Customizing Your New Year, New You
Going Grid Zero as Part of a Theme-Based Strategy (as well as a Platform Tune-up)
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I like the running-start energy of a new year. I also appreciate the conversations around resolutions and goal-setting. In publishing, there’s a January genre, essentially — the New Year, New You books. Think self-help, wellness, fitness, and personal development types of titles. They get January pub dates, and their pitches, promotions, and merchandising all have some version of the new year, new you call-to-action.
This means there’s an annual cycle of discussion about whether to lean into this slogan/marketplace positioning, or to move away from it. But New Year, New You always wins out. It cannot be stopped, and I’m fine with going along for the ride, customizing the sentiment in a way that works for me.
I personally enjoy this turn into the new year as a chance to find ways to reset and rejuvenate. I like to think in themes — a variation on the more defined resolutions. My theme this year is “Opening Space.” The specifics on this theme are purposefully undefined. I’m not really feeling the need for a major shake-up or an all-new scenario change on any level (personal/professional), but I do know that I want to open things up. Over the course of this year, I plan to weave this theme into the content and resources and the types of information I share in this newsletter. 2026, for me, is about opening space.
GOING GRID ZERO
In my last newsletter of 2025, I re-shared recommendations for tuning-up your author platform. Simple to-dos to update your site, social media, and newsletter.
I wanted to add an additional item: deleting / archiving / cleaning up social media posts on the various platforms. There are actually a couple of tracks to this suggestion, and I’m genuinely curious how others think about this type of social media maintenance and how they handle it on their own profiles.
The first track is simply deleting old posts from social media profiles that you are no longer using. For example, I had used Twitter for years, but over time it evolved into a space I was no longer interested in engaging. I didn’t want to actually fully close my account, as there may come a time where I want to rejoin the fray — these things tend to flow in cycles. But I did have this urge to get my content off the platform — thousands of tweets. So that’s what I did. I was never a power Twitter user, and my posts, even when I was very active, never got much engagement. No one noticed or cared that I deleted all my posts. But I felt great about it.
I recently did this with Threads and Bluesky. These platforms don’t seem to have the same level of issues that Twitter does, but I’m just not putting any effort into engaging there. Again, maybe that will change in the future (so I did not fully shutter the accounts), but in the meantime, it just made sense, for me, to delete my old posts and make it clear I’m not active on those platforms.
But the second track is more about an active strategy — sticking with the platform with a plan to use it, but deleting or archiving all previous posts, essentially clearing the decks so that the full focus is on the next, new thing. The first time I recall seeing this approach was through Donald Glover’s Instagram account, around the time that he was releasing a new Childish Gambino song/album/video. This is a pretty common move by high profile people/companies as they gear up major releases or rebrands. There are all kinds of things to consider here, like algorithmic surfacing and rankings, and of course, memory scroll. And for those with sizable followings, long-running programming, and income generating profiles, this might make no sense at all. But as someone with a very modest and sporadically active social media footprint, I find myself preferring the post and delete strategy. Doing it on a schedule (annually, maybe?), and not just as part of a campaign tactic, feels like a solid option and a way forward in the ever-changing social media wilds.
And of course, there’s a whole generation of users that do exactly this as a matter of course — I’m generalizing here, but many of the younger folks opt for “Grid Zero.” This means they have nothing publicly posted at all, and if they do post, it’s up for a bit, and then deleted/archived. They use the platform predominately in private way, sharing with “close friends” and via the messaging function. Perhaps this Gen Xer is finding his inner-Gen Z, but I think the kids are most definitely on to something.
For me personally, this overall connects to the theme of opening space, so it’s the direction I am taking. Note: deleting/archiving posts is time consuming! I’m still working through the process.
Please share in the comments any strategies along the lines of going Grid Zero, and any related variations that are working for you in terms of how you are managing your social media profiles in 2026.
