How Anthology Books Empower Authors And Build Community With Heart Open Publishing’s Melisa Keenan

Anthology books have become a powerful way for leaders, coaches, and visionaries to share their stories—and Melisa Keenan is helping them do it with heart and integrity. As a seven-time international and USA Today bestselling author and founder of Heart Open Publishing, Melisa blends her background in intimacy coaching with publishing to guide authors in creating multi-author books that are authentic, diverse, and impactful. In this conversation, she shares her journey from author to publisher, the lessons she’s learned about visibility, integrity, and inclusivity, and how she helps entrepreneurs leverage their books to build credibility, community, and sustainable business growth.

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How Anthology Books Empower Authors And Build Community With Heart Open Publishing’s Melisa Keenan

We’re going to have a talk about anthology books with Melisa Keenan. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we have our upcoming training on October 3rd, 2025, about how to humanize your marketing and funnel fixes. For those of you who’ve ever put together funnels and you can’t figure out why it’s not converting, we’re going to talk about five funnel fixes with Rebecca Bertoldi. You can register for that at BAMagtraining.com. I hope to see you there.

We have a lot going on in October, so I hope you’ll take a look at all of our training. Our guest, Melisa Keenan, is a seven-time international and USA Today bestselling author. She founded H.O.P.E. to help leaders and visionaries share their insights through storytelling. She is an intimacy expert and a book publisher who blends spiritual and practical aspects of life and work online with over six years of experience. Stay tuned for my interview with Melisa.

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Melisa, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

First Publication Success Journey

I’m excited a little bit to talk about the anthologies that you do and putting together those multi-author books that so many people are doing. What inspired you to found the Heart Open Publishing Enterprise?

H.O.P.E., the Heart Open Publishing Enterprise, for me, was about a compilation of the fact that I run an online intimacy business, coaching and counseling with couples and high-level business leaders on intimacy. It’s so interesting, over the years, of watching people go through relationship struggles, there was often a similar parallel challenge with visibility or how they led in their companies. Did they let people see their hearts or how alone they felt as a leader in their company? I was like, “I’ve been doing this forever.” I had already been in several publications myself. I was like, “I would love to do this for other people.”

I noticed you have a lot of books. How did your first publishing experience in 2021 influence your journey as an author and entrepreneur? I know, for me, I came from traditional publishing, and then I self-published and saw the worst business model I’d ever seen. I’m assuming you had an experience that propelled you into this as well.

It’s interesting. My first publication was amazing. I was so excited because I had written off becoming a published author, at least for the time being, because I’d done a ton of research and bought several different prerecorded courses about how to publish or how to contact publishers. It felt so big and overwhelming, and I was like, “Why am I going to write a book if I have no idea how to publish it?” I finally scrapped it.

When I found that as a model, it was like, “You’re telling me I can pay, write a chapter, and you have all these experts that are going to take me through the process and do this for me? I’m sold.” I didn’t know anything about what I was doing, but for that book in particular, the investment was quite high because we were doing a huge marketing campaign targeting the USA Today bestseller, which we hit. It was fun. It was a great experience. Many of those authors went on to become my lifelong referral partners and friends. It was a beautiful experience.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know in terms of anything else. It wasn’t until I got more into the weeds of what publishing was that I started to see maybe not everyone is running with the level of integrity that I would. There were always a lot of questions left unanswered. There was always a lot of smoke and mirrors. That was where I started to go, “Maybe I could do it, and I could do it differently.”

When I started out, I was a little bit of what I would call an industry rebel because I would tell people on the intake, “You’re not going to get ROI from this publishing package. What are you going to do with it to build ROI?” The publishing industry looked at me like, “Why would you tell people that?”

It’s like, “That’s true. They’re either going to learn it now, and I could help them build a fricking plan, or they’re going to be upset with me at the end.”

