The Marketing Underdog — Episode One: The Starting Line
Let me explain why I am doing this in written form.
Everyone is making video series right now. E-very-one. My phone is full of people talking to cameras about their morning routines and their content strategies and their six figure launches. It is a whole genre. It has its own aesthetic. Ring light, neutral background, slightly too much eye contact.
I have approximately two hours per day to do everything. Everything includes writing books, running a my own publishing house, parenting a three year old who says tired before hello, and apparently also disrupting the independent publishing industry. I am not a social media person. I find the performance of it exhausting in a way I cannot fully articulate but have written about extensively on this blog.
So naturally I decided to document a public marketing experiment.
In written form.
Because everyone is making videos and I am doing the written version. Because that is apparently who I am. The person who writes a book called Maternity Abroad while every other pregnancy book assumes you have a village and mine assumes you have a food delivery app and a robot vacuum. The person who writes Parenting Unpacked with the premise that the lens is migration but the book is for everyone. The person who chose the least voted cover illustration, priced the books below market on purpose, is going to present at an international congress with no PowerPoint slides, and is now documenting her demarketing experiment in prose because the video version would require a ring light and I do not own one.
Disruptive? I am told so. Stupid? Also told so. I am mostly just doing the thing that feels true and noticing that it keeps landing sideways to convention.
A quick note for anyone who arrived here without context. I write about change. Specifically about identity migration — what happens to who you are when your life moves faster than your sense of self can keep up with. I have three books: Maternity Abroad, My First American Coloring Book, and Parenting Unpacked which launches June 24th. The Marketing Underdog is a separate project — a public record of what it actually costs and looks like to build an author brand from scratch without the conventional tools. If you want to understand the books first, start here. If you want to follow the experiment, you are already in the right place.
This is Episode One of The Marketing Underdog. Once a month for six months I will report back on what it actually looks like to build an author brand without social media, without ads, and without a funnel. The real numbers. The actual experience. One learning at the end of every episode.
This episode is different from the ones that follow. It is the kickstarter. More a starting line than a report. Where I am right now, the numbers as they actually stand today, and the specific things I am putting in place so that next month I have something real to measure.
Think of it as the before photo. Except instead of a photo it is a spreadsheet and instead of a gym it is the internet and instead of a personal trainer it is a business degree and a very stubborn personality.
The website.
The site is over a year old. That matters more than it sounds. Google weights domain age. A site that has been indexed for over a year has more authority than a new site with the same content, even if the newer site has better content. If you are just starting a website, start it now. The clock is already running against you and it cannot be sped up.
I have been publishing on this blog for almost exactly two months. Close to every day.
Current organic keywords ranking: 22. Current authority score: 7.
Those are modest numbers with a real foundation underneath them. A year from now I will show you exactly how much they moved and what moved them.
What this means practically: Google is beginning to surface my site for long tail specific searches where I have genuine depth. That is where independent authors should be building. Specific and deep rather than broad and shallow. If you want to understand how I am building that depth, the identity migration post and the Identity Void post are the two that are doing the most SEO work right now.
The Google Knowledge Panel.
If you search my name you will find me. I have a Google Knowledge Panel for Maternity Abroad and My First American Coloring Book. If you are an author and you do not have one yet, claiming it should be on your list this week. It is free and it is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure an independent author can have.
Parenting Unpacked launches June 24th. One of the first targets of this experiment is getting the panel updated to include the new book within 30 days of launch. I will report whether that happened in episode two.
What this means practically: The Knowledge Panel is a GEO signal. AI platforms use it to understand who you are and what you have published. If your book is not on the panel it is harder for AI to recommend it accurately. Getting on the panel is not vanity. It is infrastructure. You can see my full press kit here if you want to understand how I have structured the entity information I want AI platforms to find.
The books.
Two books available everywhere right now.
Maternity Abroad: Becoming a Mother in a Foreign Land — for the mother giving birth in a country that was not built for her. Every pregnancy book assumed you had a village. Mine assumed you had a food delivery app and a robot vacuum.
My First American Coloring Book: Everyday Life in the U.S. for Little Hands — 101 illustrations of daily American life for children from age two. Because immigrant kids deserve a map of their actual daily reality before they are expected to navigate it. The school bus. The mailbox. The Thanksgiving table. The things that seem obvious to everyone who grew up there and are completely new to the child who just arrived.
