Clinical psychologist Bee Lim knew her illustrated book on trauma, Welcome Home: Healing Trauma and Reclaiming Wholeness, couldn’t be a standard paperback—and that she wasn’t willing to give up her IP, therapeutic arc, or choice of illustrator, her husband, concept artist Joel Timpson. In this episode, Bee shares why she chose the custom publishing route, hired her own publicist, and planned a multicountry launch. She also discusses the constraints of marketing a book as a regulated health professional.
Listen to the Podcast: Producing an Illustrated Narrative Nonfiction Book
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About the Host
Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.
About the Guest
Dr. Bee Teng Lim is a clinical psychologist whose work explores the subtle wounds of trauma: the fracture of identity, the inheritance of silence, and the ways we adapt to survive. Born in Malaysia, trained in New Zealand, and now based in Australia, she is fluent in Mandarin and several Asian dialects and is known for her commitment to inclusive, trauma-informed care. She is the author of Welcome Home: Healing Trauma and Reclaiming Wholeness. She is the cofounder of Mind Health Collective, a Sydney-based psychology practice that serves clients internationally, and BeTuned, a game-based therapeutic and performance platform.
Read the Transcript
Anna Featherstone: Welcome, and thanks for tuning in from your special part of this beautiful planet we all call home. I'm Anna Featherstone, joining you today from the lands of the Palawa people, the original storytellers of lutruwita, Tasmania. In today's conversation we'll be learning about producing a book with a family member using illustrations as well as text, reaching international audiences, and the production and distribution decisions that led an author to work with a custom publisher, and all that entailed.
Dr. Bee Lim is a clinical psychologist born in Malaysia, trained in New Zealand, and now based in Australia. Her book, Welcome Home: Healing Trauma and Reclaiming Wholeness, blends clinical insight with trauma-informed storytelling. It's almost a picture book and graphic novel for adults combined — a really creative approach. Welcome, Bee.
Dr. Bee Lim: Thank you so much, Anna.
Anna Featherstone: I'd love for you to tell us a little more about Welcome Home and give us a visual description of it as well.
Dr. Bee Lim: For sure. Welcome Home is an illustrated narrative nonfiction that follows the protagonist, Isabelle Maland, through a mysterious house built from memory. In the house she encounters different parts of herself that she has been avoiding — Ox, Rabbit, Wolf, and Crane. The story moves toward an integration moment in a rooftop garden where we also encounter the Celestial Whale. The format was chosen very specifically to be illustrated, because the initial inspiration was Charlie Mackesy's The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. It grew from there into something much deeper — a psychology and mental health book — through the writing process and through engaging with readers.
Why This Book? Narrative and Metaphor Over Clinical Manuals
Anna Featherstone: You're a practicing clinical psychologist. When did you think that what you were doing with your clients every day needed to become a book?
Dr. Bee Lim: I've always worked with a lot of clients in the creative industries, and I found that when explaining mental health concepts, they landed so much better in narrative or metaphor form. When I tested some of the concepts underpinning Welcome Home with clients and saw them resonating, I realized there was something there — something we could bring into the world. But it was also really important to me not to write another self-help book or clinical manual. One of the most common things I hear at book launches is how glad people are that Welcome Home doesn't provide them with more strategies. Welcome Home is written for people who have carried too much for way too long. The last thing I wanted was to give them another to-do list.
Anna Featherstone: You want them to see themselves reflected in the story and in the different journeys, rather than in how-to steps.
Dr. Bee Lim: That's right.
Navigating Clinical Ethics as an Author
Anna Featherstone: As a medical professional in Australia, there are strict laws around self-promotion in a clinical space. How do you navigate that as an author?
Dr. Bee Lim: The Australian laws around self-promotion are less about books specifically and more about health practice. If someone reads the book, finds it in a bookstore, and writes a review, that's completely fine. But I can't go and solicit a testimonial from a client. I also need to be very careful that if anyone engages with the content, their identity is not compromised. And it's important to be clear that a book is not a treatment — it can be an adjunct, a helpful resource, but it's not a clinical intervention. I've had clients reach out wanting to write testimonials, and I've had to explain that if it would compromise their confidentiality, it's not something I can accept. I can show gratitude for their appreciation of the work, but their wellbeing and confidentiality always come first.
Anna Featherstone: That's really important for any clinicians listening who want to write books.
Reaching Across Languages: Mandarin Rights and the Work the Illustrations Do
Anna Featherstone: Is the book written in both English and Mandarin?
Dr. Bee Lim: Currently it's available in English. I've had so many requests for a Mandarin translation. One of the most heartwarming pieces of feedback I receive is from readers who've given the book to their mothers or grandmothers, wanting them to feel seen and know that their stories matter too. Right now the illustrations are doing a lot of that work — images and pictures really do cross language barriers. I can say we are currently in discussions about translation rights into Mandarin, so watch this space.
