Are You There God? It's Me, Menopause 😂
For every Gen X woman who once read Judy Blume under the covers with a flashlight—The Sequel! Plus, everything we learned from the Quickies Book Launch 📚
✨ A vibrant space for midlife women, The Empress now reaches over two million readers through our networks of networks. ✨ From bestselling author Alisa Kennedy Jones. ✨ If you enjoy content about midlife, humor, and agency, I’d love to welcome you as part of our community. ✨ For only $50/year ($4.17 a month!) or $5/month, you’ll gain access to all my articles, Monday columns, book clubs, and virtual events.
Fellow Empresses! How are you?
Sorry, this is late. We’ve been on tour launching Quickies. At one point, I was home alone… trapped in my dress, trying to Macgyver a way out of it with a wire coat hanger, and THEN, my house flooded. As they say, when it rains, it pours… through your kitchen ceiling! Lol.
For those of you who caught up on all this on my other stack, feel free to jump ahead to Everything We Learned.
In the meantime, an update from the tour…
Big Secret Revealed: There’s a woman named Fritzie who manages this billboard in Times Square, and that’s how we pulled off such a big, shiny launch for practically nothing. Each ad ran for $5.61. And by standing underneath it and filming social media, we were able to thank all our sponsors, partners, and retailers, and make them feel a part of our launch and introduce the bigger world to our brand.
But NYC was a whirlwind. Books Are Magic welcomed us with open arms, we got a shoutout in Forbes (no biggie), met with investors, and filmed under our giant glowing Quickies billboard in Times Square—where it was Hot. As. Balls.
And yes, we made midlife vags multiply and fly over Broadway, into every major retailer in the country. Because while we may be small, we understand something fundamental: publishing is a volume business. And midlife women? We are a generative force. We know how to build a strong backlist that blossoms into a bold frontlist across every platform we can get our sweaty little hands on. Which means we have some wicked fun announcements coming up!
Gen X Women: Born for the Group Project
When you’ve scaled a company from 12 people to 12,000 and watched it go public (as I have), you learn this fast: It’s not about you. It’s about the group.
Gen X women were forged in the crucible of DIY chaos. At ten years old, we were producing backyard musicals with alarmingly high production values.
We don’t hear “no.” In fact, when a boomer man says it, something dark and delightful stirs inside us.
Yes, that’s when we bring BDE… Big Deck Energy. That’s right. PowerPoint and Zillow, it’s how we dream in WFH business-speak.
At my old firm, we had a motto that could’ve been stolen straight from The Terminator or The Devil Wears Prada: Convert or bypass. Picture Miranda Priestly flicking off a stole as she hisses it across a conference table.
We are the Latch-key Generation. Drop a midlife woman in the Australian outback with a paperclip, a stick of gum, and a Banana Clip, and she’ll MacGyver her way home and publish a zine about it.
We did our homework solo. We cooked our own dinners. We babysat our siblings. We got part-time jobs, kept our grades up, stayed in sports, and still managed to roller-skate to Pat Benatar in the driveway like it was our full-time job.
We know how to build bridges, keep the Wi-Fi signal strong, and duct tape a dream together. We don’t need to be the lead singer—we're the bassline holding it all down. We invite the group in, pass the mic, and when obstacles pop up, we remove them like the drama-free, solution-forward Girl Scouts we are. (Badges included. Outfit optional.)
She’s not a whiner. She’s not a wallower.
She’s a Here’s-what-we’re-going-to-do kind of woman.
She’s merit-badged and mission-aligned.
She’s Elle Fanning in Super 8—driving the car, delivering the scene, and making sure everybody hits their mark.
What Happens When Women Scale?
You get a publishing team that leaps over Sharknado rockslides—parkour-style—amid extreme heat, flight delays, and shifting tour stops.
You get coordinated execution from:
My Co-founder and Head of Acquisitions Heather Bartos, MD
Ned Rust, our master of dark global publishing ops
Erinn McGrath, our CMO and velvet hammer
Betsy Tong, our Chief Innovation Officer and bridge builder
Shannon Power, our spreadsheet sorceress and CFO
Molly Zakoor, our senior editor who can spot a dangling participle from SPACE!
