Sneak Peeks Worth Celebrating: An Interview With Girl Friday Productions
There are so many reasons to be excited for our interview with the minds behind Girl Friday Productions, Kristin Mehus-Roe and Ingrid Emerick.
Not only have they built a fantastic roster of books and authors to be proud of in a truly non-traditional publishing model, but they also continue to support the growth of authors with stories worth telling.
Today, we’re asking Ingrid and Kristin a few questions about Girl Friday Productions and upcoming titles we can expect. We’re also sharing some exciting news about viral author Keisha Blair’s upcoming re-release for Holistic Wealth: 32 Life Lessons to Help You Find Purpose, Prosperity, and Happiness. Melbourne’s Wilkinson Publishing will also be releasing an edition of Holistic Wealth in Australia and New Zealand in March of next year to coincide with the US publication.
Let’s dive in!
Can you share with our readers a little bit about Girl Friday, and the mission behind the books that you publish?
At Girl Friday, we often talk about the democratization of publishing. This comes from our background working with authors and organizations to bypass some of the anachronistic gate-keeping that still exists in traditional publishing. We have always felt that there is a bounty of amazing books that don’t fit perfectly into a genre or have a less traditional platform, and we’ve wanted to give them a forum. The missing link for our authors has been full distribution and we became increasingly aware that while not every author we work with required it, many did and it was a disservice that the really excellent books we were working on weren’t reaching their full audience (like international!). We also wanted to explore proactively creating a list – as book producers we’ve spent so much time working on the dreams of our clients, it was exciting to invest in something while still upholding that same spirit of democratization – that you don’t have to fit into the box of the big NYC publishers to be successful as an author.
While we have three imprints, they share the mission of allowing authors to own and promote their own content. We flip the traditional publishing model on its end, keeping the ownership with the creator. All of our authors share an entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to being a true partner in the promotion of their books. They understand that writing the book is just the beginning of the publishing process, and they are in for the full ride. Girl Friday Books continues our relationship with independent authors, who know their audience and have a passion to bring their books to them. Whether the book is a Seattle-based mystery, a guide to holistic wealth, or a ridiculously cute kawaii-inspired drawing workbook, they share hallmarks of high-quality content and production. Our Bird Upstairs imprint is for our littlest readers. Our benchmark for a Bird Upstairs title is that it be both an excellent book and have a reason for existing. Before we acquire a book, we ask: what does it add to the genre, what voice does it promote that isn’t always heard, what reader does it serve that isn’t always served? Flashpoint is reserved for our brand partners – influencers, organizations, and established brands that have a platform and direct sales channels and see their book as part of their full business model. For all of our authors, we consider ourselves a partner in their success.
There are a lot of Girl Friday releases to be excited about, but we want to call out the 2nd edition of Holistic Wealth which will be released on March 8, 2022. What can readers expect with the new edition?
This new edition features several new chapters that address the challenges, opportunities, and personal and societal shifts that we are seeing and feeling since the pandemic hit. It also features a foreword by actress Kelly Rutherford, of Melrose Place and Gossip Girl fame, who survived a very public and very painful custody battle. Since Keisha Blair released the first edition of this book in 2019, she has been hard at work building an international audience of holistic wealth converts. She has not only a blog and a podcast, but also a popular workshop series on the topic.
What was it like working with Keisha Blair on Holistic Wealth, and when was the moment you felt like this project really came together?
Since we started working with Keisha several years ago, on the first edition, we have always felt like there is something special about this book, so it is both satisfying and not surprising to see how it has really started to grow into a movement. Not only are the lessons that Keisha conveys timeless, but she is a committed and enthusiastic promoter of the book. The enthusiasm is infectious. It’s so easy to get excited about something that you see has made people’s lives fuller and happier.
Holistic Wealth’s origin story as a viral article by Keisha (My Husband Died at 34; Here Are 40 Life Lessons I Learned From It) is extremely interesting, and plays on the way that the internet can collectively find stories that are worth sharing. When did you both know that this would be the start of a great book?
