Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be hosting a Substack Live that many of you will want to check out. It’s about how authors can make money beyond book sales and advances.

Yes, you read that right. The forbidden publishing topic of (gasp) money.

I’ll be joined by Karla Starr, behavioral scientist and author of Can You Learn to Be Lucky? and co-author of Making Numbers Count.

Karla and I will discuss:

• How to position your book as a platform, not just a book

• Using early outreach to refine your ideas and build demand

• Strategies for turning your ideas into workshops, consulting gigs, and speaking appearances

• How to find the right audiences and organizations for your non-book work

• More insights I don’t know about because we haven’t had our conversation yet

If you’re writing or publishing a book—or just thinking about it—this will give you a smart, revealing, and expansive perspective of what’s financially possible. Also, it’s a Substack Live Q&A, so you’ll be able to ask questions in the chat you’d normally be too embarrassed to ask in person :)

Usually, our Q&As are for paid and founding members, but I’ve made it open to all because I think it’s a topic everyone should know more about.

👉 Join us here when we go live: Beyond Book Sales

I hope to see you there!

Best,

Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Marisa Renee Lee writes about grief with wisdom and compassion. In her first book, the bestselling Grief Is Love, she approached the complex feelings and emotions that accompany loss with a perspective shaped by deep personal experience.

Her new book, Waiting for Dawn: Living with Uncertainty, turns to a different but related challenge: how to live well when the future feels unclear, and control is out of reach. It’s a question that feels especially urgent right now.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Marisa reflects on writing, caregiving, and the challenge of making space for the work.

21 Questions with Marisa Renee Lee

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

A lot of naps on the floor of my office, takeout, childcare (free and paid), and the Cowboy Carter album.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That being a writer makes you rich. I wish!

3. Do you read your reviews?

I used to, but after encountering a few reviews where people called me a racist, I’ve stopped. I know what I’ve created and who I create for, and I’m not for everyone, and that’s OK.

4. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Cry and then ideally drink bourbon.

5. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Marry: podcasts

Kiss: speaking gigs

Kill: newsletters (I think their moment has kind of passed. I believe a shift is coming in that space for sure.)

6. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Putting myself first. When we prioritize our needs, we make life so much easier for ourselves and others, and unfortunately, it’s taken getting long covid to realize that.

7. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I find ideas everywhere, and I usually put them in the notes section of my iPhone, so I don’t forget them! I am middle-aged and have long COVID, so my memory is not what it used to be!

8. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Glenn Hutchins told me to just keep making career decisions aligned with my interests and my values, and it would all work out. One day, I would look in the rear-view mirror and be shocked at how far I’d come. He was right.

9. And the worst?

Anything or anyone who tries to convince me my career is the most important thing in my life. It is not. My family is so much more important.

10. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Kindle, journal, night guard, an ancient Bible, and a Laniege overnight lip mask. (Highly recommend!)

11. How did you find your agent?

By paying attention to people who were happy to help me just because. Marya Spence had been in and out of my life for a few years before I signed with her, and she’s just a really good human. I’m very lucky.

12. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

I don’t even know what the rules are, but I wrote most of my first book on an iPhone while tending to a newborn, so I’m sure that broke a few rules!

13. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I’m notoriously bad at tech. I found out a few weeks ago that I wasn’t even using my podcast mic correctly. I appreciate tech, but I prefer pens, index cards, bulletin boards, and journals.

14. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Meditation.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Two to three.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Slow start, lots of time to think, write and strategize, and minimal calls and meetings

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Well, my day starts in mom land, taking care of my son and getting him ready for school, and I work in progressive politics in addition to my work as a writer. As you can imagine, that work has been pretty busy lately! I usually get my ideal day once a week

18. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Historical fiction—my favorite

19. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

You can’t force it. The words come when they come. The best thing you can do is take good care of yourself and invest time in the people and places that inspire you.

20. Fill in the blank: In five years, successful authors will all be…

Multi-hyphenates. I think it’s hard to be any one thing, so I think many writers will wear multiple hats professionally.

21. What is your new book about?

Waiting for Dawn is about navigating uncertainty. Over a three-year period, our family suffered multiple losses, and then I found myself sick with long COVID. It was all incredibly challenging and overwhelming, and throughout, I felt a real desire to learn how we can all live well during seasons of pain and uncertainty. Fundamentally, this book is about hope.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Somehow, This is Working: 21 Questions with Jenny Lawson

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• Mothers, Daughters, and Deadlines: Memoirist Irena Smith on the invisible threads that shape a life.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

How do you juggle long timelines, self-imposed deadlines, revisions, logistics, and the emotional rollercoaster of publishing, all while dealing with challenges like task initiation, hyperfocus, and, of course, a steady undercurrent of shame?

This was the subject of my latest Author Insider conversation with , author of The Golden Ticket and Troika. Irena, who teaches a writing class for women with ADHD, spoke candidly about the difference between distraction and disorder, the role of urgency in getting your writing done, and how ADHD can shape storytelling itself.

She also shared some of the strategies that have worked for her—and the ones that haven’t. Whether or not you have ADHD, her insights and advice about the psychology of writing are worth considering. As a perennial procrastinator (followed by ruthless self-criticism), I was particularly grateful for her encouragement simply to be kinder to yourself.

Important Note: Unless you want to hear us chat about horror movies while we wait for people to join, I suggest you start at the two-minute mark. And if you don’t have time for the full conversation, below are a few key moments you can jump to:

Key moments from the conversation

02:54 — What ADHD actually is (and isn’t)

06:18 — Writing in bursts, and the role of urgency

09:21 — A simple ritual that helps unlock writing

12:45 — Associational thinking and the power of “ADHD storytelling”

19:33 — Revisions aren’t the problem

22:25 — Outlines don’t work; this does instead

30:05 — Hybrid publishing: clearer timelines, faster feedback, and a “more humane” approach

40:35 — How to quiet your internal critic

45:58 — The strengths and weaknesses of hyperfocus

I hope you enjoyed our conversation and found something helpful to take back to your desk/kitchen table/wherever you find writing time.

A special thank you to everyone who joined the live session and contributed questions in the chat. I truly appreciate the thoughtful participation from the Author Insider community.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

  Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A longtime contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Benoit Denizet-Lewis has covered stories about everything from why American teenagers are suffering from escalating levels of anxiety to overbred bulldogs to transgender conservatives in the Trump era. He’s the author of three previous books, including America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life and the New York Times bestseller Travels With Casey.

His new book, You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation, explores what it really means to remake ourselves in a culture obsessed with reinvention.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Benoit reflects on process, persistence, and the long road to finishing a book.

21 Questions with Benoit Denizet-Lewis

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My student research assistants, my therapist, my gay and straight group chats (though the boundaries blur in the age of identity fluidity), my husband, and people I met naked in the baths at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, where, as the social psychologist and political scientist Walter Truett Anderson put it, “Some of Western civilization’s leading philosophers, theologians, educators, scientists and therapists… have eased their eminent rears down in the hot water to sit and consider the surging sea.”

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That we choose what we write about. I’m not convinced I chose the subject of transformation so much as it’s just another way I’ve become my father. We’re both writers interested in change who also—and I still can’t believe this is real—each fell in love with and married a person from the Czech Republic.

There are, in my defense, differences between us, but in my book I quote the writer and professor G’Ra Asim, who, rather dispiritedly for those of us who like to believe we’re driving the bus of our self-transformations, declared, “At best people have a 15-year span of hubris-driven confusion before they morph helplessly into their parents and grandparents.”

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Reading magazines, Northwestern sports message boards, and Nietzsche. That’s two truths and a lie.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I dislike this question, which probably answers it.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Find something to change about it. Old habits.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

I know the game by another name, but I’ll play along. I would “kiss” podcasts, marry speaking gigs, and, though I enjoy the newsletters of others, kill newsletters.

7. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

At least once each writing day, I print out what I’ve written and edit it on paper. Then I also read what I’ve written on my iPhone. I catch entirely different problems depending on what format I’m editing my work, and I can’t believe anyone turns in anything without reading it in multiple formats.

8. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Figure out how to organize my research digitally. When I travel to Prague, where I spend many of the months I’m not teaching, I tend to lug suitcases of books and files like I’m relocating a minor research institute. My husband finds this very annoying, especially when I make him carry the heaviest suitcase to the car.

9. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I have purchased many beautiful blank books in my life, intending to use them to write down ideas. They’re still empty. That’s not to say I don’t have ideas, but they exist in my head. And I find ideas everywhere, especially when I manage to look up from my iPhone.

10. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

When you’re struggling with structure, go for a walk or take a shower. Showers work particularly well for me; almost every good structural decision I’ve ever made came to me—like an epiphany—with water raining down on me.

11. And the worst?

“Maybe stop pitching the New York Times Magazine.” When I was young, I pitched editor Ilena Silverman—now the magazine’s Deputy Editor for Features—about ten ideas over the course of a year. Ilena said no to all of them but encouraged me to keep pitching. A friend suggested I stop embarrassing myself and move on, but I’m glad I didn’t listen. Ilena liked the eleventh idea, and I’ve been writing for her and the magazine ever since.

12. Whose career do you most admire and why?

The Buddhist nun, Pema Chödrön. I’ve never met her, unfortunately, but from a distance, she’s the coolest person in the world. Chödrön has lived an incredible life and has written beautiful books that have helped countless people going through hard times. Also, part of me has wanted to be a monk since I was a kid.

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13. What’s on your nightstand right now?

I’m not convinced anyone has ever answered this question truthfully—and I won’t be the first. In my defense, I don’t typically read in bed. Some of the books on the coffee table near my couch, where I do read: True Nature, the brilliant biography of Peter Matthiessen by my friend Lance Richardson. In Love with the World by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, which I assign to students in an interdisciplinary class I teach about transformation and identity change, the same themes I explore in my book. And Murder Your Darlings, a fabulously titled thriller by my friend Jenna Blum, set in literary circles that I’m excited to begin.

14. How did you find your agent?

Todd Shuster of Aevitas Creative invited me to lunch two decades ago. I text him so often that it’s likely he regrets it.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

I’m a curious person who likes when people change my mind.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

I have many editors—friends, exes-turned-friends who are lawyers but should be editors, research assistants, and finally my actual editor. I never send anyone a draft I’m completely ashamed of, but I do send early drafts to people who I trust to tell me whether it’s time to murder a few darlings.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I wake up in my imaginary house in Provence, write for a few hours, and then spend the rest of the day reading, walking the dog, eating cheese, and, after the sun goes down, drinking Chablis with friends.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

It’s very different.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

I fancied myself a young Harold Pinter as a teenager, so I’d probably try to write a play about people struggling to connect.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How hard it is. I spent six years on this book, and my husband has implored me not to begin a new one for many more.

21. What is your new book about?

You’ve saved the best question for last! You’ve Changed is about the biggest mystery of all—how and why we change, or don’t. Drawing on six years of reporting, it traces the chosen and unchosen forces that shape our transformations. It’s also a book about our surreal decade: the most intense wave of identity change since the 1970s, another period marked by social upheaval and political disillusionment.

In a culture where change is narrated and judged, some transformations are embraced while others are dismissed as suspect or strategic. (The shift as grift.) My book asks not only how change happens, but who gets to decide whether it’s real—and, in its final chapter, what it might look like to “be the change” in a strange and disorienting moment like ours. That famous phrase turns out not to come from Gandhi at all, but from an octogenarian I visited in her Arizona retirement community—one of many people who changed my mind about change.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

I’m happy to announce a great conversation coming up.

On Wednesday, May 13, at 4 p.m. ET, I’ll be hosting a live, members-only Q&A with Hollis Heimbouch, publisher of Harper Business and Harper Edge, and one of the most experienced decision-makers in nonfiction publishing.

If you’re working on a book proposal (or thinking about one), this is a rare chance to hear directly from someone on the other side of the table.

We’ll talk about:

• What makes a proposal stand out right now

• How publishers are thinking about platform and positioning

• What separates a good idea from a sellable one

• What’s changed in the nonfiction market—and what hasn’t

• Where authors tend to misread the process

Hollis has worked with authors like Jim Collins, Clay Christensen, Satya Nadella, and Gary Vaynerchuk, and brings a clear, candid perspective on what it actually takes to get a book deal today.

If you’re serious about traditional publishing—or would like a clearer picture of how decisions get made—this conversation is not to be missed.

RSVP here to sign up.

Note: This event is exclusively for founding and paid Author Insider members.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Best,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

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Tomorrow, I’ll be hosting a Substack Live with Irena Smith, author of The Golden Ticket and Troika, about something that doesn’t get talked about enough in publishing: building a writing career while living with ADHD.

How does ADHD shape the writing process: deadlines, revisions, publicity, and the long arc of a book career? Where does it create friction, and where might it offer unexpected advantages?

Irena brings a rare mix of candor and experience to the topic. We’ll talk about hyperfocus, avoidance, burnout, and what it takes to manage ambitious creative work over time.

The discussion will be grounded in publishing, but the insights should resonate with anyone trying to build a demanding creative career.

Click here to RSVP and get notified when we go live.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Best,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Subscribe now

What if you could see the world the way an economist does? That’s the premise behind Planet Money, the hit NPR podcast that has spent years unpacking the hidden forces behind everyday life.

Alex Mayyasi, a longtime contributor to Planet Money, specializes in turning complex economic ideas into stories people actually want to follow. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, and he previously helped launch the food publication Gastro Obscura, which went on to win two James Beard Awards and became a bestselling book of the same name.

His new book, Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life (co-authored by the hosts of Planet Money), draws on more than a decade of reporting to show how economics shapes everything from jobs to relationships to the choices we make every day.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Mayyasi talks about storytelling, procrastination, and how not to lose a reader.

21 Questions with Alex Mayyasi

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

So many espressos. Matt Levine’s entertaining and informative newsletter, Money Stuff. A colleague telling me early on, with far more confidence than I felt, “You’re going to rock this.”

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

I did not write this book in a garret. I wrote this book in a little house inside a sculpture garden inside an arts center in a tiny town at the entrance to a state park.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Doomscrolling and TV. But I try to stick to productive procrastination, like cleaning the fridge or other writing that I’m not currently anxious about.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I try to filter for good-faith reviews from thoughtful people. Michael Lewis has a great anecdote about how a somewhat damning review of Moneyball inspired him to write The Undoing Project.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I like to do one re-read and polish, and then leave it alone for a bit. Stephen King has a great line about waiting long enough that your writing still feels familiar, but also a bit strange, like it was written by another version of you, so it’s easier to notice problems and kill your darlings. Because they’re the other guy’s darlings now.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Marry podcasts. They are my constant companions on walks and while washing dishes. And I’m launching one of my own! It’s about food and economics. It’s called Gastronomics.

Kiss newsletters. So many people are using the form in wonderful ways. Like the occasional missives I get from a writer developing a theory about how the universe is less like a rock and more like an egg that’s evolved over many life cycles.

Kill speaking gigs. But I’d prefer to kill short-form video.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Create my own newsletter. Even just to email out my latest article or podcast episode. Not so long ago, I met someone in a cafe who expressed interest in my book and asked how he could follow my work. I had no good answer. What a whiff! A subscriber list is a way to “own” your relationship with readers and build something that scales over time.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

I try to always have my antenna up. Many ideas come from a throwaway comment in a conversation or interview. Or from a single line in a book or article. They all go in a messy Google Doc.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

I once had a boss who would pull out his phone during pitch meetings if he got bored. It wasn’t an act. You’d just lost him. The advice was unintentional but powerful: This is the reader. If you bore them, they will go away. Experiencing it live was powerful!

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

I really admire people who’ve achieved mastery in multiple mediums, like books and audio. I want to be a double threat!

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Food books and econ books: The Taste of Empire, Lords of Finance, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now. Because food and economics are my two obsessions, and I’m combining them into a podcast called Gastronomics. Yes, I am plugging it again!

12. How did you find your agent?

I asked another writer for advice on whether I should get an agent. She suggested I get advice from her agent. And her agent said that he’d like to be my agent. I asked him a hypothetical about what he’d say if I wanted to turn one of my most popular articles (about Subarus and lesbians) into a book. His answer was great!

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13. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

Automatic transcription services! Paired with TapeACall to record phone calls. Mostly out of habit. I think a recording feature is built into iPhones now.