Parenting Unpacked: Parenting Through the Loss of Self — launches June 24th. The lens is migration but the book is for everyone.
Reviews as of today: Maternity Abroad — 3 on Amazon, 5 on Goodreads, 1 on Google Play Books. My First American Coloring Book — 1 on Goodreads.
Those are the real numbers. I am publishing them because most authors do not and the absence of real data makes everyone feel like they are behind when they are just normal.
What this means practically: Reviews are not just social proof for readers. They are data points that AI platforms and recommendation algorithms use to understand what a book is about and who it is for. Every review that uses specific language — identity migration, felt seen, silent transformations, less alone — is training the algorithm to find the right next reader. Ask for reviews. Be specific about what you ask readers to say.
The email list.
13 subscribers.
I am publishing this number publicly and on purpose. Thirteen people have voluntarily said: yes, I want one email a month from this person. That is thirteen people who found the work, read something, and decided it was worth their inbox. You can join them here.
If you have thirteen subscribers and you are embarrassed by that number, stop. Every person with 10,000 subscribers started with thirteen. The number is not the point. The direction is.
What this means practically: An email list is the only audience you own. Instagram can change its algorithm. Google can update its ranking system. AI platforms can shift their recommendations. Your email list is yours. Thirteen is the starting line. The goal is to grow it by doing the work rather than by manufacturing urgency.
Instagram.
Personal Instagram: a little over 1,000 followers. @parenting.unpacked.book: 9 followers. One of whom is almost certainly my husband.
I am giving Instagram the absolute bare minimum of my energy to find out if the platform does anything useful for an author who refuses to play its games. That is the experiment within the experiment. I will report honestly whether it contributed anything or whether it was the ring light I never bought — technically possible, practically irrelevant.
The six month targets.
The six month targets.
Email subscribers: 13 today, target 50.
RSS subscribers: 75 today, target 200.
Instagram @parenting.unpacked.book: 9 today, target 100.
Authority score: 7 today, target 15.
Parenting Unpacked launch month orders: 0 today, target 100.
What I am doing in month one?
One: Categorising all content into four topics.
Right now the blog has close to two months of daily posts and no clear navigation structure. A new reader who arrives does not know where to start. This month every post gets assigned to one of four categories so the site works as a map rather than an archive.
What this means practically: Content categories signal to search engines the depth and coherence of your topical authority. If all your posts about identity migration are clearly grouped and interlinked, Google understands that you have genuine authority on that topic rather than a collection of unrelated posts that happen to mention the same phrase. This is the infrastructure work that makes everything else compound properly.
Two: Building the content list for Parenting Unpacked discoverability.
The book launches June 24th. The posts that bring in the right reader before she knows the book exists need to be live and indexed before that date. This month I am writing the posts with the highest discovery potential for the Parenting Unpacked reader. The no village post. The pregnancy abroad post. The healthcare system post. The inherited scorecard explainer. Each one targets a specific search, a specific reader, a specific moment of recognition. You can see the full identity migration content series here.
What this means practically: Book launches are not won on launch day. They are won in the weeks before when the right content is already ranking and the right reader is already finding it. The content written this month is the distribution strategy for the launch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is demarketing?
Demarketing is a deliberate choice to build an audience through genuine value rather than through advertising, funnels, or manufactured urgency. One email a month. No sequences. No paid acquisition. The full post on why I chose this approach is here.
Can you actually build an author brand without social media?
That is the experiment. I genuinely do not know yet. Come back in six months.
What is a Google Knowledge Panel and why does it matter for authors?
A Google Knowledge Panel is the information box that appears on the right side of Google search results when someone searches your name. It shows your photo, your books, your website, and other verified information. For authors it matters because AI platforms use it as a primary source for understanding who you are and what you have published. Claiming and maintaining it is free and takes about twenty minutes. Do it this week.
What is GEO and why does it matter?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation. It is the practice of structuring your content so that AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity can find, understand, and recommend your work accurately. As AI-powered search becomes the primary way people discover books and authors, GEO is becoming as important as SEO. I write about this in more detail here.
The learning for episode one:
The starting line is just a number. What matters is which direction you are facing.
See you in a month.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