Illustrating With Her Husband — and Still Married
Anna Featherstone: You worked with your husband on the illustrations — with Joel Temsen. Who asked whom, and was there ever a version where you worked with someone you didn't know?
Dr. Bee Lim: I get asked this a lot, so let me give you the happy ending first: we are still married. Joe shares this story at book launches too. I'd been thinking about the book for a few years, and one Christmas I told him not to worry about getting me a present — I just wanted him to illustrate a few images for this book I was thinking about. Six months later, I often think maybe I should have just asked for jewelry instead.
Anna Featherstone: That's so funny. Did he use Photoshop, Illustrator?
Dr. Bee Lim: Photoshop and Illustrator. His profession is concept artist, and his whole approach is about translating words into images. My choice to work with him was also about the years of shared understanding we have — he was there when I first started talking about the concept. And I knew he would be able to handle the material sensitively. Trauma is such a delicate topic, and I didn't want the images to sensationalize it. He had been preparing for it, in a sense, through all the years we'd been together.
Anna Featherstone: Did you brief him like an art director, or was it more conversations over dinner?
Dr. Bee Lim: Because it was Christmas, we had about three weeks in New Zealand with my in-laws, just the two of us working through ideas — even the concept of using a house to represent the inner world. Our seven-year-old shared his opinion too: should it be a house, or a forest, or a desert? And then ideas and bursts of inspiration would come at the most random times — midnight being a common one. But because Joe is such a flexible, collaborative person, and he really understood both the message of the book and the art style I had in mind, the process was actually a lot smoother than you might expect.
Custom Publishing: Creative Control, Distribution, and Translation Rights
Anna Featherstone: So you had all the art and all your text — then came the publishing decision. Did you look at traditional publishing, self-publishing, and custom publishing?
Dr. Bee Lim: When I first met you, I was thinking about self-publishing. Then I was part of an expert author community that ran a pitch day, and through that I got connected to a few more established publishing houses and started considering custom publishing. People sometimes think of custom or hybrid publishing as a consolation prize — you didn't get past the gatekeepers, so you chose this instead. That's not how I see it at all. Part of wanting to write this book was wanting to maintain both the IP and the integrity of how it would appear in the world. Having creative control over the illustrator, the therapeutic arc, the word choices — that mattered enormously. And I hold all translation rights. If it eventually becomes an animation or appears in other languages, I have a say in how that unfolds.
Anna Featherstone: And you also decided not to handle everything yourself — partly for the distribution channel a custom publisher offers, and partly because you're already incredibly busy running a practice, raising a family, traveling. How did the financial arrangement work?
Dr. Bee Lim: The contract covers production and distribution. I make a payment to cover those services, and once the process is complete, any direct sales come straight to me. Sales through bookstores and distribution networks come through as a royalty statement. From a custom publishing perspective the royalty percentage the author receives is higher than what traditional publishing typically offers.
Anna Featherstone: And how is distribution working in practice?
Dr. Bee Lim: Welcome Home was published in January, and we've managed to get it into all the major bookstores in Australia. A few of the major stores have been quite direct with me: if a book is published under a self-published imprint — even one with the same quality — they're unlikely to carry it, for credibility reasons. That was part of the thinking behind going with a custom publisher. Welcome Home is also hardback with a lot of design detail, and producing it to that standard through pure self-publishing would have been significantly more expensive. Established publishers have relationships with printeries that make the economics work differently.
Bookstore Launches, Returns, and the Value of Direct Events
Anna Featherstone: You've positioned the book somewhat as a gift book with those decisions. Would you do the same deal again?
Dr. Bee Lim: I think I'd make the decision based on what the book is. The pros and cons weigh differently for different projects. What I'm noticing about distribution networks — particularly in terms of getting the book into the US, which is part of my contract — is that understanding the different overseas distribution partners a publishing house has can be quite a puzzle. So I'd definitely think more carefully about the book's purpose and where my readers are, and make the decision accordingly.
Anna Featherstone: And bookstores do involve returns — if the book is in the wrong store, it might come back. Whereas you're probably having a lot of success with direct sales at your talks and launches.
Dr. Bee Lim: All our launches have been handled through bookstores as well. Direct sales were enjoyable initially, but they're very time-consuming. So most of the sales now go through bookstores, or we partner with a bookstore for an event and they bring and process the books. That's worked really well.
Engaging a Publicist: Values Alignment Over Volume
Anna Featherstone: You engaged a publicist as well. What impact has that had?