I use AI as a research assistant. It’s surprisingly good when looking for an illustrative example or case study. I also find AI helpful when brainstorming section titles and headlines. It rarely suggests a winner, but it quickly produces many ideas that sometimes point me in a helpful direction.

14. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Less planning, more learning by doing. I want to do ever-more research. I want to figure everything out and craft the perfect plan. But the perfect plan doesn’t exist. You can’t anticipate everything. Before long, diminishing returns set in and additional research and planning is just procrastination.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

When the book deadline is far off, I do multiple passes. When the deadline looms, I write the last line and email it immediately. Parkinson’s Law at work!

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I drive from my home in Colorado to a mountain town called Silverthorne, listening to research on the way. I park, pull out my bike, and ride up Loveland Pass. Then I descend back down, yelling gleefully, and get an early lunch in a coffee shop where I can write with a mountain view.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

I usually just bike to the library or my favorite coffee shop.

18. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

During weekly happy hours with our cat, my girlfriend and I develop our novella idea about a very rational man from the city who goes to his hometown after the death of his uncle and… eventually there’s a mermaid. We feel it has strong potential to be adapted by Hollywood.

19. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

That spending so much time alone during the workday makes me act like an extrovert after work.

20. Fill in the blank: In five years, successful authors will all be _____.

Millionaires. But fewer in number. Because of the superstar effect.

21. Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

You know the book Never Eat Alone? Every weekday that I eat lunch alone, I feel like the author is just offstage and shaking his head disapprovingly. I’d love to find fellow writers and journalists to occasionally have lunch with (virtually or in person). If you’re interested, email me at alexmayyasi@gmail.com. If enough people reach out, I’ll play matchmaker between us all.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

Her newest book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, is her first foray into explicitly self-help terrain. We talked about why she made that shift, the tools and strategies she relies on when her brain isn’t cooperating, and why embarrassing stories are the best ones to share.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify (links below), and probably other places too; I’m just not super tech-savvy. Google it!

Happy listening,

Panio

P.S. Here’s a link to Jenny’s Author Insider questionnaire, which is also funny and brilliant. And if you don’t already follow her (you really should), you can sign up for her Substack here:

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How do you keep going when your brain won’t cooperate?

That’s the question Jenny Lawson has been answering for years, first on her blog, then in a series of books that combine humor, honesty, and hard-won survival strategies.

Known to many as “the Bloggess,” Lawson has built a devoted following by writing candidly about depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and the absurdity of everyday life. Her books—including Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Furiously Happy, and Broken (in the best possible way)—have all been instant #1 New York Times bestsellers.

Her new book, How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay, gathers more than a hundred of the tools and tricks she relies on to get through hard days, keep creating, and find moments of joy, even when everything feels impossible.

In her Author Insider questionnaire, Jenny gets real about what the writing life actually looks like…

21 Questions with Jenny Lawson

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

A cat on my lap. And coconut rum.

2. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Convincing myself that something else NEEDS to get done first before I can work. My house is never as clean as when I have a deadline.

3. Do you read your reviews?

Never read your own reviews. Have someone you love read them for you and show you the best ones. Have them also honestly but kindly share with you any criticisms that might be valid and fixable.

Bad reviews are inevitable. When I start to doubt that I do read the one-star reviews of my favorite books of all time and remember that you can’t be everything for everyone. I’m not for everyone and that’s how it should be.

4. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I send it to my agent and then try to forget that I’ve sent it but inevitably panic and become convinced that she hates me now even though she’s been my agent forever. Then I remind myself that drafts are supposed to be messy and weird and that good editors and agents can see the gold inside all of the sludge.

5. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

They’re all hard and all fantastic so I would kiss them all and then slap them in the face. And then kiss them again.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I avoid anything with the unlucky number in it whenever I can. I’ll change deadlines if I can. It’s ridiculous.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

I can’t think of anything. Five-year-ago me was overwhelmed and I’m just proud of her for surviving. I don’t think we always give ourselves enough credit for what we’ve lived through.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

My brain is full of ridiculous nonsense, and I tend to write ideas down on my phone and then later think, “What the hell did this mean? Who wrote this??” It’s like a psychopath is leaving me notes and that psychopath is me.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Whatever way works best for you is the best way. It’s okay to look weird.

10. And the worst?

“If you share these crazy thoughts in your head you’re going to scare people away.”

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Judy Blume is a real hero. Not only did I love her books growing up, she’s also a lover of books and of authors. She helped me in real life and she didn’t need to do that. I try to pass that on to others…helping as much as I can.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

A cat. And about a dozen books. And my night guard. The book I’m reading right now is The Curse of Hester Gardens. So good.

13. How did you find your agent?

I went to a writing conference about 15 years ago and embarrassed myself in front of a ballroom of people, and instead of seeing an awkward girl fucking things up, she saw an awkward writer fucking things up. Forever grateful she reached out to me. (Thanks, Neeti!)

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

All of them. I love to write run-on sentences or sentence fragments that work in my head (and hopefully readers’ minds) even though they would make my English teachers cringe. I make up words if I can’t find one that fits better. I have a Journalism degree, which was helpful because I was able to recognize all of the rules that I was breaking and sometimes that convinces the powers-that-be to let you do what you want. The rules are just suggestions.

15. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I am fanatically against AI for all creative endeavors. I’m a bit of a Luddite and easily intimidated by most tech, but there are a few tech tools that I lean on, including this one, which I cover in my upcoming book.

When I’m struggling to put something on an empty page, I’ll go for a long walk, pull up my notes app to transcribe what I’m saying, and then just pretend I’m talking to an imaginary friend and telling them everything I want to write about. I go through the details and go off on tangents, and when I get back to my desk, I have a document I can use to start the work. It’s really helpful.

16. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Embracing whimsy and joy and silliness. I write about very dark things sometimes, but I am not afraid to be ridiculous and weird and unhinged because life is very short and joy is necessary. I think that shows up in my writing and invites others to be silly with me. It’s a gift I give myself.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Ideally, I would wake up at 9 am, write for four hours, and love what I’ve written. Have a taco and pet a cat. Edit that writing. Finish the day pleased with myself and ready to do more tomorrow. Watch The Gilded Age while drawing on the couch with family. Be asleep at 10 pm. I have never experienced this sort of day even once in my life.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

A normal workday is more like…I wake up at 3 am. And 6 am. And 9 am. And get caught doomscrolling until 10:30 when I panic. I’m at my desk by 11 am and then convince myself I need lunch. Back at work at 12. Write for an hour. Delete everything. Write for another hour. Edit it. End up with two paragraphs I really like. Watch 90-Day-Fiance while playing a computer game because my cat is on my sketchbook, and I can’t possibly move him to draw. At 11 pm my cat moves and I start drawing and my husband says it’s time to go to bed but I don’t because I’m too into my drawing even though I need to be sleeping and then I have an idea on how to finish the next chapter and rush into my office before I can forget it and then it’s 3 am again.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

I LOVE horror. Like, so much that I run a horror book club called Nightmares from Nowhere. One day I’ll try it out myself.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

How it brings us together. How I can hear from people on the other side of the world who are touched by my writing. And how I can be changed by the writing of others. We’re all stories in a way.

21. What is your new book about?

It’s about all the tips and tricks I’ve collected to keep going both mentally and creatively. It’s basically my toolbox of how I’ve lived with depression, anxiety, ADHD, chronic pain, and the assorted bullshit of life and still managed to keep creating. It’s easy to read and ridiculous and weird as hell, but I’m really proud of it.

Bonus: Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

One of the reasons this book exists is because I’m forever sharing my tips and tricks and asking other authors for theirs, so I am all ears for any tools that help in writing. Particularly regarding fighting procrastination. I’ve found that often the tip that works for a year or two can lose its oomph so refilling that toolbox is a forever-act of self-care.

Looking forward to your answers!

Leave a comment

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Author Insider is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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What does it mean to stand at the edge of the universe—and try to describe it? For Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, the answer lies somewhere between physics, poetry, and lived experience.

A theoretical physicist and writer, Prescod-Weinstein studies dark matter and the early universe while also exploring how science intersects with culture and power. Her first book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science and Technology. Her new book, The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (April 7, 2026), takes readers to the boundaries of the universe, and asks what those boundaries reveal about ourselves.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Chanda talks about libraries, cat memes, and the unpredictable path to becoming a writer.

