Cody Cook-Parrott's Blog

Dear Reader,

Next week I am hosting Cody’s Big Week of Sales

My little big week of sales website

It’s important to me to be thoughtful in selling, especially during a week where everyone is bombarded with sales. At first I figured I wouldn’t participate in the noise. But then I got excited about discounting some of my favorite things and giving them to you at a more affordable price.

Each day next week one thing goes on sale starting at 7am EST and is only for sale for that day. Five days, five special deals.

Classifieds Sale!

I made this experiment it’s own little website which is now live. Check out all the sales and make your plan of action.

I’ll remind you one more time in Monday’s newsletter - but after that only people who opt in will receive the sale email each day. This is my best guess at ethical selling to an email list, something I am always experimenting with. And it’s also easy to opt out mid week.

Lots of bonuses will be appearing along the way. Marketing as creative practice. Selling as service. A portion of sales from Cody’s Big Week of Sales will be redistributed to .

Next week will be interesting to me as I continue to participate in Object Study - my spending experiment for paid subscribers of this newsletter. I know many of my own readers are taking breaks from spending, and I’ll be interested to see what tempts me to break my own rules.

Subscribe now

Spending and sales can bring up a lot for people, which is why I’ll only be selling to a small opted in list. I trust you to make financial decisions that support your learning, your small business, and your growth. And I have truly watched these tools do that for people.

Thanks for tuning in to this note today.

Live footage of Flexible Office

Oh and before I forget : THE RETURN OF FLEXIBLE OFFICE IS HERE : Dec 1-Jan 28 : M/W 9-10am EST $55-$125 sliding scale with 3 more PWYC spots left

I hope you have a beautiful weekend

Yours in the experiment of creative business,
Cody

Dear Reader,

Today I am thrilled, delighted, and honored to finally share with you my next book, The Practice of Attention : Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

Drum roll please for the cover reveal

PRE ORDER HERE

This book is the backbone of everything I’ve taught — from leaving social media to creative mapping to movement. It’s the clearest articulation of the life I’m building and the life I want for all of us.

Samantha Irby calls it “The only book we need right now”

The book comes out with St. Martin’s Essentials on March 17 2026. Now I know that is four months away so I have PRE-ORDER BONUSES for you! Head to www.thepracticeofattention.com and pick where you want to pre-order the book from. After you pre-order, come back to the website and upload your receipt so the bonuses can automatically fly to you.

BONUSES :

The Attention Audit Workbook : An inventory system to help you see where your focus is going so you can reclaim your time, energy, and creative capacity. With Notion databases, prompts, and exercises to get back on track when your attention is fractured beyond repair.

No Signal : January 1-7 : A digital detox email course + live workshop for logging off at the beginning of the year

PRE ORDER OPTIONS :

→ Choose Bookshop and order it from your favorite indie bookstore or my little shop. This would be the pathway most supportive of small bookstores.

→ Choose Amazon and you’ll be able to leave a review there and with enough pre-orders and reviews on that website it could be added to some lists. Lists are helpful. Amazon is complicated.

→ Choose Barnes and Noble if you’re really into them or are looking for international shipping options.

→ Other ways : Ask your local bookstore or library to order a copy - hell ask them to order many copies!

PRE ORDER HERENon monetary ways to support

→ Share the link or forward this newsletter to a friend

→ Share the The Practice of Attention website on the internet

→ Leave a comment on this post celebrating this book’s emergence into the world (comments open to all readers)

→ Respond to this email with your excitement

→ Make a Goodreads account so you can get ready to write a review after you read it ;)

→ If you’re my friend text me and say yay Cody you did it

The girlies all together

The Practice of Attention is a guide for stepping out of the loops that keep us hooked—so we can return to presence, play, and service. This isn’t an anti-technology book; it’s about reclaiming your time and focus so life feels like it belongs to you again. Moving from digital detox and an attention audit into five grounding practices—creative work, hobbies, movement, research, and spiritual life—you’ll learn how to weave your own retreat or residency into everyday living.

This book is : 

→ For anyone who feels stuck in the loop—scrolling, refreshing, searching—and wondering if freedom exists.