I paid an enormous amount of money in 2016 for a coach. As part of that coaching, I had to hire another coach. I remember that coach telling me, “You can’t tell people it’s hard. You can’t tell people they have to build X, Y, and Z.” I was like, “I feel like I must tell them that.” I ended up dumping her as a coach because I felt like, “You’re not going to help me build a business that’s out of integrity.”

I love that so much. It is unfortunate. As a newbie, you find a publisher and you think, “This is great.” I have, and I’m sure you have as well, heard horror story after horror story, even with some of the bigger-name publishing houses. They assumed that because they got with a bigger name, that meant that they were going to have some big experience. It still came back to the publisher on them going, “How are you going to get these books sold? They’re taking up space in our warehouse,” or whatever. They thought that was going to be all done for them. I’m like, “How can you run a business without being transparent?”

That is so very true. You talk a lot about blending integrity, magic, and love in your work. How do you embody those values in your daily business?

Incomplete Journey To Inclusivity

It means I get to stumble and fumble a lot, let people see that, and be transparent. I lead from my heart. I lead the way that I am in the world. A few years ago, my family and I left the Mormon church. It was a huge transition. I  told a friend, “I feel like we’re still “leaving”. It’s been two years, and it still doesn’t feel complete.” I’m not sure if it ever will. It’s one of those things.

Confronting White Privilege In Faith

As part of that whole deconstruction process, I had a special experience where I had a client leave because I had said that I wanted the project to be very diverse and represent a lot of voices. When she got into the project, she was like, “Where’s the diversity?” She left as a result. I could have taken that in a lot of ways, but what hit my heart so strongly was that I have not done due diligence to know how to adequately hold diverse spaces that are inclusive and where everyone feels equal.

I don’t understand. I haven’t confronted my White privilege. I haven’t gone into these places and realized how much the church and my Christianity had some biases that were very invisible to me, which led me to mostly work with people who walk, talk, and look like me. I’ve been sharing about that. I’ve been like, “Here’s what I’m going through.”

With the help of many friends that have come my way, coaches, and things, I created a partial scholarship program reserved for people who come from marginalized or underrepresented backgrounds. Particularly in the publishing industry, this is so pertinent. How long has it even been that people have wanted to hear from trans folks, Middle Eastern folks, or people who are doing things differently? It was the Good Old Boys Club until Amazon and the Internet. It’s been years.

It feels so good to say, “I haven’t done this, but now I’m going to do something about it.” We’re going through training in my team around diversity, equity, and inclusion. All I could do was say, “I’m so sorry, and thank you to the people who have come before.” Even this woman, who ended up leaving my company, gave me a huge lesson that will have a big ripple effect on a lot of people.

What’s been your most rewarding experience as a multi-time international bestselling author? You have 8 or 9 books. You have quite a few books out there.

The part I love the most is the connection with the community of authors. All of my books are multi-author books. I’ve not yet published a solo author book.. The last book that we did is called Call of the Mystical Mountain. It’s all about Mount Shasta and the spiritual experiences that people have at Mount Shasta.

I wait for the authors to come in, and then I feel into what they want to create and what would be the most epic way for them to launch their book and have it be meaningful for them. They wanted to have both an online party and launch, but what was more important to them was this in-person thing. I went to Mount Shasta, and we had this beautiful cacao ceremony and meditation. We did have a Zoom going for the few authors who couldn’t make it, but it was like, “This will not be broadcasted.” It was so important to them that we had this sacred, closed container. It was so beautiful. I had tears through the whole thing.

It’s amazing when you bring people together. Everyone is coming in with this space of courage to share in a deeper way than they have before. They all have this beautiful, inspiring message. Everyone is talking about their lived experience. It’s this very rewarding thing that I had to live this thing in order to be able to write it, publish it, and then share it with others. That one is one of my tops.

I haven’t been to Mount Shasta since I was a kid. I grew up in California. That’s so cool. How does H.O.P.E. support authors in expressing their authenticity both in writing and marketing? That must be a challenge for you because for marketing, you’ve got so many different people to present their authenticity in the same book.