Empress Board Member and upcoming bestseller Kimberly Warner
Designer Dave McLaughlin, cover conjurer extraordinaire
Eva Hunt, our Head of Audio and all-around woman-Friday
Jem, our social media ninja
Valerie the Copyeditor (a.k.a. Saint Valerie)
Claire Davy, Sales + Distribution Queen
Keith Riegert, master of all miracles with Hachette
Debbie & Brenda, our NYC printing dream team
Cynthia in China, who delivers against all odds, tariffs, and Pantone demands
Kirsten Miller, the instigator of it all, who said, “We have to hire each other.”
Our exceptional product partners at plusOne, Phosis, and Luxor Hair
I could draw you an org chart in Canva, but we all know Steve Kornacki’s would be better—and he wouldn’t forget anyone’s title.
Also: Emma J Shipley, the sorceress behind our endpapers. Endpapers!
And then there’s Shannon Kennedy, our angel investor and advisor, and Heather—my Grankie twin. We are Grace and Frankie. We jump on the bed (and other things) when the good news hits, and we pass the tissues when it doesn’t.
And somehow, despite everything the world tells us midlife women can’t do, we do it. Together. And it’s joyful. And hard. And worth every damn second.
Because it’s not just one of us doing the impossible. It’s the entire group project—photobombing the Patriarchy in Times Square.
Everything We Learned
Tours rarely move the needle in terms of book sales.
You show up, the listless clerk behind the counter shows zero interest, there are no snacks, and no one can find your books anywhere! Then, three people show up—and it’s crazy-awkward. This did not happen to us, but it did to another bestselling, National Book Award-winning author we love, and it made us rethink the whole tour strategy. You can spend $750 flying into a city to do three short appearances and only sell 20 books, and you’ve just lost $390. Good for bookseller relationship-building, but probably not so sustainable as a business practice.
What Does Work?
Substack is Everything
Substack friends rallying together with an amazing indie bookstore like LoveStruck can really drive turnout, and that thing we call collective effervescence.
You can dress up in your PJs like a jar of Bonne Maman and all the women you’ve been writing to and zooming with show up, and they are all simply wonderful.
There was this moment when Heather was speaking and said, “Imagine if we had spaces like this all over the country where midlife women could come together and talk this way?” A cathedral hush came over the packed house because each of us so longed to be heard. I kid you not, it was a Practical Magic moment!
Partners Are Everything
Also, as midlife women, we are the Exhausted Majority, so when local businesses and on-brand sponsors like plusOne, Phosis, and Luxor Hair can mobilize their lists to drive event turnout and provide amazing, luxe swag bags, it’s THE BEST.
Pre-orders Are Everything
You want to allow 8 months to stack pre-orders, early reviews, blurbs, and even cover feedback. All of it goes toward your week-one numbers, which have made Quickies a debut bestseller. The most important thing, ultimately, is that it enables us to pay our authors a royalty that’s more equitable than traditional publishing.
Conferences Rule the Day
Conference, convention, or festival bulk buys—where the conference organizer buys 1000 books for swag bags in exchange for you waiving the author’s speaking fee—is the best way to move the needle. We have been lucky this way.
Other Nuts and Bolts Things
You want to 4-6 weeks lead time to market, during which you run simple geotargeted ads on social to drive RSVPs.
Go With Two-tier Event Tickets
Having two-tiered event admission is the way to go: Book+Admission for $25 and admission-only tickets for $5. Some of your readers will have ordered in other ways, but will still want to come out and support you. Make it easy!
Lead with the Buddy System
Don’t do a straight reading—unless it’s literary fiction or romance. Have a conversation partner with real riz and a great following, throw interesting questions at you for 45 minutes, and totally YUCK IT UP together. Be BESTIES! Then, open the floor to questions for 15 minutes. Then, wrap with signing, 1:1 Q&As, and an hour of people milling about, bonding over the shared experience of your wonderful stories and ideas.