21 Questions with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Libraries. I accessed so many papers and books I needed thanks to libraries.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

We are not born good. We work hard to be good at what we do.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Looking for cat memes to share with one of my group chats.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Only the published ones.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Put it away and watch comfort TV.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I thought I didn’t have an answer to this question, but my spouse immediately said, “You’re obsessed with word count.”

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

It would have been helpful to learn how to let myself write out of order, instead of expecting it to always come to me linearly.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

Everywhere. I keep a notebook where I write down important quotes. I put sticky notes on books I want to use, with a comment about what was important in the book.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

Ask questions when you need to.

10. And the worst?

To give up because I would never succeed. That turned out to be very wrong.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

I really admire astrophysicist and author Priya Natarajan. She has had an extraordinary intellectual range within astronomy and has broadly been a force for good in the discipline. On top of that, she’s also a writer with broad interests.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Stephanie Wambugu’s first novel, Lonely Crowds, and Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Sula.

13. How did you find your agent?

Jessica Papin found me, and I cannot put into words how happy I am that she did.

14. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

Preposition at the end of the sentence. It’s fine, really.

15. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I am virtual lifemates with Zotero, the reference software. I am a GenAI virgin and proud of it.

16. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Being able to get on stage and talk to large and small audiences has served me well. I’m so glad I went to a public performing arts school for seven years.

17. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Usually my editor sees the first one.

18. Can you describe your ideal workday?

One where I don’t have to deal with any university bureaucracy.

19. How does that compare to your actual workday?

A lot of writing emails and feeling annoyed by wasteful bureaucracy, interspersed with thinking about ideas I actually care about. Right now I’m picking out a textbook for the graduate quantum field theory class I’m teaching next year.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

No two books are alike, and the way I grow and change as a writer is completely unpredictable.

21. What is your new book about?

The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Dream Boogie is about how living at the edge of what we know is part of who we are as a species. I write about the power of physics and metaphor to shape our minds and our relationship to the cosmos, and I emphasize the spiritual importance of doing particle physics and cosmology. It’s also for anyone who has ever wondered, “What the fuck is quantum field theory?”

Bonus Q: Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

I’m interested to know how they think about what it means to write with integrity.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Sharon McMahon Didn’t Chase Followers. She Got 1.3 Million Anyway.

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

One of the perks of being an Author Insider is access to special live conversations with The Next Big Idea Club. And we’ve got a great one coming up tomorrow.

On Friday, March 26, at 1:30 p.m. ET, I’ll be hosting a Substack Live with Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable.

We’ll be discussing his new book, the instant New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief: The Science-Backed Way to Stop Limiting Yourself and Achieve Extraordinary Results.

The core idea is deceptively simple: what holds us back isn’t just effort, discipline, or circumstances—it’s what we believe is possible. And those beliefs, Nir argues, aren’t fixed truths. They’re tools.

In this live conversation, we’ll explore how those hidden assumptions shape what we see, attempt, and ultimately achieve. And, importantly, how to change them.

We’ll get into:

• Why we systematically underestimate our own potential

• How hidden beliefs shape what you create, share, and hold back

• Practical ways to break unhelpful creative patterns (without relying on more discipline)

• How to stay steady and keep producing, even under pressure

If you’ve ever felt stuck, second-guessed your own abilities, or found yourself repeating the same patterns, this one should be especially useful.

Join us live tomorrow, Friday, March 26th, at 1:30 p.m. ET.

Click here to RSVP and get notified when we go live.

If you’d like a calendar reminder, you can also add it via Luma here.

I hope to see a few familiar Author Insider names in the chat!

Best wishes,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Book launches are hard. They take a huge amount of effort, rarely go as planned, and often leave authors wondering whether all that time and money were worth it. It’s easy to feel like everything depends on launch, and that if the book doesn’t take off during those first few weeks, its chances are over.

To be fair, the whole pre-order system—where all advance copies sold are counted in the week the book is released—logically pushes toward a super-aggressive rollout. And yet, just hear me out, if everyone is doing the same thing, doesn’t that basically cancel out any potential advantage? It’s like when athletes use performance-enhancing drugs; sure, you’re keeping up, but you’re not winning because of the drugs.

Regardless, I’m not arguing to pull back on your launch strategy. By all means, hire a publicist, go on dozens of podcasts, flog the book on your newsletter, do a little dance on TikTok if you’ve got some sweet moves. But you should also have a longer-term strategy in mind, on the off chance that your book, one of the four million published in the US every year, isn’t an immediate triumph.

Recently, I interviewed Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit, about book launch strategies. Michael’s book has sold millions of copies and is widely regarded as the best-selling book on coaching of the century, continuing to find new readers nearly a decade after its release. He had some intriguing insights and strategies for keeping a launch going (or restarting it), four of which I’m sharing below.

N.B. While Michael’s experience is specifically with books in the business/self-help/leadership categories, many of these strategies apply to other genres, too—they just might need some tweaking.

1. Optimize for recommendation, not attention

Launch strategies tend to aim for maximum visibility. They’re built around getting as many people as possible to notice the book as quickly as possible.

But attention fades very fast. What sustains sales over time is something much quieter and less exciting: the book continuing to solve a real problem for readers. When a book becomes genuinely useful—something people return to, apply, or reference—it stays in circulation long after the launch cycle ends.

Here’s the concept that Michael emphasized: the moment that really matters isn’t when someone buys your book for themselves. It’s when they buy it for someone else. The shift from personal consumption to recommendation signals trust. It means the book has crossed a threshold from “hmm, interesting” to “you have to read this!”

Authors often obsess over early metrics like sales rank or reviews (when my first book was released, I was transfixed by an app that refreshed its Amazon ranking hourly). But if you’re going to obsess over something, it should be whether people are sharing your book with others.

2. Authors without massive platforms often spread themselves too thin

When you don’t have a large audience, the instinct is to try to be everywhere at once: more platforms, more posts, more interviews, etc. Besides leading to burnout, it isn’t very effective at building momentum.

Michael’s approach is the opposite. He argues that authors without big platforms benefit most from focus—a clear audience, a clear problem, and a clear promise. Trying to appeal to everyone weakens word of mouth. Serving a specific group strengthens it. Momentum builds faster when readers know exactly who the book is for and why it matters.

3. Design your publicity strategy to encourage discussion

Another key idea from our conversation: books that last tend to be used and discussed, not just read. They give readers something they can bring into conversations—with friends, family, colleagues, clients, and teams. When a book becomes something that people use with others, it naturally gets recommended, shared, and revisited.

Luckily, this doesn’t require building a big platform or ecosystem or recording an elaborate online course. It can be as simple as:

• Crafting discussion questions or exercises (you can offer them as a free PDF on your website)

• Creating a framework that people can easily share (also a good PDF candidate)

• Running free livestream/virtual events about how to apply the ideas

Don’t think of your book as the end product. Think of it as one element of an experience.

4. You can relaunch your book whenever you want

One of the most liberating takeaways from our conversation is that books don’t expire the way authors often assume they do. Re-launching an older book doesn’t require rewriting it or manufacturing novelty. It just requires a fresh frame: a new audience, a new context, or even just an arbitrary milestone that gives people permission to look again.

• Has it been five years since your book came out? Relaunch it.

• Hit 10,000 copies sold? Relaunch it.

• New year? New cohort of readers? A cultural moment suddenly makes your topic relevant? Relaunch it.

Of course, unless you’re self-published, there are constraints. You can’t just decide to print an updated edition of your book. (Though if you do, you should probably add some new material. In the newly released 10-year-anniversary edition of The Coaching Habit, Michael included three new chapters and illustrations)

Regardless, the point isn’t to update your book. It’s to re-present your book to the world.

Here’s my favorite recent example: Sarah Fay originally published Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses in March 2023. A little over two years later, after building a substantial and highly engaged Substack following, she relaunched the book (July 2025), and it became a USA Today bestseller.

Your book doesn’t have just one moment. It has as many moments as you’re willing to create for it.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing: thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• The Two Things Agents Look For in a Query Letter

• Daniel Pink Is 99% Tortoise, 1% Hare

• What Is Hybrid Publishing, Really? (Video Replay)

• How Cal Newport Sold Millions of Books Without a Single Social Media Follower

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Anthony Klotz is an organizational psychologist best known for predicting—and naming—the “Great Resignation.” A professor at UCL School of Management in London, he studies the psychology of work: why people quit their jobs, how they make career decisions, and what those choices mean for their lives.

