How Carlie Maree Hit USA Today Bestseller and #2 Wall Street Journal Bestseller With Her Debut Book, Soul Modes
Authors Unite Success Story — Estimated read: 7 minutes
At a Glance
Author: Carlie Maree, Australian women’s empowerment expert and host of the Go Hack Yourself podcast.
Book: Soul Modes: You Are Not One Ordinary Woman. You’re Four Extraordinary Ones. (2020), her debut book.
What Authors Unite Did: Coordinated bestseller campaign driven by email marketing and paid ads.
Results: Thousands of copies of Soul Modes sold during launch week; the book hit the USA Today Bestseller List, and landed on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List (achieved while the WSJ list was active, prior to its November 2023 discontinuation)
Where to Read More: Soul Modes on Amazon
Who Carlie Maree Was Before the Book
Before Soul Modes, Carlie Maree had spent years building a reputation as an authority on what she calls “motivational intelligence”. The framework that became central to her work with women worldwide. She had developed a unique perspective on how women operate psychologically and energetically, shaped by extensive research, personal experience, and work with thousands of clients.
She had built a meaningful online presence: a growing community on social media, a podcast (Go Hack Yourself) that quickly became a binge-worthy resource for women interested in personal development, and a reputation as a “renegade researcher” willing to challenge mainstream assumptions about how women should approach work, relationships, and self-care.
What she hadn’t done yet was to put her core framework into book form. The Soul Modes concept holds that women cycle through four distinct modes (Bear, Bunny, Butterfly, and Bee) rather than operating in a single, static state. This has been a primary part of her teaching for years, and it has now been published as a book based on her foundational text.
For Carlie, the book wasn’t a separate venture from her work. It was the cornerstone document of her entire body of teaching. The jewel that would let “Soul Modes” exist as a reference-based rather than something only her community knew about.
That made the launch high-stakes. It wasn’t just about hitting a list. It was about putting her foundational framework into the world to establish it as a legitimate, widely recognized concept.
What She Wanted From the Launch
Carlie wanted Soul Modes to do three things at launch:
First, to reach the broader audience of women who would benefit from the framework but didn’t yet know her work. Her existing community knew “Soul Modes.” She wanted the rest of the world to.
Second, to earn the bestseller credentials that would establish Soul Modes as a serious, recognized contribution to the personal development category, not just one more self-help book among thousands.
Third, to use the launch to position herself for the next phase of her career: speaking, expanded coaching, courses, and the broader platform that a successful book makes possible.
That meant the launch had to do more than create awareness. It had to drive the concentrated sales velocity required to hit mainstream bestseller lists.
That’s what she hired Authors Unite to deliver.
What Authors Unite Did
Authors Unite ran the coordinated bestseller campaign for Soul Modes — built around the same two core levers we use for every campaign:
Email marketing at scale. Driving thousands of qualifying retail purchases concentrated into a single reporting week requires high-volume, high-conversion email infrastructure. Authors Unite ran the campaign’s email work.
Paid ads. Coordinated paid advertising designed to compound with the email-driven sales velocity and ensure purchases were concentrated during the target reporting week.
That’s the work. Email marketing and paid ads, executed at the scale and timing required to move Soul Modes onto USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists during launch week.
Authors Unite was hired to run the launch campaign to drive concentrated sales velocity and earn bestseller credentials.
The Results
When Soul Modes launched in 2020, the campaign delivered thousands of qualifying sales during the launch reporting week. The book hit:
The USA Today bestseller list
#2 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list — at the time, both major mainstream bestseller credentials (the WSJ discontinued its weekly bestseller lists in November 2023, but the credential was earned while the list was active and remains valid)
Hitting both lists — for a debut book by an author building her audience primarily outside the United States — demonstrates what concentrated launch-week sales velocity can accomplish when the underlying framework genuinely resonates with its intended audience.
Since the launch, Carlie has continued to expand the Soul Modes body of work — including the Soul Modes Planner, ongoing online courses, and personal coaching programs. The bestseller credentials are now part of how the framework is positioned in the broader personal development market, and the book has become a foundational reference for women in her community.
In Carlie’s Words
“Working with Tyler and the Authors Unite team was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. My debut book hit #2 on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List and the USA Today Bestseller List, and the support I received throughout the process was world-class. I felt completely supported and empowered every step of the way.”
— Carlie Maree, author of Soul Modes
About Soul Modes
Soul Modes: You Are Not One Ordinary Woman. You’re Four Extraordinary Ones is Carlie Maree’s foundational framework for understanding how women cycle through four distinct modes — Bear, Bunny, Butterfly, and Bee — rather than operating in a single fixed state. The book provides practical tools for identifying which mode a woman is in at any given time, how to work with rather than against each mode, and how to use the framework to make daily life feel meaningfully easier.
The book has resonated widely with women who had struggled to understand why they felt different from day to day or week to week — and is now used as a reference across coaching, therapy, and personal development practices.
Could Authors Unite Do This for Your Book?
If you’re an author with a developed framework and a debut or follow-up book that needs the bestseller credential to reach its full audience, let’s talk about whether your launch is a fit.
Book a call with Authors Unite to discuss your launch.