I Explained My Author Philosophy to a Journalist Yesterday.

Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Yesterday I spoke with a journalist in Ecuador. One of the things that came up was how I approach helping other writers — sharing what I know about self publishing, marketing, editorial processes, cover design, working with developmental editors and beta readers and proofreaders. Why I think that kind of collaboration is what takes a book from good to something people actually remember.

I told her I do not mind sharing any of it. The tips, the mistakes, the things I wish someone had told me. I told her about why people like me are choosing to demarket — the lack of support at home, the genuine discomfort with in-your-face marketing, the desire to be a creator who builds something real rather than a personal brand that performs being a creator. I told her that group work is what makes a book great. That no book worth reading was built entirely alone.

I did not have a name for any of that when I said it.

Today I was listening to an episode of The Creative Penn Podcast with Joanna Penn — Lessons Learned From Author Nation 2025, November 2025 — and she said this:

“The longer you are in this business and the more you join in and help others, the more people you get to know, social karma kicks in. Some of these relationships naturally turn into business opportunities and other author friends will be your support crew over the inevitable challenging years ahead.”

Social karma. That is what I was describing to the journalist yesterday without knowing what to call it.

The idea that showing up generously, helping people at your level, sharing what you know without keeping score — that it comes back. Not immediately. Not transactionally. In the form of relationships that arrive when you stopped expecting them.

I have seen it already. Rhoda Bangerter, who wrote Holding the Fort Abroad, met me for coffee and called the coloring book brilliant. Karina Lagarrigue, a PhD researcher studying expat mothers, found Maternity Abroad through a friend and reached out. Margery Pimentel said yes when I asked. Papa Balla Ndong said wonderful and invited the book to Valencia. Every single one of those conversations started because I was in the room, showing up, sharing what I knew, asking people I admired if they wanted to be part of something.

That is social karma. I was just too busy doing it to have a name for it.

Jessica Gabrielzyk​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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