His new book, Jolted: Why We Quit, When to Stay, and Why It Matters, explores the pivotal moments that cause people to rethink their relationship with work. Drawing on research and real-world stories, Klotz argues that many career decisions are triggered not by long-term dissatisfaction but by sudden events he calls “jolts.”

In this edition of 21 Questions, Klotz talks about turning research into a book, testing ideas in the classroom, and the moments that shape our working lives.

21 Questions with Anthony Klotz

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Good journalism and good fortune. In late 2020, I was interviewed by a journalist (Arianne Cohen) about how to quit your job. At the end of it, I made an offhand remark that the resulting article would be very useful for the many people who would quit their jobs in the coming wave of resignations. That comment led to another interview with Arianne, for Bloomberg Businessweek, during which I made another offhand remark: “The Great Resignation is coming.” That article and that term went viral, giving my research on when and how to quit a job a platform that led to this book.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

Thinking that it’s more about writing than researching. Don’t get me wrong, I do lots of writing and rewriting, but researching before, during, and after writing takes up much more of my time.

3. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Learning a second language. To be fair, this would have been my answer had you asked at any prior point in my adult life. And yet, here I am, monolingual as ever.

4. Hemingway wrote standing up; Edith Wharton, lying down. What are your quirks?

I like to work near a window with a decent view. Preferably something dynamic and with some nature in it. When I’m thinking through how I want to say something, it often helps to turn away from the screen and sort it out while gazing out the window. It doesn’t hurt that my school has some pretty incredible views of the Thames and the London skyline beyond.

5. Do you read your reviews?

I do. University teaching and the academic publication system are built on (often critical) reviews, so it feels normal to engage with them. Savor the positive ones, learn from the constructive ones, and shake off the tough ones.

6. Is there a book you wish you’d written?

Oh yeah, lots of them. Erin Meyer’s amazing book, The Culture Map, springs to mind. Great storytelling, evidence-backed insights, and an incredibly useful and approachable framework. It’s nonfiction at its best.

7. How has AI changed your writing process?

Not much. I use AI in most other domains of my work and life, but not in my writing. My hope is that AI will allow me to reduce the time spent on tasks I don’t enjoy, leaving me with more time for the things I do enjoy, like writing.

8. Where do you find new ideas?

Mainly by talking to people about how their work is going. Hearing how my students think about work is a never-ending source of insight. I also keep up with the business press and the latest buzzwords in the world of work. And of course, I’m a worker too, so there’s a bit of “me-search” going on as well. My original desire to study resignations came from my own experiences of fumbling through quitting, and as a manager, struggling with how to respond when an employee would quit.

9. How do you keep track of new ideas?

Good ol’ post-it notes. I stick them on my desk and hang onto them for a week or two. If I still think the idea is good after staring at it for a few weeks, I rewrite it on a new post-it note, and stick it in a manila folder filled with them. When I’m thinking about starting a new project, I’ll go through the pile, culling out the ideas that don’t resonate with me anymore (or that have been scooped by the great work of others).

10. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

At one point in the not-too-distant past, I found myself in this rare moment, where I felt like I was at a fork in the road, with multiple good, big projects to choose from. I couldn’t decide which option to pursue, but I knew that I couldn’t take them all on at once.

A good friend and mentor challenged that thinking and advised me that, sometimes in life, you need to say yes to more than you think you can handle, especially when the downsides are relatively small. So, I said yes to everything, and it led to a couple of the busiest yet most rewarding years of my life. And then I needed a serious break.

11. And the worst?

Throughout my career, I’ve been advised by well-intentioned senior colleagues that it’s necessary to become great in all areas of your profession or craft. Of all of the different roles I’ve had, from shift supervisor to entrepreneur to academic, I’ve found that I’m naturally good at some parts of the job, and no matter how hard I try, I struggle with other aspects. I’ve wasted far too much time trying to be great at the parts I struggle with. Now, I simply try to be “good enough” in those struggle spots, and find partners whose strengths complement my weaknesses.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

A wonderful memoir written by our neighbor from when we lived in Canada: Finding My Wings by Ron Hunt. It’s chock-full of incredible stories from his youth, and reading it has prompted me to remember long-forgotten stories from my own childhood.

13. How did you find your agent?

Through the kindness and generosity of another business writer, who made some introductions for me.

14. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Teaching students. Because my teaching and writing are in the same area, I can share ideas with my students, who range from undergrads to executives, and see how they resonate. Teaching also requires good storytelling, so in preparing to teach a concept I’m writing about, I often discover more engaging ways to convey the idea.

15. Coffee, tea, or something stronger?

For a long time, the answer would have been coffee, full stop. But British living is rubbing off on me, and now it’s coffee in the morning, and tea in the afternoon.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Well, that depends. Generally speaking, I’ll work through four to five drafts before seeing what my editor thinks. But if we’re working closely on a specific issue, I’ll just send first drafts as we iterate quickly.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Wake up and spend an hour with coffee and a book, then jog around Victoria Park. Have a smooth commute on the tube, followed by two hours of productive writing. Then lunch and a walk, before teaching a short class on a topic I like. Take afternoon tea with a colleague, answer some emails from my research collaborators, and then meet my wife for dinner and drinks. Do a neighborhood stroll, watch a quiz show, have one more tea, and call it a day.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Maybe over the course of a workweek, I’ll get to all of those things. Most of my workdays have three to four of those elements, with the rest of the time taken up by other demands.

19. What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

All the things! But mainly, I wish I’d known (and gotten comfortable with) how much of the process is simply out of your control. Even though you’re writing the book, it’s a collective effort, and so your timing and decision-making autonomy are constrained.

20. What is your new book about?

It’s about jolts. Jolts are events—big and small, in our professional or personal lives—that cause us to stop in our tracks and question our relationship with work. How we navigate the jolts we encounter has meaningful implications for our career success and well-being, but we often manage them poorly (e.g., quitting when we should have stayed, and vice versa).

Jolted is about recognizing these potentially pivotal events when they happen and responding to them in ways that improve our careers and lives.

21. Any questions or feedback you would like from authors in the community?

This is my first book, so I’d love to hear from the community about their favorite moments during the year (or years) following their launch. Any event, encounter, or moment that gave them a burst of delight, pride, or any other positive emotion. I’d love to hear your stories and then be on the lookout for them. Thank you!

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• Daniel Pink Is 99% Tortoise, 1% Hare

• How Cal Newport Sold Millions of Books Without a Single Social Media Follower

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Over a decades-long career as a journalist and author, Simon Kuper has built a reputation for combining deep reporting with tight, unsentimental prose. His book, Soccernomics (co-authored by Stefan Szymanski), is considered a modern classic of sportswriting, hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the most intelligent book ever written about soccer.”

In his latest book, World Cup Fever, Simon returns to the soccer pitch, this time drawing on a rare vantage point: he has attended every men’s World Cup since 1990. The result is both a personal history of the tournament and a broader look at how soccer has evolved in the era of globalization.

Here, Kuper answers 21 questions about writing sentence by sentence, why most adjectives should go, and the discipline of listening.

21 Questions with Simon Kuper

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My office—a quiet place away from my family, a room of my own, to borrow from Virginia Woolf. It’s the thing that enabled me to write five books in the last five years. I’ve come to think that the workspace makes the author. Of course, this is an issue of economic inequality.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

That you sit staring at a blank page or screen, wondering what to write. In my case, at least, I plan out each chapter in enormous detail before I sit down to write. I make long plans in an A4 notebook showing pretty much where each sentence will go. When I sit down to write, I know almost exactly where I’m heading. The planning takes me longer than the writing.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Skimming mind-numbed through social media. Does anyone have any other way to procrastinate?

4. Do you read your reviews?

I have to admit I do. But I no longer take them as personally as when I began writing books more than 30 years ago. Now I’m sometimes less concerned with whether a review is positive or negative than where it’s insightful or not. I sort of value the insightful ones even when they hurt.

5. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

I immediately start editing it. I hunt for non-sequiturs, lack of clarity, unnecessary adjectives (and most are unnecessary), and sentences that don’t end with a crisp word or thought.

6. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Kiss: podcasts. I really enjoyed doing my soccer podcast, Heroes & Humans, with the excellent Mehreen Khan, till the funding stopped.

Marry: speaking gigs, if paid.

Kill: newsletters. I always ask about a writing task: how many years or even weeks could the thing I’m working on last? I don’t read other people’s newsletters, and won’t be doing my own.

7. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

In my office, I have a shelf of over 200 notebooks, dating back to 1998, in which I write down every thought or interview or observation I’ve ever considered using. Write it down at once or you’ll forget it. And index every notebook or you’ll never find it back.

8. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

You have to attach your story to specific characters, those characters must come to life, and they must carry the reader all the way through the book, not just through occasional scenes. People care about characters. There isn’t a novel or movie without characters. But there are many nonfiction works with none or no compelling characters.

9. And the worst?

I react badly to suggestions that you should try to heighten writing with superlatives or colorful adjectives.

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Michael Lewis is the most successful nonfiction writer of our time. He has succeeded again and again in finding fascinating new topics, summoning the stamina to report on them for months or years on end, and then throwing away the overwhelming majority of his research to produce a tightly structured narrative.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

I’m reading a 500-page biography of a forgotten Dutchman called Jan-Willem Beijen, who was one of the handful of men who, after the war, created the European Economic Community- forerunner of today’s European Union. I’m planning a book on those guys. On the side, I’m reading Lord of the Flies, which I somehow missed as a child. It has yet to win me over, but maybe I’m too old for it.

12. How did you find your agent?

My first one disappeared. He had some kind of life crisis, and became uncontactable, abandoning me and all his other authors. He later resurfaced, but by then a publisher had connected me with Vivienne Schuster of Curtis Brown. When she retired, she passed me on to Gordon Wise, and I’ve been very happy with him these last 20 years.

13. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

In the last few weeks, I’ve started using AI again, after mediocre initial experiences last year, and this time I’m very impressed. I can see the time coming when an author will have an idea for a book, tell AI which chapters to write, then prompt AI to improve them. The writer will still need to rewrite the book to put it in their own voice and do the fact-checking. In fact, maybe within five years, AI will have mastered voice and reliable fact-checking too.

14. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Listening. From having been a loud young man who couldn’t listen, I’ve schooled myself to actually hear and be interested in what people say. It’s an essential tool for any writing about the world (as well as being the most appealing social skill). It’s the one piece of wisdom that I’ve tried to pass on to my children: learn to listen.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

I probably do about 15 rewrites of the average page. By the end, I’m usually hunting for just one stray word.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I wake up at 7:30 am rested after a good night’s sleep. After a healthy breakfast at home, I’m in the office at 9 am. It’s a day when I have no journalism to do, no Zoom calls or personal administration or other nonsense, and I can just work on my next book. I work fully in the zone till 1:30 pm when I pop out for a quick, world-class, affordable two-course lunch in one of the restaurants within a 5-minute walk of my office. (This is only possible because I live in Paris.) Back to the office for a 28-minute post-meal nap, then work till 8 pm, when it’s home for dinner with family or friends.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Much of this actually happens, except that I almost never have a good night’s sleep and therefore am rarely in the office before 10 am.

18. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

It wouldn’t be a book, but I have sniffed around at the fringes of TV writing, and one day I’d like to co-write a TV or streamer script.

19. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

The enormous pleasure of meeting fellow authors. That’s a big reason why I go to festivals. You do the job alone, so it’s a joy to discuss it with people who are wrestling with the same issues, and good writers are ideal companions—original thinkers who are interested in people.

20. What is your new book about?

World Cup Fever recounts my journeys to the last nine men’s soccer World Cups—every one since 1990—and adds some history and reflections on what the tournament is all about. Call it a personal look at a global phenomenon. It’s timed for this summer’s World Cup in the US, Mexico, and Canada.

21. Anything you’d like to ask or crowdsource from fellow authors in the Author Insider community?

How do you use AI in your writing, if at all? (I guess this applies chiefly to nonfiction writers.) What advice do you have on this?

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• What Is Hybrid Publishing, Really? (Video Replay)

• The Two Things Agents Look For in a Query Letter

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

For a long time, the conventional wisdom in publishing was simple: Nonfiction writers need a platform. Fiction writers don’t.

In the past few years, however, that clean distinction has gotten blurry. Agents and publishers are increasingly aware that writers who bring readers with them—even a modest number—can make a project easier to champion.

That doesn’t mean every novelist needs a massive social media following (thank God.) Plenty of debut novels still sell on the strength of the manuscript alone. But it does mean that visibility can help push a deal through.

Why is the platform becoming part of the conversation?

In a word? Risk.

Publishing is a business built around risk. When editors acquire a book, they’re making a bet. They’re not just betting on the quality of the writing and storytelling, but on the likelihood that readers will discover it.

A writer who already has some kind of audience—whether through a newsletter, social media, journalism, a podcast, an online course, etc.—can give a publisher a little more confidence in that bet.

What platform really means

When writers hear the word platform, they often imagine needing hundreds of thousands of followers. But in practice, a platform can take many more achievable forms.

It might look like:

• a Substack newsletter with a loyal readership

• a strong presence in a particular online community

• a professional network connected to the subject matter

• an engaged social media audience

What matters most is engagement, not sheer numbers. A small but enthusiastic group of readers is often far more valuable than a large but passive one.

(If you're curious for examples of sales flops from people with massive followings, this 2021 New York Times article is just for you: Millions of Followers? For Book Sales, ‘It’s Unreliable.’)

The encouraging reality

Even as a writer’s platform becomes more relevant, the fundamental truth of fiction publishing hasn’t changed. The manuscript still matters the most. Agents and editors fall in love with voice, story, and originality.

So take heart! An impressive platform may open doors or strengthen a pitch, but it doesn’t replace the essential requirement: a compelling book.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few recent reader favorites:

• Mary Roach on Why Nothing Is Off-Limits

• The Easiest Publicity Move Most Authors Ignore

• Video Replay: How Do You Write a Query Letter That Gets Read?

Subscribe now

Why do some groups thrive while others stall out? For years, Daniel Coyle has been chasing this simple but slippery question.

Coyle is the New York Times bestselling author of The Culture Code and The Talent Code, books that explore the hidden patterns behind high-performing teams. Over the years, he has reported from locker rooms, classrooms, and companies in search of the forces that help groups succeed.

His new book, Flourish, looks at the communities that generate unusual levels of belonging, energy, and shared purpose—from Chilean miners trapped underground to a small Michigan deli that grew into a $90 million ecosystem of businesses.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Coyle talks about curiosity, notebooks, and why writing is really a form of carpentry.

21 Questions with Daniel Coyle

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

My parents passing away rather suddenly. Dark but true! No matter what age you are (I was mid-fifties), the experience of being an orphan knocks you out of your usual patterns and toward a deeper set of questions. What’s a good life? How do you create strong relationships? How do you build community?

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

Writing ability matters far less than you think. Editing ability—the carpenter stuff—matters far, far more.

3. What’s your most common form of procrastination?

Doing more research, which feels virtuous, and rarely is.

4. What’s the first thing you do after you finish a draft?

Send it to someone, most often my brother (who’s a great editor). I find that the mere act of hitting SEND – suddenly imagining someone else’s eyes on the page – catapults me into a clearer perspective. Suddenly, fault lines I’d ignored become glaringly clear – likewise with possibilities I might have missed.

5. Kiss, marry, kill: podcasts, newsletters, and speaking gigs.

Kiss: podcasts.

Marry: speaking gigs.

Kill: newsletters. I know this is an unpopular theory, but here goes: Newsletters can be a terrific laboratory, but they are quietly dangerous, because they can lead you into thinking and behaving like a one-person media company. What serves your audience doesn’t always serve a writer’s long-term interest.

6. What’s a writing habit you’re embarrassingly superstitious about?

I am hopelessly addicted to Mead’s five-subject wire notebooks: 175 pages of letter-ruled bliss. That’s where most notes and outlines happen; which makes me feel like I’m living in a pre-Internet world. They create a rhythm and depth that goes deeper than typing on a screen.

7. What’s something you wish you’d started doing five years ago?

Morning Pages—three daily pages of freewriting, as prescribed by Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way. It feels strange, particularly when you’re accustomed to crafting sentences – and maybe that’s why it’s so liberating.

