. It was a year to take stock and to think about what’s really important. So I was thrilled to end the year on a harmonious note by chatting with one of my earliest clients as a memoir coach — Henriette Ivanans.
Her indie-published memoir, In Pillness and in Health, is a bestseller on Amazon and poignantly tells the story of a marriage held hostage by disease. In raw and moving prose, Henriette recounts her battle with kidney disease and drug addiction. Woven throughout is a love story that ultimately helped her find redemption and healing.
Julie Artz: It’s so good to see you, Henriette! For our readers who weren’t there as it was happening, tell us a little bit about your publication journey. Why did you choose self-publishing?
Henriette Ivanans: I tried for a year to get an agent or a publisher. I’d written a book I was really proud of and I gave it everything that I had. I hired an ex-agent to help me craft a query letter, I researched everything, I watched webinars with Jennie Nash and Lisa Cron and others, I researched self-publishing, hybrid publishing, and traditional publishing. I’d come to a point in my life where anything I was going to do, I was going to work harder than I had ever worked before by being open, being teachable, and being willing and really learning about things in a way I’d never committed myself to before.
But after a year, it didn’t happen. The thing that gave me some perspective is that I used to be an actress. And the literary industry is not that different from Hollywood. It’s still a bit of a club and I didn’t take that personally. I really understood that perspective from the acting world. Since I didn’t know anybody, after a year, I just dove right into self-publishing.
I would recommend Rob Eagar’s Mastering Amazon for Authors course from Writer’s Digest. It has three components: publishing, marketing, and advertising. It had absolutely everything — 5–8 modules each, 30–40 hours long — that I needed to master Amazon. Every time I did something out of the box like that, it was very empowering. And I got more and more and more excited about self-publishing.
I was in acceptance and not in any bitterness about the traditional publishing route. Even if you are traditionally published, there’s a lot you give up control over and you have to do a lot of marketing yourself anyway. I wanted to get the book into the world, so I was willing to do anything….
JA: And you’ve had phenomenal success!
HI: Yes. As of today, I’ve sold 5200 books! Most self-published authors sell 100–250 copies in a lifetime. In Pillness and in Health has been out for a year and a half. I knew I’d written a good book, but I honestly had no expectations.
It can’t be about the money — it still isn’t enough to live on. For me, success was really when I understood why I was writing the book — that’s Jennie Nash’s “Deep-Level Why”. My dad died of alcoholism when I was 10 and I never understood why. Now I’ve had the opportunity to live sober for 7.5 years. Now I get to share what I know addiction to be. This book is my perception and understanding of it and I had to get that into the world.
After the book came out, people started to write to me on social media. A woman in New Zealand reached out and thanked me. She said she could better understand her husband, who was addicted to meth, and she understood how to approach him differently now. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.
At the time this story took place, I was an animal for drugs and alcohol. So if I can touch one person, if I can get that understanding to someone else, that understanding that for some reason my dad couldn’t get in his life, it’s been a success for me. It’s my entire reason for being on this earth, to connect with others and help somebody understand that story. It’s been incredibly exciting to have it received like this, with numbers like this.
JA: That’s so beautiful, and now you’ve been awarded with that orange bestseller badge for all of your hard work.
HI: It never gets old to me. That through the help of all these people including yourself — I’m very clear that it’s a collaborative experience, the willingness here and the knowledge and experience there — it still blows my mind that I wrote a book that I’m super proud of and that it’s out in the world.
JA: So what other things did you do to promote the book?
HI: For years, I had been following a number of different marketing people like Dan Blank, Jennie, Jane Friedman, Writer Unboxed. So by the time is came around to me being ready to publish, I knew where to go to get best-practices information. But the truth is I did a lot of social media posts before the book was out and, initially, I got quite a following. Then, once I released the book, they knew about the book and went out and bought it.
I was on the front page of the arts section of the Winnipeg newspaper on the day of my launch and the local bookstore, a chain with three locations, does a lot to promote self-published authors. They put together a whole launch for me.
I’ve taken a lot of webinars on Amazon advertising. There have been sales and there has been profit, but it’s a very intricate and challenging system to master. I looked into BookBub and have advertised there.
Part of mastering Amazon is finding these subcategories where you have a shot at being a bestseller. You can join up to 10. There’s maybe only been 14 days where I wasn’t on the Organ Transplant Bestseller List. There are 100 books on every Bestseller List. They change hourly depending on sales. I’m №1 because I sell books every single day. There have only been eight days in the last year and a half when I have sold zero books. And In Pillness is actually on seven total (including Organ Transplant) Bestseller Lists tonight, which is a very big deal. It’s kind of surreal sometimes.
I’ve pitched to newspapers and there still is very much a stigma against the self-published author. Jane Friedman is very educated on what will work and what won’t in self-publishing. My husband has had a photography business for 25 years and over the years we’d try all different kinds of ways to advertise, but eventually what worked the best was word of mouth. I have to say that has to have a lot to do with it. There’s a component to it that you can’t control. And that’s impacted my book — I don’t know what happened in March, but when COVID-19 hit, my sales doubled, even tripled: from 6 books a day to 12, 14, 18. You track it and try to figure out what you’re doing, but….
