The manuscript is finished. Or at least as finished as a manuscript ever seems to be.

Some of you know I’ve spent the better part of the last couple of years working on a book. There’s still editing and designing and producing and marketing ahead, and the book itself won’t be out for another six months or so.

I’ll save the cover and the contents for another day. For now, a peek under the covers at what it’s taken to get this far.

I’ve wanted to write a book for a very long time. I love books. I read a lot of them, write about my favorites every year, and have spent countless hours talking about books with friends and family. I also love bookstores and libraries, to a degree that drives my kids a bit crazy: I can’t walk past one without going in.

About eight years ago I took a creative nonfiction class. I even wrote a novel once. (No, you can’t read it.) More recently I enrolled in an online book-writing accelerator and worked with a developmental editor to turn a collection of ideas into something that might actually become a book.

The hardest question was never whether I wanted to write one. It was which book to write.

What did I have to say that was distinctive? Who was I writing for? What problem could I help solve? And, most important, why was I the right person to write it?

It took me a while to find my way to the answers.

When I did, the topic wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me well. It draws on my years as a scientist, technologist, product development leader, and CIO; on what I’ve learned teaching undergraduate, graduate, and executive audiences; and on my experience serving on boards. It’s about how we design innovation that can earn and sustain trust, and how leaders and practitioners can put those ideas to work.

I’ll share much more about that in the months ahead. For now, I want to talk about something else I’ve learned along the way: writing a book and publishing a book are two very different things.

I thought I knew what publishing a book meant

When I started this journey, I had a conventional idea of what success looked like.

You write a great proposal. You find a literary agent. Your agent sells the book to a traditional publisher. The publisher gives you an advance, and eventually you walk into a bookstore or an airport and there it is on the shelf.

So that’s the path I pursued.

I found an agent and worked with her to create and polish a book proposal that ultimately ran about 50 pages. For those who have never seen one, a nonfiction book proposal is almost a book unto itself: synopsis, audience, comparable titles, marketing plan, advance praise, detailed chapter outline, sample material, author platform, and more.

We took the proposal to traditional publishers. I had some very good conversations and a few offers.

And somewhere along the way I realized something surprising. The path I had assumed I wanted wasn’t necessarily the right path for me. I’d been thinking about traditional publishing as the definition of success rather than one possible means of achieving it.

Those are two very different things.

There’s more than one way to publish a book

One of the unexpected benefits of this process has been an education in the publishing industry itself. I talked with agents, publishers, and, most usefully, other authors who had recently navigated the process. Last year I joined a group of academic authors, each an expert in a different field, and what they’ve shared about their own publishing experiences has been more useful than anything I read.

It helps to understand the scale of what you’re joining. More than 4.2 million titles were published in the US in 2025 (over 11,000 a day!), roughly 15 times the annual output of 20 years ago. The number of readers hasn’t grown anywhere near that much. More books, fewer readers for each one. Knowing that changed how I thought about the choice in front of me.

I discovered a much broader spectrum of options than I had appreciated.

At one end is traditional publishing: the large houses most of us recognize (including the “Big Five” like Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster), along with smaller independent presses. The publisher assumes the financial risk and manages much of the process, including editing, production, cover design, and distribution. In exchange, the publisher owns more of the decision-making and more of the financial upside.

At the other end is self-publishing, which has become dramatically easier and more sophisticated, and today accounts for over 80 percent of new titles published. Authors can manage virtually everything themselves and use readily available platforms to produce and distribute both digital and physical books.

And then there’s an increasingly interesting space in between: hybrid publishing.

I learned quickly that “hybrid” covers a wide range. There are so-called vanity presses that will publish virtually anything someone is willing to pay to produce. But there are also selective hybrid publishers with professional editorial, design, production, marketing, and distribution capabilities. Authors invest in bringing the book to market and keep a greater share of the revenue and greater control over the product.

That last part got my attention.

Anyone who’s worked with me is probably smiling right now. I have opinions.

I care about the words, of course, but I also care about how those words are presented. The title. The cover. The typeface. The interior design. The paper. How the book feels when someone picks it up. How it’s positioned and marketed. I liked the idea of having expert partners help me make those decisions without making all of them for me.

The more I learned, the more willing I was to trade some of the traditional publishing cachet for greater autonomy.

So I changed paths.

After researching the hybrid market, talking with authors, and comparing different hybrid publishers, I chose IdeaPress Publishing, which specializes in business books. I liked its emphasis on design and quality, its approach to getting books into the channels where business readers find them, and especially the level of author involvement throughout the process.

It was the right trade for this book.

Writing may be solitary. Creating a book isn’t.

Something else I’ve learned is just how many people it takes to write a book.

Yes, there have been hundreds of hours when it was just me and my laptop, mostly in my home office with my dog nestled at my feet, and sometimes on the bleachers at my son’s baseball game, in the car at after-school pickup, or in a hotel room. Chapters written and rewritten, stories added and deleted, words moved around endlessly, and moments when I wondered why I’d ever thought writing a book was a good idea.

But I’ve hardly done this alone.

My family has listened to me talk about this book ad nauseam. Friends and colleagues have read early drafts, challenged my thinking, edited my words, shared stories, made introductions, offered encouragement, and told me when something simply didn’t work. People I admire have agreed to read the manuscript and, now, to lend their names and words to it.

Writing groups, editors, my agent, publishing professionals, friends, family: each has helped shape the book in some way.

The name on the cover is mine. The journey isn’t.

So where am I now?

The manuscript is done: 316 pages, 12 chapters, 55 figures. The publishing path is chosen. Editing and production are underway. We’re working on endorsements and finalizing the cover.

Over the next six months I’ll share much more: the title, the cover, some of the stories behind the book, what I learned while researching and writing it, and eventually how you can get a copy.

A website for the book will launch soon. Until then, you can follow along here, on LinkedIn, or at kathrynguarini.com.

For now, I wanted to capture this particular moment in the journey, somewhere between I think I want to write a book and here it is.

I don’t yet know how the book will do. I hope people will read it. I hope they’ll find it useful. I hope some of its ideas stick with them, and perhaps even change how they lead, build, and innovate.

And someday, I’d like to do this again. But first, I suppose I should finish this one.