Author Keisha Blair
Well, it was Keisha herself, that realized that her story and the lessons she had learned from this tragedy in her life would make for a great book. She was just blown away by how resonant her story was. Once we launched Girl Friday Books, our book production company’s publishing wing, I knew we had an opportunity to offer some of our self-published authors a wider market and Holistic Wealth was one of the first books that I wanted to bring out in that way. When I connected with Keisha, she was excited and was working on this second edition. When she told me that the new edition addressed life and lessons during the pandemic, I was even more keen to bring this book out to a larger audience. I think the pandemic has really shifted people’s priorities and made them rethink the way they have been living their lives. It’s made us think about how precious our time here on earth is. The way we spend it and what we focus our energy on is really at the heart of Holistic Wealth.
Have you both been able to hear of any personal stories around Holistic Wealth, and how it has impacted reader’s lives?
Many readers came forward during the first half of the pandemic looking for a deeper connection with the book and asking about a certification program, which is now titled the Certified Holistic Wealth™ Consultant Program, developed by the author and offered through the Institute on Holistic Wealth. Many women who requested the certification program – and have now completed it – are now offering free workshops for adults, teens, and even entrepreneurs. Its impact on lives has inspired a movement, spearheaded by readers.
Keisha has recently received requests from readers in Africa to develop a micro program for teachers across Africa. After Arianna Huffington commissioned an excerpt from the book and posted a quote from the first edition on her social media platforms, other book editors and journalists as far away as India and Africa reached out about the importance of the book, in terms of changing lives and inspiring change. The book has garnered attention from celebrities and influencers alike, such as the producers of Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk and producers of the Mel Robbins Show. Clearly, the book is making an impact!
What other upcoming works from Girl Friday can readers get excited about this fall?
Of course we’re really excited about all our titles, but a few that especially stand out are Grace and Frankie: A Guide to Best-Friendship and Not Giving a Damn (Emilie Sandoz-Voyer, Flashpoint), A Little Book of Self-Care For Those Who Grieve (Paula Becker, Girl Friday Books), and Born to Read: Our First Five Years in Books (L.J. Tracosas, Girl Friday Books). Grace and Frankie’s message of female empowerment at every age is just so resonant for Girl Friday, we couldn’t pass it up. How could you not love a show that features the smart, hilarious, and beautiful Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin?! This title is close to our hearts and so much fun.
Paula Becker’s A Little Book of Self-Care is a really beautiful and meditative book about grief. Anyone who has lost someone close to them will relate to her inspiration for this book – after her 25-year-old son, Hunter, died she looked for solace in books but struggled to find anything that she could focus on. Everything was too dense, too challenging. She wanted to create something that was small enough to hold easily and that someone grieving could manage a page at a time. Paula is such a beautiful writer and her words come from someone who truly understands what people grieving can handle. We wanted a package that was very tactile so we used a three-piece binding and added watercolor illustrations, both of which add to the specialness of the book.
Girl Friday was founded by a bunch of working editor moms, so of course children’s literacy is very close to our hearts. Born to Read is a gorgeous gift journal that celebrates reading with a young child. The design is really modern and colorful and the prompts are just the kinds of things you want to remember about all those hours you spend reading with your little ones. I can imagine buying this book as the perfect baby shower gift as a companion to your favorite children’s book (my go-to is Little Hoot – it makes me sleepy just thinking about it!).
As a fun closing question for you both, what were some of your favorite guilty pleasures this past summer?
Speaking of Grace and Frankie, reviewing the passes provided us with the ultimate excuse for re-watching the entire season this summer! The writing on the show is so sharp, it was really cool to read the book and then watch the scenes referenced again and see how well they held up in written form. And Born to Read gave us all the excuse to mine our memories of our and our kids’ favorite books to add to the recommendation lists. Our ultimate guilty pleasure is the fact that we get paid to read and so we made excellent use of this good fortune this summer, and we also felt the maybe not guilty but cautious pleasure of actually going into bookstores again. One of our favorite things to do is checkout the other new books that are out, and it’s so nice to see them in person after being online for the last 18 months. We are eagerly awaiting the PNBA conference in early October where we’ll finally get to show off our wonderful titles In Real Life. And along those lines we are really hoping we get to attend the London Book Fair in 2022! Being with other people outside our own homes must be the guilty pleasure of summer 2021 and beyond.