I’ve done some podcasts and posts, but I’m not in bookstores, I don’t have a publicist, I haven’t gotten in any big papers or on radio, so I have to think word of mouth has something to do with it. I keep working hard at it. I’m always doing something. I ask for a lot of reviews from people who tell me they’ve read my book. Reviews and ratings definitely help boost my profile on Amazon and Goodreads. Balancing all that marketing work with staying creative is a challenge.
JA: Can you talk a little bit about what the process of working with a memoir coach was like? You called working with a memoir coach a collaborative process. Tell us more!
HI: Who doesn’t fall in love with Jennie right away? Her energy and “yes you can” attitude oozes out of her. I was smitten and wanted to work with her. A couple months into it she told me I just wasn’t ready to write a book. I was crushed — devastated. I asked her what she suggested, and she said it wasn’t the writing; it was that I didn’t know what I was trying to say.
We talked about accountability. I said I didn’t know if I was going to be able to write a book without someone to be accountable to. By that time, I’d written four chapters and Jennie thought I’d be perfect for [an Author Accelerator certified memoir coach]. I worked with another memoir coach first and you (Julie) both had the story’s back from the beginning — you always had the narrative in your mind — and that was so valuable. I felt very held and that was crucial for someone so new. When that first memoir coach [stopped coaching], you stepped in.
There are no mistakes…when you came on board, you completely got that the book was about the marriage, that that was the focal point: the marriage going through the addiction. When you hit that for me, everything else fell away like feathers and everything else was so easy. Pages and pages I could hack away, like polishing something and watching it become brighter and brighter. It was magical.
I learned so many things from [working with a memoir coach]. Jennie said really early on that if you want to write a book, you have to give up something. You will not churn out 10 pages a week of focused content unless you give up something in your life. I remember thinking, What am I going to give up? I cut back a little bit on a number of things: less housework, less working out, and less socializing, for example. The first pages back from you were overwhelming, all the colors and the edits, but it was exactly what I needed. I wanted tough love [of a memoir coach] and I knew it was necessary if I was going to have something good.
I went into the whole [memoir coach experience] being very clear about how new I was. That I had some kind of raw talent for writing, but I didn’t have a clear understanding of the difference between the story and the plot. And you guys also got me on that train. It was very basic stuff, but as a new author it was what I needed. It was invaluable. I have recommended it to many new people. To feel all through the process that you guys were there, that I was writing with your note or comment or suggestion in mind. It felt collaborative.
When you write a book and you see all the pages of acknowledgements — there’s no way I feel like it was just my book. I feel like you’re a huge part of it, Jennie was a huge part of it, Lisa Cron was a big part of it. My six beta readers. One of them, one of my best friends, is a professional screenwriter. That’s why you guys are right up there in the acknowledgments.
That whole time that I was writing the book I was suffering with a horrific nerve issue and I felt so alone a lot of the time — and Jennie talks a lot about that in terms of the busyness of moms, but for those of us who are chronically ill, it’s a whole different situation and series of things you’re dealing with on a daily basis. How do you find time? Deal with pain? Go to endless appointments? So again, my drive to complete a book nudged me, it propelled me, to work through the pain.
On my wall, I had a quote from Lauren Hillenbrand’s essay A Sudden Illness. She’s lived with autoimmune disease and, while writing Unbroken, had vertigo so bad she’d have to lie down and write with her laptop propped up next to her and maybe write a paragraph all day. It’s mind-blowing that she could come up with something that genius given the condition that she had.
So I had to surround myself with not only Author Accelerator, but with inspiration from chronically ill authors, and the spiritual principles of Alcoholics Anonymous — people who do the work and show up no matter what and that kept me accountable and inspired. The fact that you guys were showing up with really solid efforts that were clearly not dropping the ball, that inspired me to keep going.
Writing, I always felt like I had someone with me. It wasn’t a lonely process. When I think about what I’m really trying to say, and realize I’m doing it to connect with other people, I never feel alone. And in a way, because he was my Deep-Level Why, my dad was always there too.
JA: What’s next for you?
HI: Honestly, I’m at a point where I’m trying to pick something. I have a podcast possibility to tell the story of addicts. To create more tolerance and patience and less judgment, to help people with understanding that it’s a disease. And I have an acting agent who wonders if there’s a limited series option.
But I have ideas for books too. I’ve had five dogs in my life and I’ve always wanted to write a Marley and Me-type memoir on the healing nature of dogs, especially during all the periods of sickness and sadness in my life: addiction, kidney disease, tinnitus, heartbreak, marital separation, chronic nerve pain, etc… How Five Hounds Healed a Hen.
But I’ve also written a children’s book for adults about arachnophobia. We lived in a little cabin in the foothills outside of Los Angeles with no AC and no heat. By our back door one day, we found a tarantula. She had her little cave there and she’d come out at night and she’d sit on her little crag of rock, and she’d get a cricket, and then go back in. I can’t overstate how arachnophobic I was before meeting her. For two years, we watched her and I came to maybe not love her, but to at least have compassion for her. So I have an idea for that too.
Again it’s like Jennie would say: “too many ideas” syndrome. So I need to take two weeks and think about if that’s really what I want to do. More will be revealed.
JA: More will be revealed, indeed. Thanks, Henriette. It was great catching up with you! So glad I could be your memoir coach on this project!
To find out more about whether a memoir coach is right for you, read more at Book Coaching.