8. Where do you find new ideas, and how do you keep track of them?

My approach to every project is to find something that looks like magic—a performance, an achievement, a phenomenon—then to go in search of the machinery beneath. So I’m always on the lookout for unlikely stories, and the best barometer is my own reaction to them. If there’s a mystery that I can’t stop thinking about—for instance, how did those Chilean miners survive those weeks buried underground together?—that’s a strong signal.

For each idea, I keep folders, both real and in Google Docs. The folders function like shoeboxes: I put a bunch of stuff inside and let it rattle around, and see what connections emerge. Of course, a lot ends up on the cutting-room floor. The ratio of notebook pages to finished-book pages is around 20:1.

9. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

When I was in my early twenties, an editor told me that journalism is a license to be curious. In what other profession can you call strangers out of the blue and ask them questions? It feels almost illegally fun.

10. And the worst?

“Stay in your lane.” One of those things that sounds wise but isn’t. All the good stuff lies at the intersections.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Michael Lewis, because of his uncanny ability to sense where the world is moving, and to follow his curiosity and delight.

12. How did you find your agent?

Summer 1991, I was working at a magazine and dreaming about writing a book. The guy in the office next to mine told me I needed an agent, and scribbled the name “David Black” on a Rolodex card. Thirty-five years later, having never signed a contract, we are still together.

13. What’s a writing rule you’ve happily broken?

“Write the title last.” A title is not a summary; it’s a navigational tool, a compass. Write it first, and use it to find your way.

14. What tech tools (AI included) do you actually use—and which ones do you actively ignore?

I used Zoom’s translate feature recently to interview a French journalist, and it was kinda magical. I avoid all the note-taking apps—I love taking my own notes, and won’t give that to anybody.

15. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Optimism.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Around one hundred.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Editing a draft, moving the pieces around, feeling them clicking into place, noticing connections that I hadn’t seen before. It feels like music. Time moves very quickly.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

There’s a lot of ditch-digging before you get to that point.

19. If you could write one book in a totally different genre than you usually do, which would it be?

Kids books. Because no one has ever written anything that surpasses Dr. Seuss.

20. What’s something about the writing life that still surprises you?

The spooky connection between the writer and the reader. You write words on a page, and people are moved. How is that even possible?

21. What is your new book about?

Flourish is about the transformative power of community: how to create joy, meaning, and collective growth—kind of like you are doing here!

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few recent reader favorites:

• Mary Roach on Why Nothing Is Off-Limits

• The Easiest Publicity Move Most Authors Ignore

• Video Replay: How Do You Write a Query Letter That Gets Read?

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

When I was a book editor, I would occasionally start to feel overwhelmed by the number of submissions I had to respond to. Fun fact: You rarely read submissions in the office when you’re an editor. You usually don’t have time to edit in the office either (thanks, meetings!). You tend to do both your reading and editing at home on nights and weekends.

One day, at lunch with a literary agent friend, I was complaining about this perpetual game of catch-up when she told me how many queries she received every week. Not ten, or twenty, or even fifty—a hundred. A week. I shut up and ate my California roll.

It’s been years since that lunch, but based on recent conversations with agents, the number has only gone up. Which is exactly why a strong query letter matters so much. You’ve got half a minute, at best, before the agent moves on to the next letter.

So, how do you make the most of those thirty seconds?

In last week’s Author Insider Q&A, novelist and Pitch Your Novel creator Karin Gillespie explained just how. Specifically, she said that there are two elements that are essential to the modern query letter:

1. A clear one-sentence pitch

2. Strong, recent comp titles

Do these things right, and the agent will be able to decide, almost immediately, if the book has potential. It doesn’t guarantee representation, but it gives your book its best chance to stand out in a crowded inbox.

OK, let’s get into it…

The one-sentence pitch

This is the line that distills your story into its most essential elements. Ideally, it tells:

• Who the story is about

• What disrupts their life (the inciting event)

• What they want (their goal)

• What stands in their way (the obstacles)

A classic story like The Wizard of Oz can be reduced to something like this:

“When a restless young woman is swept away by a tornado to a magical land, she befriends a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion and sets out on a dangerous journey to find the wizard who might send her home.”

You’ll notice this is a very plot-oriented approach. Atmosphere, themes, big sweeping commentary—none of that belongs in the pitch. The character’s name isn’t even supposed to be in it.

The goal isn’t to capture every nuance of the book. (It’s one sentence, so it couldn’t even if you tried.) Instead, you want to pull out the core story engine. This is the pitch at its most pared down.

Why does this matter so much? Because if an agent decides to represent your book, they’ll eventually have to pitch it to editors. If an editor likes it, they’ll pitch it in an acquisitions meeting. If the book gets bought, someone will pitch it to the sales team, who will pitch it to booksellers… and on and on. At every stage, someone has to explain—in one sentence—why your book matters.

A strong pitch sentence makes that job much easier.

Comp titles

Comp titles, short for “comparative titles,” have also become more important in recent years. A comp title helps answer a simple question: Where does this book fit in today’s market?

Good comps usually have a few qualities in common:

• They’re recent (generally from the past two to three years)

• They share something meaningful with your book: tone, structure, audience, or theme

• They help an agent quickly understand how the book might be positioned

Bad comps are either too old, too massive, or too vague. If the book came out in another decade, the market has already moved on and the comparison is ineffective. If you claim that your book will be the next Gone Girl or The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, no one will believe you (you might even get dinged for hubris). And saying that your novel will appeal to “fans of great storytelling everywhere” is like telling someone you like “good food” when they ask where you want to eat.

The right comps immediately situate your book in the current publishing landscape.

Why these two elements matter to agents

Taken together, a compelling pitch and smart comps do something critical: they show that you understand not just what the story you’re telling is, but how it fits into the publishing ecosystem.

In a business where agents are rapidly evaluating hundreds of submissions, that kind of clarity can make a real difference.

If you’d like to hear Karin break this down in more detail, including examples from real query letters, you can watch the full conversation here:

Video Replay: How Do You Write a Query Letter That Gets Read?

Until next time,

—Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director at The Next Big Idea Club

You’ve written the book. You’ve revised it, polished it, shared it with early readers… and now comes the unsettling moment when you have to condense your entire book into a few paragraphs designed to make an agent want to read more.

In this week’s Author Insider conversation, I spoke with novelist and Pitch Your Novel creator Karin Gillespie, who has published nine books across Big Five, small press, and indie routes, and now helps writers navigate the submission process.

We talked about what agents actually look for in a query today, how expectations around pitches and comps have evolved, and how writers can position their books more effectively before they ever hit send. If you’re preparing to pitch a novel or memoir, this conversation offers a clear and practical roadmap.

And if you don’t have time to watch or listen to the full conversation straight through, here are a few key moments you can jump to:

Key moments from the conversation

01:07 — The two things that matter most in a query letter today

Karin explains why the one-sentence pitch and recent comp titles have become the most important elements of a modern query.

02:53 — How to write a one-sentence pitch

Breaking down the core elements agents want to see: character, inciting incident, desire, obstacles, and stakes.

12:53 — Why publishing has become a “soundbite industry”

Why clear, concise positioning helps agents quickly understand and champion a book.

17:45 — Why querying many agents at once is expected

The reality of the numbers game and why querying widely isn’t considered bad etiquette.

23:05 — How pitching memoir differs from pitching a novel

Memoir still needs stakes and narrative drive, but the author’s personal story and credibility play a larger role.

24:06 — How to choose strong comp titles

Why comps should be recent, comparable books rather than massive outliers like Gone Girl.

52:02 — The best tools for building an agent list

Karin’s recommended resources: Publishers Marketplace, Manuscript Wish List, and QueryTracker.

If you’re working on a query letter now—or planning to start soon—I hope this conversation helps demystify the process and gives you a clearer sense of what agents are actually looking for.

And a special thank you to everyone who joined the live session and contributed questions in the chat! I always appreciate the thoughtful participation from the Author Insider community.

I’ll also share a few key takeaways from this conversation early next week.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

Darcey Steinke has spent much of her career writing about the body—its desires, its mysteries, and its limits. Across several novels and works of nonfiction, including her acclaimed memoir Flash Count Diary, she has explored the complicated terrain of being human.

