Ep 251: 2026: The Year of Ease, Not Hustle

This episode starts with a question that’s been tapping me on the shoulder all year: What would it look like to choose ease without giving up momentum?

I’m reflecting on the past year in book writing and publishing, and sharing what I’m carrying forward into 2026. Less hustle-for-hustle’s-sake. More sustainable progress that feels livable.

I talk about why consistency in book sales matters more than viral spikes, and why realistic goals tend to outperform ambitious ones you can’t maintain. 

There’s an honest look at marketing, too. It takes time. It’s rarely linear. And there’s no shortcut that replaces steady effort and experimentation. 

Finally, I dig into the quieter side of growth: building community, focusing on connection over vanity metrics, and staying open to adapting your approach as the market (and your life) changes.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Year-End Setup And Context
• 3:24 Recapping 2025 Trends With Jen
• 4:34 Defining Ease For 2026
• 7:29 Rejecting Bro Marketing
• 11:04 Earning Ease Versus Instant Success
• 14:54 Realities Behind Big Book Launches
• 18:59 Aim For Two Sales A Day
• 22:39 Why Consistency Beats Spikes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:18

Hey, everybody, and welcome, welcome. I think this is gonna be the last episode of 2025. It is the 17th of December, which means that next week will be the 24th. So I'm thinking this is it. This is the last episode. And if you have not yet listened to the episode just prior to this, the one I did last week with Jen Hansen-DePala, you're gonna wanna have a listen to that. Believe me. It is so we did an episode together at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2020, where we were talking through, I was asking Jen a lot of questions. If you're not familiar with Jen Hansen-DePaula, she's a book marketing specialist and she has been doing this for as long as I have, not only in the area of books, but she also worked in the music industry in Nashville as a publicist and as a publicity specialist for many, many years. It's it's interesting how similar the book industry and the music industry are to one another. And so we've had a lot of really interesting conversations talking about that. And then we just become very good friends. In fact, yesterday she sent me an email. She's like, I think this is the first email we ever wrote to one another back. I have to look at the year because I haven't looked at the email yet. But over time, we've not met in person, as per all this. And but we've become very good friends. And I just adore her and I love her approach. And so we talked about what we thought was gonna go on in 2025. And so, not like we didn't have a crystal ball. We just we were kind of talking through what it seemed like was working and had been working and what was new and what people were enjoying and those sorts of things. That episode was very widely listened to. And so last week I thought, let's do this again for 2026. So that's what we did last week is we talked through just what, again, what's working, what's not working. And these are general what's working and what's not working. I think one of the things that I want to talk about today, because today is all about ease in 2026. And if you just rolled your eyes because you're so tired of hearing phrases like, I want to do this with ease, and of course I'm selling 10,000 books a day. Fear not, I've got you, because I too am tired of all of that. But I'm gonna come at it from a little bit of a different angle. I'll speak for myself. I need 2026 to be not easier, but I need more ease in my 2026. I have been working for years to undo in myself the hustle mentality that was instilled, if not outright, attempted to be beat into me by early coaching experiences I had. And I'm not saying that negatively. That's just that's the it's the mode people were in back 10 years ago. And it also was who I was choosing to surround myself with. I mean, those people still exist. The bro marketing and all that is still out there. And I'm not here to say it's bad or wrong. It's just not for me. I couldn't keep up. I don't want to keep up. Um, I felt like it was just this go, go, go, get, get, get more, more, more scenario. And it's what prompted me to think through the content of my fifth book, which is titled Enough, because I realized I had to figure out what enough looked like for me, and then how to get there and keep going and feel okay, even though so many people were saying, but Elizabeth, you could get and have and be so very much more. So, with that in mind, for 2026, as we look into 2026 as authors, whether we're traditionally published, indie published, self-published, hybrid published, however you identify, whatever paradigm you're and publishing model you're with, and it maybe multiple models, what do we want to do? And how do we want our 2026 to look? I heard a phrase the other day. This is not unique to, I did not make this up. I wish I had made this up. I don't know who the originator of it is. If you know, please tell me. But the phrase was you earn your ease. Now, I love it and I want to be clear about something. I am so tired of words like earn, deserve, worth. I believe those things are all inherent. I don't think we have to earn love or we deserve this success, or we don't deserve that success, or we're worth this, but we're not worth that until fill in the blank. I think all those things are inherent. But what I love about the phrase, you earn your ease, is it is so easy. I didn't