Personal Storytelling Coaching For Authors

It’s hugely through coaching and supporting the authors themselves about, “How are you sharing your story?” We’re doing something new, where we have a little bit more of an in-depth, one-on-one writing coaching process to help them pull forward those pieces. I find that most often, especially when you’re writing one chapter and especially if you’ve never written before, people want to come to that chapter with their entire life experience. We help support them, like, “What if we could put a magnifying glass on this one part? How did you feel? How did you move through that?”

There are always coaching pieces around, like, “If I tell this story publicly, my brother or my mother,” which comes up for every author. We help support through that as well. One of our books that we’re working on is called Embracing Your Eros. We have individuals who are writing under a pseudonym because they’re talking about their erotic journey. Not everyone is very public about that. What’s so cool is how you can still be so proud and uniquely shine your story, even though you’re not attaching it to your birth name.

That’s interesting. I remember a long time ago, a friend of mine wrote a book. All of us who were her beta readers were like, “Where’s this thing that happened to you?” It’s her pivotal story. She was like, “I can’t share it in a book.” It was the thing that people commented on most. She was very scared and vulnerable about it, like, “People are going to judge me,” and everybody was like, “That was so brave of you to share.” Sometimes, we attach a little too much shame to our past that we can’t change it. It happened, and it was there. We can share it, but we always feel like other people are going to shame us the way we probably over-shame ourselves, if that makes sense.

Yes and no, because even in my own journey, I’ve had family ostracize me for being so public about different things that have happened in my life or in my ancestry. My in-laws are not big fans of me.

Are they still LDS?

Many of them are.

I don’t know if you know. I live in Utah. It’s an everyday experience here.

I don’t think I knew that.

I didn’t know about your LDS experience either, so it’s very interesting. I, too, have pretty much left the church, but I still retain a lot of those values. They’re good values. When you get into your 60s, the church doesn’t matter as much anymore. For entrepreneurs who want to leverage their books for business, what’s your top advice? For so many of us, we want to leverage our business, but we don’t know how.

Leveraging Community For Strategic Success

Building a strategic launch and then utilizing your built-in community is the number one way. The biggest mistake I see people make is like, “Once I hit it big, then I’ll tell my people.” The biggest struggle that I see these entrepreneurs having is leveraging their network. We build out three concentric circles around the author and their first circle.

I’m like, “Who’s that cousin that you call when you are drunk and you don’t want anybody to know you need a ride home? Who’s that teacher that you had who was your biggest cheerleader, who you know would be so proud that you’re writing? That’s your first inner, most circle. Those are the people you reach out to when you’re like, ‘I can’t do this. Why am I doing this?’” They continue to build from there. I’m then like, “Your outermost circle is the people in your email list, the people who are following you on social media, and stuff.”

It’s getting everybody as involved as possible through giveaways and parties. People want to be a part of your joy and your celebration. There’s no better way than to leverage your organic reach first. We’ve got an Amazon ads guy. We run an Amazon Ads campaign for almost all of our books. He said that there are 20,000 new books a day being uploaded onto Amazon. I haven’t seen a verifiable statistic for this, but he’s in there every day.

For the people who’ve been following you for a long time, and suddenly, the book has elevated your clout, their know, like, and trust factor is like, “This is perfect. My year-long one-on-one, here it is.” It is having those things all built out so that there are systems and funnels in place for people to come and get closer to you.

The funnels are so important. We do a lot of platform-building. For probably half of the people who come to us, if they want more business from their book, but they had built the platform, they probably wouldn’t have even needed the book because they would’ve had solid marketing and platform-building to begin with. There is always a challenge there. I was going to ask you what some of the common challenges your authors face in the publishing process are, and how you help them overcome those.

I see people wobble through the writing process. We’ve built out quite a bit of handholding through that. It’s that piece of feeling like you’re taking up too much space with people by asking for help. I’m always telling people, “You not telling your first cousin that you’re published in a book is denying them the joy of being a part of the celebration and being a part of the journey. That’s selfish. Don’t do that.”

