My Book Went Live Today and I Wish I Could Take It Back

Today my book went live.

Not "live" as in sitting on my laptop where I can still tweak a paragraph.

Not "live" as in a draft that only a few trusted people have seen.

Actually live.

Available for people to buy.

And suddenly I'm convinced it's terrible.

The first two-thirds? Pretty good.

The last third? Weak.

The flow? Questionable.

The writing? Average at best.

As I sit here tonight, I genuinely cannot understand why I thought publishing it was a good idea.

The funny thing is, none of this existed yesterday.

Yesterday I was excited.

Yesterday I was proud.

Yesterday I was telling people the book was finally available.

Today I'm mentally highlighting every sentence I wish I'd written differently.

I suspect this isn't really about the book.

I think it's about being seen.

For months, Close the Tab belonged to me.

Now it doesn't.

Now somebody could buy it, read it and form an opinion about it.

And that is a surprisingly uncomfortable feeling.

Especially when the book is based on real life.

Real struggles.

Real mistakes.

Real moments when I absolutely was not the parent I wanted to be.

One of the biggest surprises of writing this book is that I thought publication would bring relief.

I imagined clicking "publish" and feeling a sense of completion.

Instead, I seem to have unlocked a whole new category of worry.

What if nobody buys it?

What if people buy it and hate it?

What if it's not as good as I thought it was?

What if all of this was a waste of time?

It's amazing how quickly the brain can move the goalposts.

Six months ago the challenge was writing a book.

Three months ago it was finishing it.

A month ago it was publishing it.

Today it's apparently becoming the next Mel Robbins.

My brain has decided that anything less is failure.

Which is ridiculous when I actually write it down.

The truth is that I never started this because I wanted to become a famous author.

I started because I felt alone.

I was trying to juggle work, family life, neurodiversity, school meetings, forgotten forms, guilt, overwhelm and a forever-growing mental to-do list.

I wanted somebody to say:

"This is hard."

Not:

"Here's another colour-coded system."

Not:

"Have you tried being more organised?"

Just:

"This is hard, and you're not failing."

That was the message I needed.

And ultimately, that's the message I wanted to share.

Maybe that's why this launch feels different from what I expected.

Because a book isn't really the point.

The point is connection.

If one parent reads a chapter and thinks:

"Thank God. It's not just me."

then the book has done its job.

Not because it is perfect.

Not because it will win awards.

Not because it becomes a bestseller.

But because it helped somebody feel less alone.

And if I'm honest, helping overwhelmed parents feel less alone has been the mission all along.

The book is simply one way of doing it.

So tonight I'm trying something I don't do very often.

I'm leaving it alone.

No rewrites.

No further edits.

No refreshing sales reports.

No imagining terrible reviews that don't exist.

Just accepting that the book is now out in the world.

It's finished.

And maybe that has to be enough.

Because at some point, every parent, every creator and every author has to close the tab and trust that what they've done is enough.

Even when they're not completely sure.

Kate Guest
Author of Close the Tab | Founder of Too Many Tabs & SENTracker

Helping overwhelmed parents feel less alone and better able to support their children.