If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die: Pre-Order Now

My book is now available for PRE-ORDER!!!!!

Oh my god.

I am sitting here, in my dark office with a cup of ginger lemon tea. I’m filled with anticipation and thrill as I write this to you, dear reader, because I can finally share some of the biggest news of my career—my debut memoir, If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die, is now available for pre-order.

This is a momentous day—for me, for anyone who has been reading my blogs for the past 17+ years, for this book, and for our culture.

As far as my book’s team and I know, this is the first memoir of its kind. It’s a raw and honest look at the harsh realities of influencing as a career, exploring themes of seeking validation online, blurred boundaries, oversharing, cancellation, identity loss, internet mob mentality, and the struggle to reclaim autonomy in a digital world.

Every other book on influencing is either a how-to guide or focuses on the influencer’s life and how they got to the top—but the influencer is still influencing.

This book explores my rise to internet fame in the 2010s, the pressures that came with it, and the journey to reclaim a life beyond the screen.

It traces my journey from using Instagram like everyone else to receiving 60,000 likes per photo and earning $18,000 for a single post.

If you were following me back then, you might remember that in the fall of 2018—at the peak of my influence—I faced intense criticism, with some of my audience attempting to cancel me.

I will never forget that day, that week, that month, that fall.

It changed me.

Everyone who remembers knows what I posted in response to the criticism, but nobody knows what I was actually doing or feeling off the screen. What began as a conversation about privilege, wellness, accessibility, and the value of a woman’s work—how much she should charge or even earn—quickly spiraled into something much bigger. The criticism was relentless. I remember talking to various mentors on the phone and them telling me not to worry, “Every big persona eventually has this happen to them”.

I lost control over my narrative—and myself along with it. Ultimately, I ended up stepping away from social media, letting go of my team, and losing nearly 150,000 followers in the process.

This part of the book foreshadows the early waves of mass cancellations of female founders—a trend that would intensify just a few years later, peaking in 2020 during the pandemic.

It ties into the larger conversation I hope this book will ignite—about the unrealistic standards women are expected to meet. As women, we can never get it right. When we mess up, because we all do (we are human, after all), we are expected to publically apologize, step down, and disappear, while our male counterparts barely get a slap on the wrist. I stand by this: as a woman earning significant money in the public eye, your biggest critics won’t be men—they’ll be other women. They’ll be the ones to scrutinize, dissect, and hold you down. I hate to say it, but it needs to be said. On the day of my cancelation, almost all of my haters were other women coming out of the trenches. And guess what? Many of the same women who wrote negative comments under my Instagram posts are now doing exactly what I was doing—influencing. Others have become famous comedians, business owners, or TikTok stars. Interesting…

Beyond cancel culture, the book unpacks the contradictions of influencer culture—especially in the wellness space, where I spent my days promoting self-care, cycle syncing, and whole foods, all while glued to a screen for nine-plus hours a day.

It also sheds light on the often transactional nature of influencer friendships, where relationships were built as much for engagement and visibility as for genuine connection.

This book is a meditation on what happened when I stepped away from the perfectly curated, toned, and glowy Lee, and asked myself: who am I without my social media persona? Who am I when I am not stirring matcha for millions of viewers?

This book is so needed, now, more than ever.

• 86% of young Americans want to be an influencer¹

• 40% of Gen-Z feel an extreme “closeness” to influencers they follow, despite having never met them in real life²

• 95% of children born in 2025 will have an online footprint before they turn 5 years old, created by their parents³

When it comes to social media, we can’t deny that we are at a critical time in this political, economic, and social landscape. People are starting to question the billionaires who control big tech and deactivating Meta, canceling Amazon Prime, and welcoming the TikTok ban as part of political resistance.

We already know that social media ruins our attention spans and makes us depressed. Our teens are struggling at school and at home. Workers who use social media while on the clock cost our collective business up to $650 billion per year⁴.

Our country and communities are grappling with the same questions: Why does social media make me feel awful? And why can’t I stop using it? We have all this awareness—but what do we do with it? In 2019, I went through what so many are experiencing now. I reached my breaking point, walked away, and discovered a different kind of life—offline.

Some of you may be asking, “Lee, aren’t you still an influencer? Even though you’re not doing sponsored posts, you’re still sharing your life online and monetizing it.”

And I think that’s an excellent question, and one we will continue to dive into in the coming months here and beyond.

What is an influencer? What is a creator? Is a writer on Substack an influencer? Is an influencer someone who has a large audience? Is it someone who posts consistently? Is it someone who posts about products? Is it someone who cares about their audience? Is it someone who makes money online, either through affiliates, ticket sales, sponsored posts, or linking to their Substack? Is an ex-influencer writing about influencing still…influencing?