I like that. I don’t know if you have ever heard this story, but my best friend wouldn’t read my first book. We were out walking one day, and I’m like, “Why haven’t you read my book?” She’s like, “It’s because I’m your best friend. If it sucks, I have to tell you it sucks.” I was like, “Oh.” There are some people who have a little bit of fear around that as well.

The last question here. How do you help authors weave their book marketing into their existing business strategies? For so many of these people, especially in the spiritual, which it sounds like you do a lot of those books, they seem to always have trouble marketing because they don’t know how to express the spiritual in an esoteric way.

A way that’s tangible.

I think I said that backwards. It is taking the esoteric and making it tangible. They always think about the problem, but they don’t articulate the results in a tangible way of what’s going to come from this.

12-Month Joyful Marketing Plan

We bring in and do group coaching sessions with our multi-author books. We target whatever their issues are as they’re coming up. My biggest piece around all of this is that you need to build a twelve-month marketing plan after the book has launched that weaves beautifully with what you’re already doing, but that feels joyful and light.

If you can’t see yourself doing that thing consistently over twelve months and still feeling joyful and light, don’t commit to that because you’re not going to do it. Sometimes, that’s about hiring additional support. If it’s like, “I’m not that good at being able to talk about what I do.” I’m like, “Who is? How can we bring them in?” You’re like, “I can’t afford an assistant.” We’re like, “Who could you trade services with in your community that’s your biggest fan?”

I’m always in there, brainstorming with them around wherever I see their needs being. I like to go and follow each person to see what they are putting out there so that I can say, “I don’t have any idea what you do. I’ve already known you for three months. I’ve been reading your posts, and I still can’t quite figure out what you do.” That’s good feedback. We try to be real with tools on the ground.

When it comes to post support and things like that, we give our authors a writing guide. I’m always trying to show them, “Everything that we’re teaching you in this process could be duplicable. You see how this is so simple. This is how you ask your referral partners to share about your book. That’s also how you ask them to share about your work.” Maybe a lot of that stuff gets bypassed, especially for online business owners. Nobody goes to Business 101 school when you’re becoming an energy healer or whatever, so you miss some of those very basic fundamental things, like relying on business partners or referral partnerships.

That is so true. We call them power partnerships. Many people get sucked into that JV, Joint Ventures. There’s a big difference between that click of a Joint Venture and the relationship that you’re building with a power partnership. They worry about disability, but they get sucked into how a click is not a relationship. They don’t understand that from the Joint Venture. You call it referral partners. I call it power partners. That’s very important. If we want to find out more about you or want to publish a multi-author book, where do we get hold of you?

Multi-Author Book Publishing Services

You can come and visit my website at MelisaKeenan.com or HeartOpenPublishing.com. They take you to the same place. That’s the last piece I want to speak to. My favorite thing to do is help people who run communities create their own multi-author book with their community. That’s such a powerful leadership point and way of building trust and connection with your community in a different way than you’ve done before.

I’ll have coaches who are running a monthly membership and also running one-on-ones, and then it’s like, “Maybe this isn’t a fit for everyone.” They can come and interact with you in a multi-author book where you don’t have to do the heavy lifting of the publishing. We do that part. You don’t have to know how to create a bestseller launch. We do that part for you. We teach that for you. It gives another layer of clout and leadership. That’s what we love to help people with.

“Grateful Thanks For Joining”

That’s great. Thank you so much for being on.

Thanks so much.

Important Links

• H.O.P.E.
• Become a Book Partner | Become a Soul-Led Multi-Author Book – Melisa Keenan
• Call of the Mystical Mountain
• Superbrand Publishing Monthly Training

About Melisa Keenan

Melisa Keenan, seven-time international and USA Today bestselling author, founded HOPE to help leaders and visionaries share their insights through storytelling. An intimacy expert and book publisher, she blends spiritual and practical aspects of life and work online with over 6 years of experience.

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