Know the “Run of Show”
Most of all, finding a bookstore like Lovestruck, where their team is expert at “run of show” and then rehearsing all the steps and transitions with your author in a calm space ahead of time makes a world of difference for everyone’s comfort factor.
Know that Warehouse Logistics Will Always be Imperfect
You will completely stress out over whether everyone receives their order on time. It will haunt you like that bad dream where you left your newborn baby on the New York City subway. You’ll wake in the night and realize warehouse quantities shipped were wrong, and so you overcompensate and send more.
Recognize that Often People Couldn’t Give a Toss
Your authors showing up to sign stock at bookstores is great because that means the books can’t be returned, but you need to warn them: Don’t expect gushing adoration from the listless clerk.
And Bookplate Glue Chemistry is Hella Complex!
Lastly, you will realize that self-sticking bookplates bubble like bad wallpaper in East Coast humidity and look like garbage. This will drive the Martha Stewart wannabe in you crazy. Chill the heck out. You need to get a serious crafter to help with those things. Stop f*cking around. They need to be gorgeous, on-brand, and smooth.
Ok, this is what we know so far, but what we know even more about midlife is that the path to thriving will come through our greater cultural visibility, more of our voices owning their own agentic intelligence, and hiring each other around that.
Over the last few months, we’ve seen women everywhere asking for a midlife follow-up to the iconic adolescent classic, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret?
Which is why we’re so excited to announce TODAY that we wrote it! Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause: A Novel by Heather Bartos is coming to a bookshelf near you.
For every Gen X woman who once read Judy Blume under the covers with a flashlight—welcome to the hot flash sequel you never knew you needed.
Margaret is all grown up. She’s got teens of her own, a long marriage that’s running on fumes, and morning routines that involve green smoothies, dry shampoo, and low-level identity crises. Her body? Morphing. Her mind? Melting. Her uterus? Plotting an exit strategy. And when a certain surprise visitor shows up after seven period-free months, all hell—and hilarity—breaks loose.
Pre-order your autographed copy today and get:
The Official “Screaming-into-the-Fan” Playlist
Cue the Gen X mixtape of your life: Liz Phair, Alanis, Salt-N-Pepa, Bikini Kill, George Michael’s Freedom... even your pillow gets a scream track.Margaret’s Annotated Bathroom Copy
An exclusive, annotated sampler with irreverent wisdom, post-it-worthy zingers, and author notes that belong on sweatshirts.The “Burn the Casseroles” Book Club Guide
Real talk. Real snacks. Real name tags: “I Must Increase My Bust,” anyone?Book Club Bundles (of 6 books or more) get a special virtual chat with the author.
Offer valid through Menopause Awareness Month… and beyond. Because time is a flat circle, my friend, and our metabolism is still at summer camp.
Use Code: JZ7N4IA for Free Shipping
And don’t forget the T-shirt!
It’s $20 and says it ALL—so you don’t have to. 😂
What Else Does It Take to Scale?
Play. AI-enabled reader experiences that you own. (Taylor’s Version, but for books.) If the bro-bags at Meta are gonna steal, we may as well rob ourselves first, with flair.
Stretch. With streaming projects. Yes, one will involve my mom’s work on the Clinton campaign, and her bursting into my Freshman dorm with her incessant soundtrack of positivity. When she started shaking hands like Hillary back then, it unnerved us all, especially my guy friends.
Bridge. We juggle it all. The boss. The kids. The aging parents.
Last week, mid-editorial call, I get a text from my dad. I hadn’t replied to his previous text fast enough… so he sent the cops to my house for a wellness check.
I’m like, “Pop. I’m in a meeting. I’m 55. I’m allowed to do meetings.”
This is what scaling (and thriving) looks like. It’s messy. It’s brilliant. It’s ours.
Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
p.s. If you are so inclined, follow us on IG for flash content & upcoming giveaways. We’re at @the.empress.age and we’d love to see you there!
 | A guest post by
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Not to bore you with shop talk but is Quickies really on the shelf at Target? If so, if that title doesn't sell, nothing will : )
Brilliant headline!