→ For the ones who’ve set every limit, rule, and break, only to fall right back in.

→ For those afraid of stepping away and losing connection, relevance, or belonging.

→ For people craving presence, slowness, and a life that feels like their own again

I’ve been working on outlining, visioning, dreaming, writing, editing, writing, more editing, tiny edits, big edits, and saying YES over and over again to this book since 2021.

Reading this book out loud to myself during the editing process is what actually got me to finally delete Instagram instead of just deactivate it or take a break. My own work worked me.

New Author Photo Alert by Anna Friss

I’ll be celebrating on March 18 at Boulder Bookstore and would love to see you there. More tour dates forthcoming, I’m also open to you inviting me places!

Pre-orders matter more than most people realize. They tell my publisher — and bookstores — that this book has a life waiting for it. When you pre-order, you’re helping determine the first print run, the marketing budget, and whether booksellers decide to stock it on shelves. Pre-orders are the quiet math behind a book’s future.

PRE ORDER HERE

If my work has supported you in any way, this is the moment that supports me the most. I wrote this book for you dear reader, the ones who open this newsletter. Who read every week or when they can get to it. I wrote it for us!

Thank you for letting me write to you for over a decade.
I hope this book becomes a companion for whatever season you’re in next.

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

Non Newsletter Update : All of my email replies / general emails I send from my inbox are going to spam. Waiting on a response from me? Check there and mark not spam

Dear Reader,

I have had my pulse on privacy, weathering the small storms of what is for the people and what is for list making. What is for the closest circle and what is for the outer circle.

There is no manual. No oracle. I cannot learn these lessons by guesswork, but by doing. By getting my hands in the garden beds, dirt under my fingernails, replanting the cosmos that already promised they’d come back next year.

Some days anxiety is too bright, I shape shift into something I cannot stand behind. I get porous in the wrong direction. I lose the thread of who I am and slip into who I think I’m supposed to be.

So I find myself daring to give myself permission to be whole, not a version of what other people hope I could be.

This is a tender edge. I forget that privacy isn’t just about withholding. It’s about returning. It’s about finding the part of myself that doesn’t need to be witnessed to be real.

I am becoming especially resistant to a version of myself I need to show the world to prove my goodness, to prove my worthiness of space, another breath, a seat at the table of creative expansion and enoughness.

I want a version of me that is whole and doesn't require performance or investigation. That doesn’t require defense, over explaining, or claiming my rightness. I open the door to change, I am naturally on the offense.

The less I contort myself to be understood, the more I am in connection — with self, Earth, Spirit, and others.

The interior threshold remains my connection to my higher power, which somedays feels like nothingness and other days feels like everything. Rarely an in between, but I continue to search with great faith.

I begin to trust my inner weather above the forecast. Storm as compass, not as failure.

A small note as I close: beginning this week Thursday, my longer, more interior writing will arrive for $5/mo, a new cadence for the deeper layers—longer essays, private process notes, early ideas, studio pages,
and the creative maps that shape my work behind the scenes.

If you were a paid subscriber in the past, you’ll need to sign up again, as the system doesn’t transfer previous subscriptions. I’ll share more on Thursday, but for now, consider this a gentle heads-up and an invitation to keep walking with me into this next season of the work.

As a thank you for riding the wave and returning to being a paid subscriber : everyone who signs up this week gets access to one of my most popular on-demand classes The Cartography of Time : Planning your creative and professional week while building systems that support your art and work

A portion of all paid subscriptions has been redistributed monthly since 2021 - This month they will go to supporting The Northwest Food Coalition

Upgrade nowSome Announcements :

→ Offline Practice registration is open. Not sure you’re ready to jump in? Add yourself to the email reminders here.

→ Cody’s Big Week of Sales starts Nov 24 : Click here to opt into the list to hear all about discounted classes, Creative Advising, Classifieds, and brand new things!

From Force to Flow: Join us for a free 60-min workshop to unlearn what’s in the way of your creativity. Book your spot for Nov 27!Mo(u)rning Altars An online workshop for you to create an altar that brings supreme joy and offers space to commune with the ecstatic energy of the universe.