even mean for that to happen. So pun, not in unintended, it is so easy to think in this space, I'll speak just to this space, the author space, that other people have it easier. We look at their social media numbers, we look at like their number of followers, their number of likes, their numbers of comments, the number of books they say they're selling, et cetera. And we make all manner of assumptions about what's going on in their life, how much money they're making, how many books they're selling, how beloved they are, how likely it is that their next book is just gonna do great. They're now in the machine and they're on see the air quotes, easy street from here on out. And I have talked to enough authors this past year of all different publishing models, again, traditionally published, New York Best Times selling authors, self-published authors that you've perhaps never heard of, but are definitely selling books. And I know that because I can go in and look at certain things and see certain numbers that are not exact numbers. But I can, you know, if you're number two in fiction, in the whole fiction store or in women's fiction, you're arguably selling books. And everyone has the same response, which is like this, it's not easy. This and people who get to the point where when they release a book, it just goes, air quote goes, because we don't know what the expectation is on them from their publisher. If their last book sold a million copies, selling 10,000 isn't gonna probably it's gonna raise eyebrows because the publisher's like, wait a minute, where's we need you to surpass your last one? And there is not a book on the market, there is not an agent, there is not an editor, there is not a publisher who can guarantee that a book will do uh any level of see the air quotes well. It's just, it's gambling. It's like legal gambling, is what it is on all fronts. And some people have more success with that than others. But authors who release a book and it just does so well right out of the gate, it immediately hits number one on Amazon, like the whole store, andor New York Times, andor Wall Street Journal, andor USA Today, USA Today, they it for the most part, of course, there are exceptions. For the most part, they earned that. And what I mean by that is they've been working at this for years and years and years. So it's their eighth book, or it's their 15th book, or it's their first book, but they've been writing it for 20 years and networking for, like, you know, working with coaches or writing programs, whatever the case may be. It's not something that just falls into someone's lap in this space. And one of the greatest parts, I thought, I mean, there were so many great moments of my conversation last week with Jen. One of the ones that I loved the most and that's getting the most great feedback, but also questions is focus on selling two books a day. I would even say focus on selling one book a day or focus on selling one book five days, like five books a week. It is dangerous to say, I want to sell 10,000 books this year if you've only sold five of that book to date. So starting with more reasonable metrics for the motion and more reasonable goals for the most part feels so much better to people in this space. Yes, there are always going to be people who are like, listen, I'm committed to. I've heard people over the years say things like, I want to reach a million women. And my thought on that is that's that's wonderful. Like I love that journey for you and that dream for you. Do you even know what a million women looks like? It's just, it's really just a number. So when people say, I want to sell a hundred thousand books, why are you grabbing at that number? Let's bring it down to something a little more measurable and reasonable, which for most people, especially the authors with whom I talk, is like one or two books a day. Let's get to that point because as I will talk more about in 2026, consistency. I'm so tired of talking about what's king. Like it was like content is king, and then it was context as king. And I think I might have been one who was really on that soapbox of context. But let's talk about consistency. And we'll take out the word king, but consistency is so important in the book world. I mean, really in almost anything, but in the book world, consistency is so important. I would prefer, and I don't want to put words in Jen's mouth, but I'm pretty confident, like assuming that Jen would agree that it it's going to work better for you and feel better for you if you are consistently selling a book a day, and then you go to two, and then you go to four. If you come out of the gate and sell a thousand books in your first week, but never sell another book, I we it's you're gonna, there's gonna be a challenge unless you don't care. And if you're listening to this, I'm assuming that you care. So there are different challenges that come with that, all of which could probably take up their own episode. But it becomes a challenge. So an author with whom I work listened to that episode with Jen. And the first, I knew it was gonna happen, but the first question she had, I was talking to her about something else the other day, and she said, okay, but how? How do I get to two books a day? Small spoil or not, I think Jen and I will be having a few more public conversations about these sorts of things in 2026. So stay tuned. It's something that is really important to both of us to be talking about more. I know from my own personal experience as the author of six books how important that consistency