Joy (And Disappointment) on the One Year Anniversary of Ejaculate Responsibly

Today marks one year since the publication day of Ejaculate Responsibly. What a year! Here is a little report of things I’m proud of from this past year, and something shockingly disappointing.

Things I’m Proud Of

• Ejaculate Responsibly made the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks!

• Ejaculate Responsibly was reviewed in the Washington Post, Oprah Daily, Vogue, New York Times, and many more. Click here to find a list of reviews with links — it’s a long list. It’s fun to see it.

• In South Carolina, a politician quoted from Ejaculate Responsibly in front of the entire legislature — and it went viral! Here’s a reel about this.

• Ejaculate Responsibly was discussed on many excellent podcasts. You can find links to lots of them on this highlight (though it needs to be updated).

• Ejaculate Responsibly has had multiple reprintings.

• There are 10 international editions of Ejaculate Responsibly — either already published, or in the works. The German edition comes out next month, and the French edition in January.

• There have been two Ejaculate Responsibly book tours with sold out events. Like, whaaaat? That’s amazing! So cool to connect with so many of you in person.

• It’s been a trip, and so wonderful, to see the phrase “ejaculate responsibly” being used on posters and in memes and on social media.

• What a delight to see an increase in positive talk about vasectomies, which is at least partially influenced by the book, because I receive DMs about it almost every day. Keep sending them, please!

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But Also, There’s Shocking Disappointment

Every six months my publisher sends a summary about the book and how it’s selling. They sent two reports so far. One arrived in April, covering the book release through December 31st, 2022. The next report came earlier this month, covering book sales from January 1st through June 30th, 2023. The summary includes how many copies of the book — printed, audio, and ebooks — have sold.

Want to guess how many copies have sold according to the latest summary? Since receiving the report, I’ve asked about a dozen people to guess. The highest anyone has guessed is 3.5 million copies. The lowest anyone has guessed is 100,000 copies.

The actual answer:

55,000 copies.

55,000? That’s it? Are you shocked by that number? I sure was. Shocked! It’s far lower than it needs to be.

It may sound strange to express disappointment in a book that has seen so much coverage, and received so many mind-blowingly positive reviews. The disappointment is aimed at the gap between the importance of the message of this book, the reach it’s had, and the role it can have. I don’t think there would be disappointment if it was another book — for example, my first book didn’t sell anywhere near 55,000 copies and I wasn’t disappointed. But this book different.

I know this book can change the discourse. I know it can change people’s perspective fundamentally. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times. I know this book can have a hugely positive effect on women and men.

Yes, some of this is perspective — a book that sells 10,000 copies is considered successful in the publishing world, so from a publisher’s perspective, I imagine 55,000 copies is something to celebrate. But from the perspective of this book’s potential, it’s much too low.

55,000 copies means this book has not has the impact it needs to have.

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This Book Needs a Book Selling Genius

My goal is that this book will help significantly shift the way our entire society thinks about and talks about abortion and the work of pregnancy prevention. I want the book to influence a future where it will be laughably ridiculous for any politician to talk about abortion without talking about responsible ejaculation.

For the message of this book to have true cultural influence, it needs to sell millions of copies. And it’s barely made a dent so far. 55,000 copies sold means the vast majority of people you encounter in your daily life have never even heard of this book, let alone read it. If you read my newsletter or keep up with me on Instagram, you may feel like everyone in the world knows about the book. But in reality, it’s safer, and more accurate, to assume no one knows.

This book has received every marketing and publicity effort that I know how to give, and arguably, the efforts have been successful — the book has had excellent media coverage! But clearly, the book needs an entirely different marketing strategy, from an expert who knows how to sell books in a huge way.

The American Urological Association needs to ask all of their 23,000 members to order 100 copies each, and then give them out in their waiting rooms (and watch the vasectomy appointments roll in!). A hundred universities need to order 10,000 copies to give to incoming freshman. Barack Obama (or Michelle Obama!) need to recommend the book. Or, maybe something entirely different — I have never created something like this book before and I don’t know how to get the message out there.

But I do know that America is going to be talking about abortion, extensively and intensely and frequently, leading up to the 2024 election and beyond. And this book could really help contribute positively to those conversations.

It is certain that there are people who know how to get this book into so many more hands. Are you someone who knows how to do this? Do you know someone who knows how to do this? Would you/they want to work with me? This is beyond my expertise, so I’d love to work with an expert. To be clear, I’m not looking for magic tricks — I’m totally willing to do the work to make this happen, I just don’t know how. If you do know, I hope you’ll reach out to me (respond to this newsletter if it’s in your inbox, or DM on Instagram, or however you want to reach out).

Let’s make this happen.

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Not A Book-Selling Expert? Here’s A Way You Can Help Too

If, like me, you are not a book-selling genius, but you still want to help get the word out about the book, a really helpful thing you can do, and it only takes 60 seconds, is leave a 5-star review on Amazon. It sounds like not a big deal, but it’s remarkable how much this means to people who are deciding to buy the book — thousands of 5-star reviews means the book is much more likely to be purchased by people who are considering. So this book need thousands of reviews.

As of this writing, the book has 832 ratings on Amazon. If you’re willing to leave a rating, go to the book page, then scroll down. If you’re on your phone, scroll till you see “Write A Review” and click the button. If you’re on a laptop, there will be a section in the left margin titled “Review This Product”. It should take you less than a minute, and it will really truly help.

It doesn’t need to be a long review — clicking the stars and typing a few words is great!

You don’t have to have purchased the book on Amazon in order to review it there — if you have an Amazon account, you should be able to login and go to the book page to leave a review. Consider it a gift, to help celebrate the one year anniversary of the publication date.

I know this book is going to make a major positive difference in our cultural conversations and in the lives of individuals. Thank you to everyone who has helped promote it so far. I could not be more grateful for your efforts.

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That’s all for now. Feel free to comment on anything I mentioned above, or whatever’s on your mind. I hope you are having a beautiful Wednesday.

kisses,
Gabrielle