Want to book a classified ad for next week? Click here

Subscribe now

→ info@codycookparrott.com
→ Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
→ www.codycookparrott.com
→ Follow Along on Are.na

P.S. A final note on no annual pricing for Monday Monday. After talking to a few peers I decided I wanted to keep the pricing the same for everyone, not reward people with more cash in hand to get a deal. I also like that it lets me pause or stop when I need to without promising too much ahead of time.

Dear Reader,

I write to you from my couch, a place I have written to you one hundred times before. I write to you from humility, a place I find myself stretching in to inhabit with more ease and less shame.

Today I write you the story of changing tech platforms in creative business — nothing short of three times in the past month. Something I would never recommend to any business owner or artist. A story that I hope prevents you from chasing the thing that was right in front of you the whole time.

Cross-Pollinating Projects: 5 Ways to Weave Writing into Your Work

What if the page was a mirror for the process, rather than the product?

In this episode, I share how I weave my projects together through writing.

I open the pages of my cross-pollination log, trace the path of how “untitled field project” became my business coaching group Fieldwork, and offer you a journalling prompt for translating from one medium to another.

Tune in for a portal into your own metaphors, obsessions, and vortexes of creative imagination.

Mentioned in the episode:

Creative Ideation Portal

Reclaim the Archive: A Fundraising Work for Cody’s Book

A Quilt in a Weekend

Pollinating Through Projects

Subscribe to MONDAY MONDAY to join Object Study

If you loved this episode I think you’ll love class this weekend, would love to have you

POLLINATING THROUGH PROJECTS

Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more

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→ Website
→ Are.na
→ info@codycookparrott.com

Liking and sharing this post is a great way to support my writing. Thanks for reading.

Dear Reader,

My hair is long enough to fit in a braid now, a sign of patience. Two pigtails as our first grand gesture, the braid in the back as the final form. I have grown my hair long once and it felt so triumphant. To celebrate I cut it all off.

I stand before you in a deep not knowing, in a wanting to rush but staying still. I’ve been returning to the Pilates method after almost two months out of practice. As soon as I said it wasn't my job I couldn’t figure out how to integrate it into my life. I find that when something is my job I know how to weave it together, and when it isn’t income earning I have a harder time.

https://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/pilates-is-not-my-job

So I do my little project - Public Access Pilates. A small expression of my dedication to documenting the body’s work of remembering. Without judgement I film myself, without knowing what it’s for, where it will go, or who will see it. I know I do it for myself. I like how it makes me feel, doing the movement, recording it, and archiving it.

I screen record the video, screenshot my favorite moment, and upload both to the website and to my Public Access Pilates Are.na channel where the videos live.

I reinstated my little YouTube channel, again with no clear plan. I just wanted to remember how nice it felt to make the videos without needing to know how they would lead to monetization.

It feels like a time of collecting, of gathering, preparing for Winter with each passing moment of creative indulgence. I am reminded again that the body of work is allowed to grow without a clear outcome in mind. It is the writing that creates the through line, that weaves the tapestry of work together to become one entity.

My website world, both my personal website and creating mini websites for projects, is another hub that reflects how it all sits on the same shoreline. And yet I am no stranger to the question of : Does this all make sense together? Does this all go together in a way that the people will understand?

That isn’t the right question though. The question I want to ask is : Am I being creatively fulfilled? Am I finding joy and delight in my work and the scope of my practice? And if something is missing can I unhook from capitalism long enough to know that not every part of my process needs to be income generating.

I am drawn in to what is contemplative and cyclical, not what makes me the most money. This as a starting point takes more trust.

The work of being an artist is to practice devotion in all directions — to let the projects pollinate each other without forcing a single flower to carry all the meaning. The Pilates videos teach me how to write with a new steadiness. The writing teaches me how to move. Each practice feeds the next.

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If you’re also sitting inside a field of unfinished or half-formed work with no clear direction — poems, essays, recordings, scraps of fabric or sound — I made something for you.