and that sustainability is for the long-term trajectory of your books. I have one book of mine which has sold consistently, sustainably, reliably for the better part of 20 years. It was the very first book I wrote, and I can't even advertise it because it has the word shit in the title. So you can't, Amazon and Meta won't let you run those ads as of today. But it sells every day. At least one copy. Now keep in mind, I could also go out and be like, I sell every single day. And you or you, the listener, or you, the general you, might assume that what I mean by that is that I sell a thousand books a day. If I sell one book a day, I'm I profit about$4. So that's not paying any of my. I mean, it's not, it can't even get me a latte. But I do sell that book. That book sells every single day. Now, on that book, I don't have some authors have another product or service that they are offering, and some authors don't. Some authors are just, they've written one book or they plan to write more books. And sometimes it's fiction, and sometimes it's poetry, and sometimes it's a cookbook. And people are handling their author business in all different ways. For me, that first book doesn't lead into anything else. So there's, I don't have a, it's for parents of newborn twins or twins in the first year. So I don't have a course for them. I barely knew, you know, what I was doing myself, as I clarified in the book. The other book of mine that now sells every day, with a few exceptions. Every once in a while I do have a zero sales day because it happens, is write the damn book already. And then write the damn book already is a little bit different because some sometimes, certainly not 100% of the time, I have no idea what the conversion rate is because I have no way to track it that I can figure out. People will read that book and then they will come and take my outlining workshop, or they'll join the 33-day bookwriting boot camp, or they'll ask for help with bookwriting, you know, whatever the case may be. So the ROI, if you want to look at it from a purely business and numbers standpoint, on that book is different from my first book. Those two books, however, at this point sell on average at least one copy every single day. The first book, I didn't have to earn the ease on that. It just happened. At the same time, I'm not earning enough off that book every month to pay all my bills and certainly not to retire to Portugal, which sounds really more lovely by the day. The second, this, the other book, which is my most recent book, Write the Damn Book Already, I sell right now, you on average, between two and I'd say eight or nine copies a day. That I earned. And I don't mean that in um it takes a different amount of time for everyone to get there. It took me 11 months of consistently running Amazon ads, switching my keywords, changing my book description. I didn't really ever change my categories, but really learning how to finesse and fine-tune that listing so that it could be discovered by the people who were gonna discover it and say, oh my gosh, this is what I was looking for. Read it, enjoy it, review it. And it took that much time, apparently, in my case anyway, for Amazon's algorithm to learn if we show this book to this type of person, they're probably gonna buy it. And so they do. And I don't have any strong data to understand well, how much is that influenced by ads versus keywords versus categories versus book description versus A plus content? I don't know. I just know that it all came together and I just kept tweaking. So when I work with authors on Amazon ads and they get frustrated, and I get it, believe me, after three or four weeks, when it's like this isn't working, it's not that it's not working, it's that it takes longer than all of these ads out there want you to believe. These ads, they people who are running the ads to the courses and the programs and the workshops that can make you X number of dollars or can help you sell X number of books. I like to believe that they're not lying. The thing that's important, it's not sexy though, and it's terrible marketing, like in the psychological world, copy is, and it will take a minute. You just have to stick with it. None of us wants to stick with it. Everybody wants an easy button, myself included. I want to snap my fingers and have this book do well and sell and because I believe in everything I've written. And I know that the authors with whom I work feel the exact same way. And it's confusing when you've written what you believe is a pretty great book, and then other people read it and they're like, I love this. And you think, then why isn't it selling more? And the reason it isn't selling more is because there are 43 million titles on Amazon and people are busy and they're distracted and they have so many options. I mean, this is a little bit blurred out, but the vast majority of the books on this bookshelf, and this is only one of my bookshelves, they're everywhere. Like books are everywhere, and the vast majority of these books are still to be read. And that's how it goes. So it's not as simple as listen to this song, and now you've listened to the song and then you download the whole album. It takes people more time than that. As Jen also mentioned on our podcast last week, you're asking people to give up their most precious commodity, which is their time. So they need to be able to sit still long enough to get into your book and read through it and then remember to go out and leave a review. All these things take time. And so when we say, when that we, I