I’ve been walking around the world the last year asking myself this question, deliberating it closely.

I’ll never forget accidentally coming across a viral tweet about me on x.com the day my NYT feature came out. It said something like, “Influencers influencing influencers to stop influencing? I have a headache”. (if you can find it, send it to me.)

But I had the courage to walk away.

And I had the courage to come back into the world and share my story.

Of course, I knew that critique was coming. The thing is, when you are an influencer or online creator, you are in relationship with your audience. It’s different from a singer, actress, or comedian who shares content online because they have other creative and financial outlets—movies, albums, touring—that exist beyond the internet.

Influencers exist solely on the internet, for their followers. They need them. We don’t exist without them. They are nobody without their audience; it’s a symbiotic relationship. That is why I found it so challenging when people told me to just turn off comments while I was burning out. “I need them,” I remember thinking. “I need to know what they are thinking about me” (Ooof.)

I care deeply about this book and want it to reach as many people as possible. I want young girls to read it, along with their parents, everyday consumers of online media, deep-dive Reddit and BlogSnark readers—and, of course, you.

I care about how this book does because, as you’ll see in its pages, it reflects the very struggle I’ve lived—the cognitive dissonance of craving validation while questioning its worth. At its core, this book is about my deep desire to be seen and loved, the validation I sought from the internet, and the painful truth that it was never enough.

But Lee, isn’t that part of you still inside you?

I don’t know. It’s a risk, and I’m willing to find out.

If I were to give a 1-1 mentor session with anyone who wanted to become an influencer, here is what I would tell them: “The key to finding success online is to not care at all what anyone thinks. Delete your filter, delete your inhibition, and share all the weird parts of yourself. Relatability is a powerful force.”

But then, I’d follow up with, “But be careful—there’s a cost to carelessness. Boundaries blur, your identity becomes entangled with an algorithm-driven machine that could vanish overnight, and you expose yourself to relentless scrutiny.”

And when you care too much, and you face cancelation, or your views go down, or your platform disappears, you are at grave risk of losing it all, but worst of all, yourself.

The process

I came to write this book because I knew my experience would help people. I initially wanted to start writing this book in 2019, right after stepping away from @leefromamerica, but a book agent encouraged me to sit with the experience—and, in a way, tried to dissuade me from writing it altogether. She warned that memoirists often become tethered to their stories for years, which, to be fair, probably isn’t wrong. I am thankful for that meeting, because I kissed the idea of writing a book away, and decided it was best to just live my life. I left LA, moved back to NYC, and went back to working a 9-5 job.

Three years later on a random morning in September 2022, I woke up with an overwhelming need to write this book. I didn’t know if anyone would buy it. I told myself I didn’t care about the advance money or anything like that. I just wanted the story out there. So I started writing it in the mornings before work, and it poured out of me.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I’m rarely the exception. What I went through—rising as an influencer and ultimately choosing to walk away—was something I knew others would relate to. I sensed I was experiencing it ahead of the curve, just as influencing was becoming a “respectable” career. And I was right—so many influencers have since stepped back, stepped down, or simply vanished overnight. I had the chance to speak with many of them during my Goodbye Influencing workshop.

My haters love to call me a grifter (a favorite insult of influencers on BlogSnark Reddit). Over the years, I’ve been accused of just about everything—and yes, the book dives into all of it. It’s easy for trolls to dissect someone from behind a screen. But I dare any of them to claim they’re perfect, too. What I’ve learned is this: you can’t win. No matter what you do, people will judge you anyway.

So I keep doing what feels authentic to me, living my life, and sharing when I want to. Sometimes, I look back and cringe. But if you aren’t cringing, you aren’t growing.

I’ve pretty much grown up online for the whole world to see.

And I wrote a book about that experience.

I could say to my haters right now, if you don’t like this, I won’t die.

But you should probably read it anyway—because, like it or not, there’s something in it for you too.

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Pre-orders are crucial to a book’s success. I know August 12, 2025, feels far away, but over the next six months, I’ll be promoting the hell out of this book and reminding you to pre-order—probably every week.

Here’s why it matters: pre-orders play a massive role in securing a spot on bestseller lists. I want this book to reach as many people as possible, and early support makes all the difference. Pre-orders help the publisher figure out how much of a market there is for the book and how much money they should put behind advertising. So go on, let them know this book is going to be fire, and hit that subscribe pre-order button.

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/social-media-influencers-86-of-young-americans-want-to-become-one

2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346758654_Parasocial_relationships_of_Generation_Z_consumers_with_social_media_influencers/

3. https://www.darkreading.com/cyber-risk/92-of-u-s-toddlers-have-digital-footprint

4. https://cropink.com/social-media-at-work-statistics