→ Pollinating Through Projects is a two-day workshop this weekend (Nov 1 + 2) about learning to see your creative ecosystem as a whole. We’ll map your current projects, trace the invisible threads between your mediums, and find clarity in what already exists through writing prompts and mapping out what wants to come forward.

It’s not about starting something new — it’s about seeing what’s already alive.

Each gesture — the writing, the filming, the small acts of care — belongs to the same cadence of creative practice.
It’s less about knowing where it’s headed and more about noticing that it’s still moving.
That’s the through line: the motion itself.

READ MORE + SIGN UP

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Cody’s World is my digital garden Notion universe of writing and dance experiments, research and book notes, and more. Become a Paid Subscriber to access for $5/mo or $35/year

Subscribe now

→ I added the Library of Research - an experiment in using my private Notion as an inbox and then filtering things I am actively ready to share into Cody’s World. I added this after taking Podge Thomas’ AMAZING digital gardening class.

→ Documented Katy putting up the drywall in the small shed

→ Two new short experimental essays : Getting Back To It and The Great Returning

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→ The fundraiser workshop to buy back books with my deadname on them is going well! We’re at $1935.70 out of $8820! We meet for Reclaiming the Archive on November 9 and you can contribute as much as you want to this humble effort - thank you to everyone who has participated so far, it means the world to me to not take this on alone

→ Just announced OBJECT STUDY which starts Nov 1 and will have a very cool free Notion template and Google Sheets template

https://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/object-study-a-30-day-experiment [image error] The newest episode of Common Shapes is an interview with the amazing Kening Zhuhttps://codycookparrott.substack.com/p/weaving-worlds-on-the-web-with-kening [image error]

→ Tired of forcing discipline in your creative practice? Join Make it Delicious — a free live session to design a creative practice you (actually) love.

→ Stop working alone. Focused Space is an online co-working app & community for writers, artists, entrepreneurs & anyone who is sick of procrastinating.

→ Cosmic Playground 🪁 a creative community exploring Art, Astrology, Zines & more. Join our Monthly Reset this Friday for ease, grounding, & inspiration. Use MONDAY30 to get 6 weeks free

→ Diaries, journals & daybooks : Write in warm, low-key community and start (or continue) a journal practice. Read diary excerpts from writers like Moyra Davey and Helen Garner & write together. $75 for 6 weeks.

→ Midwestern Daughter A 6 month container for anyone who has ever identified as a girl or woman affected by the ethos of the Midwest, to rewrite their own stories of identity and reclaim themselves with joy. MWD25 for $25 off of registrations in October

Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more

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→ Website
→ Are.na
→ info@codycookparrott.com

Liking and sharing this post is a great way to support my writing. Thanks for reading.

Weaving Worlds on the Web with Kening Zhu

Kening Zhu is an artist, writer, teacher, and creator building worlds on the internet.

Her approach to business is a stunning integration of creative practice, intuition, and artistic clarity.

I’m thrilled to bring you this conversation where we talk about:

Minimalist business ecosystems

Websites as archives outside of time

Allowing ourselves to be multifaceted

How Kening runs her business without platforms

The pros & cons of paid newsletters

Seasonal memberships that support inner rhythms

The labyrinth as an artist’s path

How to quit compartmentalizing business and art

Letting your artist child grow up

Mentioned in the episode:

Creative Ideation Portal

Kening’s website

Kening’s newsletter

“Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you’re not. But going below the surface too, it’s an active process. It’s not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that sound waves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you’re tuned out, then you’re not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.”

Pauline Oliveros

Dear Reader,

I am starting to believe I have compiled enough ideas, materials, and objects for my next projects, essays, books, and workshops. I feel filled to the brim, having gathered all Summer and finding myself moving into Fall with my ingredients indexed, my thoughts simmering like soup, my bookshelves overflowing with texts.

It is no mystery to me that I love to accumulate. A bookstore feels like a place where I find my kin and my ancestors, wanting to take them home with me. I love fashion and dressing a certain way so I love to thrift and shop at vintage stores and find treasures. I love to read and listen to podcasts to bring in new knowledge. I am a hungry ghost, looking to fill the spiritual hole that lives inside of me - and in this time of life I am parsing out which parts of this process are beautiful and which fall into addictive spending and consumption.