Dr. Bee Lim: She's been a lifesaver. One of the biggest things I learned about book publishing is that writing is the easy part. When I reached out to you, Anna, I was starting to panic a little about the marketing and promotion side. Engaging a publicist is a strategic choice, but also a really hard one — I wanted someone who was values-aligned. Welcome Home isn't supposed to be a loud blockbuster. It's a book someone can read and see themselves in. I wanted a quieter launch but with a long-term impact. Finding someone with the same vision for how the book would reach readers was crucial. I was lucky to be connected with a publicist who is also an author herself, and that has made an enormous difference.
Anna Featherstone: A book like yours doesn't need to be everywhere — it has a very specific audience. And publicity for the book can also support everything else you do as a practitioner. We don't need to be everywhere as authors, but having someone who finds the right places and navigates it for you is really valuable.
Dr. Bee Lim: It's made all our events both impactful and enjoyable. The logistics matter, but what we've gotten the most from is the conversations with the people who've come to be part of them.
Print Runs, the American Launch, and Endorsements from Ivy League Professors
Anna Featherstone: Was there a big print run upfront, or is print on demand happening?
Dr. Bee Lim: We had a bulk print run. Part of the initial contract involved deciding how many copies to print — 300, 800, 1,500, or 3,000, depending on what made sense. We worked out the numbers carefully to understand how many books we'd need to sell to cover the cost. And it's a book with a long lifespan — the concept isn't going to date, the illustrations are done, and there'll always be new readers coming to it.
Anna Featherstone: And how are you handling the American launch?
Dr. Bee Lim: That will be handled through the custom publisher's distribution partner. They're going to process pre-orders from major retailers and indie bookstores and handle the fulfillment. And I'm hoping to do a Welcome Home tour — at least in San Francisco, which is the first city I brought the book to and where I was welcomed so warmly into the community. That's definitely something I'm planning for next year.
Anna Featherstone: For nonfiction books — and yours is such an interesting crossover — endorsements from practitioners really open things up. Were these people you already knew, or did you reach out to strangers?
Dr. Bee Lim: I reached out to practitioners I didn't know at all. And I'm really grateful for their generosity. I reached out to practitioners who also had their own books and asked if they'd be willing to receive an early copy or have a conversation. Welcome Home isn't a conventional textbook or workbook, and when they heard about the concept they were genuinely open and excited. Through that process I formed a community of therapists who are also authors, very supportive of each other's work.
Anna Featherstone: Were you nervous reaching out the first time?
Dr. Bee Lim: You're going to laugh. I was on a trip to San Francisco and came down with a really high fever. In the height of the fever, I sent a message to a professor at an Ivy League university — thinking, there's no way this person is going to want to meet me or receive an early copy. She responded straight away, and she's now part of my community. Through her I got connected to other authors in the Bay Area. It's been a really beautiful experience. So my advice: send the message.
Lessons Learned and What Comes Next
Anna Featherstone: Is there anything you'd do differently looking back?
Dr. Bee Lim: I would have spent more time earlier thinking about the reader and how to build a platform to make sure the book reached the right people. I had a lot of fun with the writing and illustrating process. But I really do wish we'd thought about the marketing piece earlier and been more intentional around it. Starting to connect and build momentum for the book before it was published — I would do that earlier.
Anna Featherstone: A lot of people are nodding along — it's very common to start talking about the book a bit late. But for the next one you'll know.
Dr. Bee Lim: We are building the platform now.
Anna Featherstone: Do you have more books underway?
Dr. Bee Lim: I'm definitely considering a series. Welcome Home has about four rooms and a rooftop garden. I joke about wanting to write The Forbidden City next — which has 9,999 rooms — so it would be never-ending. But I do feel like Welcome Home was an experiment: could this format resonate, could this contribute something to the book world? And the Kirkus Review captured it so clearly — the intention to make trauma understanding accessible, and the way the words and illustrations together create an experience for the reader. Seeing that in print was really heartwarming. So yes, I'm definitely up for more experiments.
Closing and Where to Find the Book
Anna Featherstone: Congratulations — it's a fantastic concept that serves its audience beautifully. Where can people find you and your book?
Dr. Bee Lim: It's at drblim.com/welcomehome, and it can be found in any major bookstore. What I'd really love for your listeners to do is go into the local indie bookstore they want to support and request that the book be ordered in for them.
Anna Featherstone: Look at you — doing the marketing perfectly. Thank you so much for joining us today, Bee. And to all of you out there thinking about a special project, you can do it and you can do it beautifully. Reaching those readers and helping people — or just entertaining them — is something you can do, and we're all so unique in how we do it. Thanks for being part of our very special ALLi podcast family. I'm Anna Featherstone. Here's to all your projects. Until next time.
