Semiretirement: Publishing a Memoir?

Maybe You Shouldn't Tell Your Story

Depending on whom you’re consulting this is either the era of the memoir or a time in which that genre had peaked, is a hard sell and could tarnish the brand you’re developing in semiretirement.

However, all those public relations and marketing experts hammering professionals and businesses to “tell your story” may have implanted the idea that you should 1) Reflect on your life/career and 2) Publish that narrative. What makes that venture so seductive is observing how many celebrities and politicos have been doing their memoirs. They range from Al Pacino to the Clintons.

There is also another driver: A memoir could provide a post-career platform to launch a successful semiretirement. Oh, dreams of paid talking engagements, assignments and part-time jobs in your new lines of work and invitations to do another book on another subject.

However, there are downsides to publishing a memoir in semiretirement.

Canadian publication Walrus points out that the demand for memoirs is down. You probably won’t get a major publisher. If you do and the book doesn’t get traction, the low ranking on Amazon can undermine your post-career branding. The message delivered could be: Here is a has-been, struggling to remain relevant.

There is a glut of memoirs and most haven’t kept up with trends. For example, those stories of childhood trauma, so popular during COVID, are being received as too internal a focus. Even those by powerhouse brandnames such as Pacino can be dinged for “being long on introspection and short on surprises.” Could the evolving new meme be: Please don’t tell us your story.

Another peril of investing your time in penning your memoir is the energy drain. Instead, you could be focusing on the real-time activities which will shape the contours of your semiretirement.

Overall, the royalties for all book sales are peanuts. It’s the rare book which is so popular that the author becomes rich. So, don’t go that route for the money. The better bet is to work for income. Even a $20-an-hour customer service position will probably earn you more.

In addition, as I explain in this blog post on public relations trends, more businesses are bypassing telling their story and plowing their resources into the direct implementation of the strategies. That has been the MO of wildly successful law firms Jones Day and Paul Weiss. Legacy media used to chronicle those stories; legacy media is in rapid decline.

Yet another downside of going on the memoir journey is that it can pull attention back to the past. A successful transition to semiretirement is immersion in the present. Especially by you. In my coaching I warn how counerproductive it can be to talk about the old days, even in casual conversation. That marks you as “old.”

Instead of a memoir develop a presence in social. Not only post. Comment. Repost. In the specialist niche, it only takes about 30,000 followers to be an influencer. In itself, that is a source of income.