I feel full right now, meandering through life knowing that to bring in more books I would need another bookshelf. To bring in more clothes I would need another closet. To bring in more ideas I would need another brain.

What if the work now isn’t to gather more, but to tend to what has already been gathered. To alter the clothes, gift the books I have read or will never open, bring things to the Women’s Resource Center to donate. Perhaps it is time for a clothing swap or a tiny garage sale. I feel the projects that already exist - like my 366 day prayer book Look About You - want to be recorded as an audio book. Some of my favorite essays want to be rearranged into workshops. My old sheets turned into quilts.

The archive holds so much, yet I can only hold what is in front of me. Instead of hunting for new material, I feel called to weave together the existing fragments. World building not as bringing in new possibility, but as working with the fractured pieces that have been waiting for me. I want to let things settle, digest, and integrate.

I turn not to composting but to pollination. I am not asking what wants to be turned over back into soil, I feel like I am swift to this action. Instead I ask - what projects want to inform new ones. An example I keep coming back to is a poem I wrote in grad school last semester, The Quilt As Archive. This became the title of my solo art show and I self published the poem in the catalogue with the show. I didn’t need to come up with new material for the catalogue or the show, it was already right in front of me. The series of quilts I finished were ones I had worked on at the Gee’s Bend Quilt Retreat a year before, courting me to be finished.

I always have something waiting in the wings, ready to be changed, or to become new again. Within and without. Projects not as separate entities, but as opportunities to cross feed each other. The poem feeds the quilt, the class feeds the essay. Everything I’ve collected, already in conversation with each other.

Papers all over my desk, scraps of fabric on the floor, podcast episode ideas in my notes app — the soft shuffle of things asking to be chosen. They all start to hum together as one, everything living simultaneously.

This same abundance shows up in my material life, and I begin to be more skeptical of how I am advertised to, what my values are in fighting against it, and how to be in greater alignment with my spending. The same discipline that guides my creative practice — to finish, to revise, to listen — might also guide how I consume. What are the objects telling me — the quality, the source, the way they came into my home. The way they exit the home.

I consider the great stillness, a spending interlude, of not acquiring new things and to see what the offerings in front of me have to say. I want to spend November in observation, not accumulation — studying the objects that already hold my attention.

It all comes back to metabolizing, and the older I get, the slower this process becomes in body, mind, and spirit.

What if every unfinished idea was already enough?
What if attention itself was the practice?

For now I will invest in the deep listening of what is already here.

Subscribe now

→ Donate to Land Back in Detroit : Noojimo’waning- A Place for Healing

→ This episode of The Money with Katie Show with Tressie McMillan Cottom

→ Early Bird Registration is open for Pollinating Through Projects Nov 1 + 2 : Use code POLLINATING for 20% off for the next 48 hrs

→ Thank you to everyone’s support on the announcement of buying my books back from my former publisher to trigger a reprint without my dead name on the cover

I’d love to invite you to check out the fundraising workshop on Nov 9 and contribute or share with your communities. Over $1200 has already come in to meet my $8820 goal to buy back 980 books and print stickers for the covers.

JOIN THE FUNDRAISER

→ For the month of November I am hosting OBJECT STUDY for paid subscribers of this newsletter. More information on this experiment soon but if you want to think more deeply about the objects you acquire, purchase, and get rid of : this is for you

We’ll have a Discord group to track our progress each day, a spreadsheet template, videos guiding you through how to set up a spending pause, and more!

→ I got an early copy of next book Making Art and Making a Living and I already dug in and am loving it. Mason’s book Daily Rituals totally changed my life a decade ago and is a huge reason why I try to do certain things every day. PRE ORDER his new book! HIS NEWSLETTER IS ALSO VERY GOOD :

→ 2025 Parole Prep Holiday Raffle : (from the website) This fundraiser will support Parole Prep’s mission of providing community, care, and advocacy for people rebuilding their lives after decades in prison. From weekend getaways to signed collections of books, we hope you find something special to share with a loved one this holiday season.

