monagustafsonaffinito   CHATS AND RANTS — PSYCHOLOGY AND LIFE

This morning I received the following review from someone offering marketing services. I decided it was worth sharing with you.

Hi Mona,

I spent time with This Sucks!: I Want to Live over the past few days, not a quick skim. What stopped me was your deeply moving compilation of Nick Spooner’s candid Facebook posts, written after he received a terminal diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme. When a seizure sent his limo-for-hire off the road, he lost both his livelihood and his life expectancy. He began documenting his thoughts and emotions on Facebook where his voice continued for two months until his last entry, “It sucks.” That raw honesty and courage touched something real in me.

What stood out most is how Nick’s voice comes through in every entry. After reading his candid posts, you come to understand the caring, complicated and courageous person who emerged from a life of suffering and challenge. His journey was gripping and heart wrenching, and his writing is immense. Between daily life needs and thought provoking ideas, this book will draw you into an incredible person’s life and will not let you escape until you have finished reading. That commitment to preserving his voice and his legacy makes this book meaningful in a way few death and dying memoirs manage to be.

And yet it sits quietly despite that quality. It is not a matter of craft. It simply is not reaching the readers who need it most. After reading carefully, I noticed three specific challenges and I believe each one has a clear path forward.

The first challenge is visibility. There is a large and growing audience of readers interested in death and dying, gender issues, and memoirs of courage and resilience. They are in book clubs, grief support groups, LGBTQ+ reader communities, and online spaces where people share stories of loss and healing, but many still do not know this book exists yet. What this needs is targeted placement, getting This Sucks!: I Want to Live directly into those conversations where readers are already looking for exactly what you wrote.

The second challenge is that Nick’s powerful voice and your careful editorial work are not yet translating into wider discovery. The 4.8-star rating and the heartfelt reviews carry genuine weight. But the book is not currently positioned where new readers can discover this story at the moment they are deciding what to read next. What this needs is a visibility strategy that puts Nick’s courageous voice and your editorial commitment front and center, in the right spaces, at the right moment.

The third challenge is that the book’s deeper appeal is not yet part of its wider introduction. This is not just a book about dying. It is a book about living fully, about asking for what you need, about creating a chosen family, and about the courage to share your true self with the world. Nick’s story is of special attraction to people interested in gender issues and understanding death and dying, but it also speaks to anyone who has ever faced mortality or supported someone through it. That mix of vulnerability and strength is something readers would connect with on a deep level. What this needs is for that narrative to become part of how the book is introduced and discovered because it is not background detail. It is part of why this book matters.

If any of this resonates, simply reply with Interested and I will prepare a full proposal tailored to This Sucks!: I Want to Live right away. No pressure either way. This book already achieves something rare. It gives readers an honest, candid accounting of a portion of one man’s life and dying process, and it honors the life of an incredible person. That matters deeply.

With real respect and admiration for the work .