And for more author platform tune-up suggestions and recommendations, make sure to read my recent post — very easy to-dos that can be taken care of in a very short amount of time.
INSIGHT AND RESOURCE-PACKED POSTS TO CHECK OUT
Fisher the Bookseller shares a wonderful day-in-the-life of a book buyer post, including both the personal and the professional goings-on in a typical work day. Especially liked seeing the book buying insight into commissioned reps representing a multitude of publishers. It’s an important window into how smaller publishers reach book buyers/the marketplace, and furthers the understanding of what it means to be published by a small vs big 5 publisher. If your book is with a small publisher being sold in by a sales rep that represents lots of different publishers, while it’s still good that there is an effort underway, you can clearly see the added challenge to the sell-in process.
And another helpful post that’s worth a read is Sally Ekus’s primer on blurbs. Sally is a longtime agent, and she shares some excellent in-the-know insights about handling the blurb-ask effort. There’s a cyclical conversation in publishing that regularly bubbles up about the efficacy of blurbs, and I truly hope we get a break from it in 2026. Best to just know how to handle the process and get the best blurbs you can for your book, if you are currently in the blurb-ask business. I’ve shared my insights and recommendations on blurbs in previous editions of this newsletter, which you can read here and here.
With the arrival of the new year comes renewed energy towards submitting your work and seeking writerly opportunities. Be sure to check out Erika Dreifus’s hefty compendium of contests, competitions, and submission opportunities. Erika sends this out at the top of each month via her resource-packed Practicing Writer 2.0 newsletter. And speaking of open calls, Jerry Portwood’s Queer Love Project is seeking personal essays on the theme of second chances. Details here.
Lastly, it’s great to see the indispensable Publishers Marketplace here on Substack with Buzz Books Official. Was thrilled to be included in their excellent new year’s round-up of book publishing-focused newsletters, and its fantastic to see they’ve got some exciting programming set to happen right at the top of 2026. Details on their upcoming “Buzz Books Authors and Editors Panels” here.
Thanks as always for reading, commenting, and sharing. I truly hope you had a restful holiday stretch, and that you’re entering the new year with renewed energy and creating some fun intrigue with what you’re planning to launch in 2026.
— Jeffrey Yamaguchi
jeffreyyamaguchi.com
Check out the full Book Publishing Brick By Brick ARCHIVE.
View the Archive organized by TOPIC.
Book Publishing Brick By Brick SERIES:
— The Publishing Timeline
— Developing Your Book’s Marketing & Publicity Plan
— Understanding Book Campaign Costs and Establishing Your Budget
— How the IndieNext List Works
— How to Develop and Execute a Pre-Order Campaign (and why it’s important to do so).
EVENT PLANNING for 2026:
The 2026 Calendar of Book Publishing Industry Events and Conferences
ABOUT THE WRITER OF THIS NEWSLETTER
I’m Jeffrey Yamaguchi, and I got to work with a whole host of amazing authors on their campaigns in 2025 — Freda Epum, Cynthia Weiner, Tracey Gee, Troy Ford, Sam Sussman, Jennifer Fawcett, Satsuki Ina, Juliet Izon, and more. I met countless others for formal consults and informational conversations, and all of this led to meeting many more people — event programmers, podcasts hosts, newsletter publishers, reviewers, media professionals and more. I’ve been championing books and authors for 20+ years and that’s one of the best things about working in publishing — getting to connect with talented people and work on amazing projects. So excited for what’s in store for 2026 (a year of opening space). Learn more about me and the work I do in books (and beyond) by visiting my website, and get in touch if you’re interested in a campaign or a consult.
I really like this — especially in thinking about profiles as a curated place for readers to learn about/engage with us, and how it's ok that some posts won't hold relevance over a long period of time.
Great insights, Jeff - I'm really taken with the Grid Zero idea. Whenever I see an Instagram with a really cool integrated design I always think "I want that!" but it never occurred to me to delete everything first.