Parole Preparation Project works to bring incarcerated people home, reunite families, and strengthen communities. To learn more about the work, visit Parole Prep.

The newest episode of Common Shapes is about how I decided to end one of my favorite places to be : my writing group Landscapes

I also announce yet ANOTHER NEW PROJECT - listen to find out what it is!

A Class Traitor’s Guide to Solidarity Under Fascism 11/6, 7-8:30 ET For any young person who has more than they need ($, housing) and wants to share it but doesn’t yet know how. Find community, make a plan!

Stop procrastinating. Focused Space is an online co-working app & community for writers, artists, entrepreneurs & anyone who is sick of working alone.

Fog Chaser: A new original instrumental song sent to you monthly, skipping algorithms entirely. For creatives seeking calm focus (+ free download)

Meditate & Create Open House, Sun Oct 26, 10am ET. Bring a journal, a sketchbook, some knitting, and let’s meditate, make stuff, & connect! Free, ticketed event online. ALL welcome!

Sex and the City fans rejoice: Night of 1000 Boyfriends brings 14 drag artists together for a show celebrating (and roasting) the series’ most iconic boyfriends. 11/6 in NYC

Expressive Unshaming: Work with body symptoms, emotions, and patterns to move toward ease, self-trust, and authentic expression

Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more

→ Website
→ Are.na
→ info@codycookparrott.com

Want access to my digital garden of pollinated projects? Become a paid subscriber to access Cody’s World : my Notion based universe of projects, archives, dance videos, writing, and more - $5/mo or $35/year

Subscribe now

Liking and sharing this post is a great way to support my writing. Thanks for reading.

Dear Readers,

Yesterday I wrote about wanting to buy back the remaining 980 copies of How to Not Always Be Working and Getting To Center that still say my deadname on them - doing this will trigger a reprint!

I took the paywall off so you can read it here :

With all of your amazing advice and help I landed on the following fundraising event and I’d love for you to be there or contribute!

JOIN THE FUNDRAISER

This investment of buying back the books costs $8820. In order to raise this much money I am hosting this fundraising event and workshop. Can’t attend live? The workshop will be recorded.

Or you can simply contribute in solidarity — every dollar helps. Anything raised over $8820 will go toward printing stickers to place on the cover and spines of the books, shipping costs, and managing inventory.

The workshop is valued at $55 but you can contribute as little as $27 (that helps me buy back 3 books!) - You are encouraged and welcome to contribute more if you are able - $111, $222, $500, $1000!

WHAT WE WILL DO IN THE WORKSHOP :

This workshop is about reclaiming and re-animating your own archive — as an artist, writer, or small business owner.

Together we’ll explore:

How to organize, revisit, and repurpose old projects.

How to transform past work into new stories.

How to reclaim creative lineage as a living practice.

Expect journaling prompts, guided reflection, and live conversation.
I will read from How to Not Always Be Working and Getting to Center, share what this reclamation means, and talk with special guests about the practice of renaming, lineage, and attention.

There will also be book giveaways, prizes, and small surprises throughout the session

WHY IT MATTERS :

This is more than a fundraiser — it’s a collective act of creative sovereignty.
Every registration helps bring my early works home under my true name — aligning the archive with the artist before The Practice of Attention arrives.

Thank you for reading! Thank you for trusting me! Please share widely!

→ Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more→ Website
→ Pollinating Through Projects Waitlist : A Two-Day Workshop on Writing Across Mediums - a study in bringing together all your many forms to make what seems like a jumbled mess finally make perfect sense. Live on Zoom Nov 1 + 2 :)
→ Are.na
→ info@codycookparrott.com

EDIT : YOU CAN NOW JOIN Reclaim the Archive: A Fundraising Workshop for Cody’s Books on Sunday November 9

Dear Reader,

Today in Behind the Scenes of Business I come to you with a request for advice that is sensitive. I feel stumped, and so do many of my peers. So I thought I would bring you into the fold. I have so few examples of trans authors who have changed their name after a book has already been in print, I am coming up short for for resources.