Her new book, This Is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith, turns to one of the most universal experiences of all: pain. Blending personal story with history, philosophy, religion, and art, Steinke examines how humans try to understand—and live with—suffering.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Steinke reflects on the writing life and the experiences that become books.

21 Questions with Darcy Steinke

1. I couldn’t have written my last book without…

Having injured my back. That’s the odd thing for me about being a writer; the painful and difficult things that happen to me are often the very subjects I need to explore. My suffering interests me in a way my day-to-day life does not. They are also the experiences that bring me into a greater humanity and connect me with others.

2. What’s the thing most people get wrong about being a writer?

It’s such a strange vocation writing, as it’s both arduous—there is lots of rewriting and worry—but it’s also wondrous, allowing me to communicate what my own embodied experience is to others. It can be lonely; I am alone in my office many hours of every day, but when I go out, I am often overtaken by the beauty and complexity of the world.

3. Hemingway wrote standing up; Edith Wharton, lying down. What are your quirks?

I have a standing desk and a regular desk. Also, a place to lie down and read in my office. If I am going to work for 4-6 hours, I need a variety of places to do it. I like to have things growing on my desks; that helps me remember that ideas and page numbers can grow as well. Right now, I am watching a half dozen green shoots move up from narcissus bulbs.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I do. They can be painful and I have to remember that a review is just one person’s opinion. I feel if you read and believe your good reviews you also have to be open to complaints in your bad ones. One of the qualities I like the best about myself is an ability to take in criticism and try to work with it to make my writing better. We write alone but we can’t bring the work out into the world without help from editors, and also reviewers.

5. Is there a book you wish you’d written?

Oh my gosh! So many. Just a few are The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

6. How has AI changed your writing process?

I guess it can make things easier to look up, but as far as the actual writing, not at all. I don’t think AI will ever be able to understand human sorrow, the brokenness of being human, of grief and love. So, I am not really worried. I mean, no machine can write a Darcey Steinke book!

7. How do you keep track of new ideas?

I have a zillion journals. In recent years, my books have come out of my journals. My last book, Flash Count Diary, came directly out of the diary I kept of my hot flashes when I was going through menopause. At the moment I have a journal called One Thing From Nature, and I write one observation about the natural world every day in its pages. I have another, in which I keep track of a house that is being torn down on my block, and yet another to record my feelings, and another (!!!) to keep track of ideas for new projects. I glue pictures to the front of all my journals and give them names.

8. What’s the best piece of professional advice you’ve ever received?

To remain curious and open. To not shut down things that threatened you but be interested in them. Also, that it’s not just about your own books but about the literary community at large. It’s important to buy books, go to readings, read drafts of friends’ books, and talk about books you love.

9. And the worst?

I had a teacher who modeled narcissism in the writer’s life, and I think that is dangerous. Writing can seem like a singular, selfish pursuit, but it’s actually a very generous one; it gestures out to connect with others.

10. What is the one piece of advice you would give to recent graduates that want to make a living as a writer?

Keep your expenses low and be careful with money. I guess I believe that if you are called to write, you will do it no matter what the obstacles are, but I have seen former students have to take jobs to pay bills that leave little time for writing and thinking. Also, surround yourself with people who understand your need to write and are readers themselves.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

I admire Simone de Beauvoir a huge amount. How she worked out her own ideas so bravely, how she wrote both fiction and philosophy, and understood both modes could get her ideas out. Her elegance, her style, her curiosity, her fierceness.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Little Communist who Never Smiled by the French writer Lola Lafon, Girls Play Dead by Jen Percy, Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness, The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, The Wise Child by Olga Ravn, Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt.

13. Foreign rights, audio rights, film rights: which have been the most valuable to you?

My books have been translated into many languages and that means a lot to me. As a little girl, it was my dream to be a writer, but also one who could be read around the world. To think of a reader in, say, South Korea, opening one of my books and sharing in my world, thrills me.

13. What’s the best non-writing skill that’s helped your writing career?

Wonder and curiosity. Trying to see the depth in every situation, even if it’s just going to the grocery store. A writer’s work is to witness, sometimes that means highly emotional and charged situations, but also just ordinary ones, a walk in the park, watching a mother interact with her baby, the way snow falls against a street light.

15. Coffee, tea, or something stronger?

I start my workday with a cup of coffee. I just have one, but it’s a key part of the morning ritual. A few days a week in the late afternoon, I might have a hazy IPA while I read.

16. What’s one marketing tip you’d give a new author?

Try to be authentic to who you are and what your book is about. Before the book comes out, try to write some short essays that might accompany the pub date. Send your book to other writers who might be interested in your book and could help you spread the word. Social media is great, but in-person stuff is important too: do readings, workshops, stop by bookstores to sign your books.

17. How many drafts before you show your editor?

30 to 50. I am never really done. I work endlessly. I show it to people, get comments, rewrite. I let it sit for a month, then look with fresh eyes. I pay attention to any little nagging feeling that a passage is not quite right.

18. Can you describe your ideal workday?

After a good sleep, I wake between 6 am and 8 am, get coffee, and meditate. I try to be at my desk soon after. Some days I answer emails first, but that is not ideal. Work a bit in my journal to warm up. Then go over my notes from the day before, read through what I have written, and start. I like to work between 3 and 6 hours, depending on where I am with a project. Then I either, in the summer, go swim in the sea at Brighton Beach, or I take a yoga class. Come home and read till dinner.

19. How does that compare to your actual workday?

I teach graduate students at NYU and Columbia, and so some days I read their work and comment on it. Some days I have to go to the dentist or get groceries. Some days I am sick or upset. Even if these things are part of my day, I always try to work even a little, at least an hour.

20. What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out?

I have loved my writing life, even with its ups and downs; it’s a way to be in the world that has a lot of freedom in it. It’s not a race, it’s a slow unfurling of your ideas and stories. I think at the beginning of my career I rushed.

21. What is your new book about?

This is the Door: The Body, Pain, and Faith is about my own struggle with back pain, about what people did in the past to relieve their pain, about how artists, writers, musicians and saints worked with their pain to create new worlds. It’s also about my minister father’s death, how in his long illness, he lost his faith but also gained human connection and a more lucid grip on reality. It’s about trying to live in flawed but wondrous bodies, incarnate for such a short time on this earth.

·More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with bestselling authors and industry insiders, clear-eyed analysis of where the market is headed, and practical strategies for building a sustainable writing career. Whether you’re just starting out or several books in, the goal is the same: helping you make smarter decisions about your work.

If you’re new to Author Insider, here are a few reader favorites:

• The New Rules of Book Publicity

• Daniel Pink Is 99% Tortoise, 1% Hare

• The Freedom of Constraints: David Epstein on why limits can fuel creativity, focus, and even contentment

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club

In this Author Insider conversation, I spoke with Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press, about what hybrid actually is, how it differs from traditional and self-publishing, and what authors should understand before choosing a path.

If you’re weighing your publishing options—especially as a debut author—this should bring clarity to a space that often feels murky.

And if you don’t have time to watch the full conversation straight through, here are a few key moments you can jump to:

Key moments from the conversation

00:53 — What is hybrid publishing, really?

Brooke defines hybrid publishing and explains what separates it from vanity and self-publishing.

04:03 — How submissions work

We get into agented vs. unagented submissions, editorial curation, and why the size of an author’s platform isn’t a gatekeeper in the hybrid model.

10:11 — Distribution & bookstore access

What it means to have your hybrid-published book distributed through Simon & Schuster, and how that affects reviews and placement.

18:26 — The financial structure

How hybrid investment and royalties differ from traditional advances.

24:54 — Editorial control & cover decisions

Hybrid doesn’t mean “the customer is always right.”

32:34 — Rights & termination

What happens if an author wants their rights back?

36:01 — Is hybrid growing?

The rise of the middle space, and the definition tensions playing out in real time.

If this conversation raised questions for you about your own publishing path, don’t miss our upcoming “Pitch Your Novel” Substack Live, where we’ll shift from publishing models to the work itself and talk through how to position your project in a way that actually gets attention. It will be practical, candid, and (as always) focused on helping writers move forward.

And a special thank you to , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video. I hope to see you all at the next conversation.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos
Editorial Director, Author Insider & The Next Big Idea Club