When Stephen first asked me to come on board as a guest writer for The American in Paris I was thrilled — I had long wished for a space where I could speak about my experiences as an expat in France. 

I wrote my first few articles and the feedback we received helped us realize there was a need for more information on getting the student visa, au pair visa, and APS visa, all of which I’ve successfully applied for and received. 

The more we worked together the more we realized the need for a manual — or a guide, really — for Americans who were interested in moving to France from the United States. We did it ourselves (as did our other co-author Gracie Bialecki) and we wanted to help others with the process. Stephen mentioned it before and I’ll say it again: it’s the book that we wish we had at the start of our journeys. 

What started with an idea to create a 29-day email autoresponder morphed into something much larger: we decided to create an actual paperback book and ebook version to go along with it. We knew that it could potentially help a lot of people and were prepared for the amount of work it would take to get it published. 

Famous last words. At the beginning of our publishing journey, I did a quick Google search: how to self-publish. A slew of articles came up and I skimmed a few. All of them said how easy it would be. I quickly let Stephen and Gracie know that I would be happy to take care of the publishing process myself — I had just opened my native English creative boutique Plume and I was eager to get some publishing experience under my belt. I tend to be optimistic when starting a new project. My motto: How hard could it be?

Well, it turns out a lot harder than you would think! I want to preface this by saying that I am so grateful for the opportunity to be an actual published-in-print writer and I am thrilled with how everything came out. That said, something that I figured would take me ten hours tops ended up taking double, even triple the amount of time.

Figuring out margins, bleed, what quality printing we wanted to go with, page numbers, and crafting areas to take notes inside the book was a long and arduous process. I tried and tried and tried again, uploading manuscript after manuscript into the self-publishing platform we used. After over a dozen attempts, success! Our manuscript was accepted and under review.

With the paperback version taken care of, it was time to figure out the ebook. Because the paperback manuscript was done and dusted this part of the publishing undertaking was a lot easier. That’s not to say that I didn’t spend at least an hour lining up the bullet points. Again, I want to express my gratitude for this project but, phew, who knew publishing could be so complicated? (Anyone in publishing who is reading this article is likely chuckling to themselves).

At this point, the email autoresponder was a piece of cake. Unsurprisingly, it was the easiest part of the project. That’s not to say that I didn’t have to test it out with several different services before finally settling on one that I liked. But, en fin, our project was ready to launch!

And here we are today. Stay tuned for more updates on our book and if you purchase it, please do let us know what you think. We’re so happy and honored to be able to help so many others make their I-want-to-move-to-France dreams come true, as we did.

Molli offers private consultation services which range from help with visas and adjusting to life abroad to Paris travel itineraries. Fill out the contact form to learn more.

Photo taken outside San Francisco Book Company near the Luxembourg Gardens, after we (finally) got our approved proofs back!

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I’ve said more than once that I never expected TAIP to grow into the resource it has become. I simply wanted to help others who, like myself, wanted to move to France but didn’t know how.

After ten years of helping people who were trying to figure out how to get here, I used that experience to put together a book that goes through how to do to move to France as a non-citizen, step-by-step.

Rather than offer detailed explanations of how to fill out specific visa applications (which can periodically become outdated and which we’ve already offered for free on the site) we took a higher perspective from: once I know that I want to move to France, what are all the things I need to think through in order to make that happen?

We created a set of 29 “Days” which serve as prompts and exercises to prepare you to move to France, broken into three parts, to help get you organized

• before you arrive
• when you arrive
• after you’ve been here for a while

This is the book that I wish I had when I was preparing to move to France.

I didn’t write it alone. TAIP correspondents Molli Sébrier and Gracie Bialecki shared the load.

The book comes in three forms:

• A traditional paperback, which comes with original photos and two appendices featuring a resource list for Paris residents (doctors, plumbers, accountants, etc.). This purchase also gives access to the digital version, which will be updated annually, and the email autoresponder version, which sends you the book in email form over 29 emails.
• A digital copy for whichever e-reader you prefer. This version does not include photos or the appendices.
• An email autoresponder which sends you the content in email form, spaced out over 29 consecutive days.

I’ve worked on publishing projects before, but only as a proofreader or as someone helping behind the scenes to get the project to press. This was my first time as an author, and even there I had help in the form of two co-authors.

There’s such a big gap between “I’d like to write a book” and “I wrote a book” and it’s not just work that fills that gap.

It’s the original brainstorming of what people really need to know before they get here, when they get here, and after they’ve been here a while.

It’s endless proofreading. For those of you who’ve edited work, you know the feeling of finding a typo (“another one?”) on what feels like the 27th pass of a text.

It’s sending galley copies out to reviewers (of which we had half a dozen from the TAIP audience step up and volunteer to help).

It’s personal events and travel that are also jockeying for attention (e.g. Molli left to get married the day after she sent a batch of edits to the publisher, then came right back to that text a couple of weeks later to finish up).

We also wanted to make the information useful but not overwhelmingly so, which led us to create single-page days with specific exercises at the end of each one.

We’ll be sharing more information on this book each month for the rest of the year. For now, I am very happy to have completed the project and am excited to get this book into the hands of those seriously considering a move here. It’s going to make the process so much more enjoyable, fun, and reflective.

Photo taken outside one of the windows of my apartment in Moret, where almost all my chapters of the book were written.

Did you enjoy this article? TAIP is 100% reader-supported through tipping. If you want to leave us a tip of any amount it would be highly appreciated. These tips help support our efforts to keep TAIP an ad-free environment. Just as at a cafe, the tips are split evenly among the team.