I was the bottleneck. Who can relate? · GOOSIFY 🍎🐛🦋🌈⭐️🩷

I was the bottleneck. Who can relate?

What I'm building this June — and the shift behind it

For over a decade, I've run an elite publishing house, Red Thread Books, taking nonfiction authors all the way through. Manuscript to launch to awards. We've put 77 books into the world and 55 of them have won awards.

It's been good work. And it's been ten years of being the bottleneck.

I have had a school community for nearly two years for my authors and for cultivating aspiring authors. I have had a few different strategies, with varying success, but it is time to shake things up.

Earlier this spring, I had a moment of clarity I haven't been able to shake: I'd rather help 100 authors publish their own book well than keep publishing 10 a year through my full done-for-you service. Inspired by

@Diana Frank

who I originally met in this community, I remembered to do what I love & what I am good at...

So this June, I'm running the first pilot cohort of something I've been holding back for a long time, an 8-week Publishing Mastermind. Six to ten authors. Live teaching every week. Hot-seat coaching on their real manuscripts, covers, and launch plans. Personal introductions to my vetted network of editors, designers, formatters, and launch partners, matched to each author's budget and goals.

Pilot price: $2,500. Future cohorts will be higher.

This isn't a course I built once and forgot about. It's the work I do every day, distilled into a structure I can deliver at scale without it eating me alive.

Three things made the difference in getting me here:

Naming the bottleneck honestly (it was me)
Letting Founding Leaders co-build the community around it
Picking a small pilot cohort instead of trying to launch big

WHO CAN RELATE?

If you're building something similar, moving from done-for-you to taught-to-many, I'd love to compare notes. And if you know a nonfiction author with a near-done manuscript who's been circling self-publishing for too long, send them my way. The pilot enrolls through June 9.

This is the kind of build where I'd rather move slowly with the right people than scale fast with the wrong ones. Honored to be doing it in community with the rest of you who are building too.

— Sierra Melcher, CEO/Founder, Red Thread Books

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