don't know why I included myself in the royal we there, but when whoever came up with the phrase, you earn your ease, I choose to believe, I don't know what they meant, but but the way I interpret that phrase is we just keep going to where we can say, with confidence, I'm confident I'm gonna sell at least one copy of Write the Damn Book already today. By the way, I'm also confident I'm not going to sell any copies of enough, because that is one that I have still, I mean that book is 18, seven years old. It's still completely irrelevant. I think it's fantastic and it's in a very saturated space in a in a niche where I'm not, I'm not well known in any niche, but I'm definitely not well known in like the women entrepreneur guidance niche. So when people want a book like that, they're going to Jensen Cherrow or Marie Forlio. They're not coming to Elizabeth Lyons, but I'm I refuse to give up on it because I believe in it. So I'm having to do the exact same thing. Maybe I've air quote earned my ease when it comes to two books and some courses and some workshops. It's been 10 years. It's been 20 years that I've been in the author space. And it's been the better part of 10 years that I've been in the guidance space, and I've only been full-time in the guidance space for about five years. So there have been side gigs all along that I have been earning my whatever ease I currently have. And I don't, by the way, feel like I have ease because it's we're we're not, we're not buying yachts over here at this time. So what I, if if 2026 for you is a year where you also, as an author and or just a human being, want to have you're you're willing to do the work, you understand and are at least willing to accept, even if you don't like it, that it might take some time, you're willing to be consistent, you're willing to try new things, you're willing to own what feels comfortable for you and what doesn't. You don't have to do anything. If I ever am dancing on TikTok, it is a cry for help. If you're just willing to go slow and stop thinking that everybody else has a secret andor a lifestyle andor a bank account that you just can't figure out. If you're willing to let that belief go, you're going to love this space, uh, the author space, and hopefully this podcast for 2026. Because we're not going to be spewing magic bullets or easy buttons. There are what I would guess I would call shortcuts. There are. I mean, there meaning if you know when you upload your book to really think about keywords in an effective way, if you know to think about categories in an effective way, if you know to consider those keywords and those categories when you're writing your book description, you will be setting your book up better for both initial and long term success. But just because you do those things does not mean and probably will not end up with the effect that like your book will just blow. Blow up from day one because you picked the seven best keywords and the three best categories. And Chat GPT wrote you a very awkward and sterile, but keyword-rich sounding book description. That is not a recipe for the feeling of like, okay, we're just doing this thing. So we're all gonna do this thing together, and we're going to support one another, both in promotional aspects and like sharing books that we love, which I love doing so much on this show. And I love discovering new authors. Yesterday, a book showed up on my doorstep, and I'm so excited to read it. It's called Soft Launch, and it's by Sarah Vacchiano or Vacciano. I have to figure out exactly how to. She's coming on the show so I can ask her exactly. I hate mispronouncing people's first or last names. It's like a it drives me crazy. I feel terrible about it. So, Sarah, if I just botched it, I apologize. I will correct it immediately when we speak in a couple of weeks. But showed up on my doorstep. Sarah was, and I'm kind of paraphrasing here, and I don't want to screw this up, but she was part of the legal team for Molly Bloom, who wrote a book called Molly's Game, which was based on her life. It was a movie. It starred Idris Elba and Jessica Chastain. And I remember reading watching the movie. I didn't read the book, but I remembered watching the movie and I absolutely loved it. So to put all those things together, I had no idea there was a book coming out that was by this one, and then Molly endorsed it. And it was a whole thing. I'm learning every day about books that other people think everybody knows about. That's what this world is. It's an incredible opportunity for connection, for self-discovery, for others' discovery, for community. And that is what I hope we can all focus more on in 2026, as opposed to merely focusing on sort of vapid numbers and dollar signs and all those sorts of things. In my experience, when we focus on these things, that's when the dollar signs start to even matter. Like that, that's it's a byproduct, it's not the starting point. So please let me know what you'd like to hear more about here on the podcast in 2026. If you have authors that you would love for me to have on the show, let me know. If you would like to be on the show, let me know. If you're an author, indie traditional, it doesn't matter. If there are topics about the publishing industry that you would like to understand better or learn more about, let me know. For all of this, you can email me elisabeth at elisabeth lions.com or you can DM me over on Instagram. I'm at Elizabeth Lyons Author. I hope you all have an absolutely incredible holiday season, and I will talk to you again next year.