My request pertains to How to Not Always Be Working and Getting to Center which both currently are in bookstores worldwide with my deadname on them. It bums me out, hurts my heart, and as a small business owner reads to me as bad and confusing for sales. Combined — these books have sold over 50k copies, been translated into multiple other languages, and are very special to me.

If you want to read more about my name change read along here :

My former publisher has been difficult to work with on changing my name in print and I have been presented with a big decision to make. I’ll tell you the story and lay out the details as best I can, and in the comments you are welcome to share your thoughts. We’ll talk exact numbers, pricing, and transparency as always.

My next book The Practice of Attention : Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World comes out with Sounds True on March 17, 2026.

In a world where things are in alignment - leading up to the sale of this book and DURING the launch of this book, all of my former books would clearly say Cody Cook-Parrott on them, as this is my chosen, legal, and business name for almost two years.

My old publisher has worked with me to get everything ready for a reprint that clearly says Cody Cook-Parrott on the covers, spine, and back as well as change my name and pronouns in the text itself. For this I am grateful.

However, with the remaining books in the warehouse - 214 copies of Getting to Center and 776 copies of How to Not Always Be Working - they will not budge to work with me on putting stickers on these covers or triggering an earlier reprint for the book and their estimate is they won’t sell before The Practice of Attention comes out.

After months of asking, today I was given the total amount it would cost to buy the books back myself and trigger a reprint, which is $8820 with my author price of $9 a copy. This is more money per copy than How to Not Always Be Working is currently listed at on Amazon.

In no particular order here are some facts and considerations :

→ In no way do I have an extra $8820 laying around, saved, or in a bank account for me to do this today.

→ If I were to save up and buy back this many copies of my books, what would I do with them?

→ Would I make name plate stickers myself and have a big sticker placing party somewhere and have a blowout sale and sign copies of them and sell them for super sale on my website?

→ Does this then compete with selling the new reprint copies? Or does that not matter?

→ My old publisher is suggesting “I simply wait for the reprint” - am I overreacting in how upsetting it is to see my deadname everywhere?

→ If I don’t do this, what do I do instead?

→ Is it appropriate to fundraise for the $8820 - or do a sort of presale for these copies? I am sensitive to the many needs in the world right now (always)

→ I can’t use Kickstarter because it isn’t a new project and with GoFund Me I couldn’t give the book as a reward for contributing

→ Is there another site or way to do a fundraiser/pre order of sorts with a GOAL to reach and rewards to be given that IS NOT my own website?

→ My understanding is I would have them on a Net30 contract, meaning once they are in my hands I would have thirty days to come up with the money to pay for them

This is where I run out of ideas. Having 980 books on hand feels ultimately overwhelming, but also a bit exciting to think about all the things I could do with them. If I did buy them all back it feels clear I’d need to also order stickers for the covers.

I wish so badly my old publisher would just let me pay for stickers for them to place on the books - but they have said no multiple times. I offered to pay for them, fly to NYC, and put them on myself. They still said no.

When I did my residency at Atland in August I brought my books to put on the merch table and it wasn’t until I got there that I realized how painful it was to see my deadname on the covers. I cut up post it notes to write Cody on and stuck them on the books. My students insisted I push to have a reprint done earlier or stickers made. I am so grateful to be surrounded by advocates and allies in this way.

It was then that I really started to realize how important this was to me. How disorienting and dysphoric it feels to have M@rlee Gr@ce written all over these books when I feel so far from that name.

I also am noticing that some bookstores are confused when I email them, not linking that I am the same person (even though I am clear about it in my email).

One of the reasons I didn’t change my name for so long was the fears that are now coming true. That having my deadname on so many books in the world and in the warehouse would confuse the buyer, the reader, and be painful. These fears have all come true.

I am so glad I changed my name and didn’t wait for the fear to go away. Not only has it persisted, it was real all along. Sometimes we have to do things for ourselves at the detriment of our careers, our bank accounts, and our comfort.

This brings me to you dear readers.

For my trans and non binary readers, have you been through something like this, and how did you handle it?

For my cis readers, how would you advocate for a trans person going through this?

And for all of you - what would you do?

To keep it easy, here is a poll. But I’d love for you to elaborate in the comments.

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