On Wednesday, September 16, I’ll be joined by India Lena González, senior editor at Poets & Writers Magazine, for a candid conversation about what makes a debut nonfiction book, and its author, stand out.

Backstory: I met India at the Whiting Awards lunch a few months ago. When she told me where she worked, I got nostalgic and immediately started reminiscing about how, in my early twenties, I used to pore over the long lists of magazines and writing contests in Poets & Writers Magazine, pen in hand, circling my favorites. (To her credit, she did not walk away).

India oversees the magazine’s New Nonfiction feature, an annual look at some of the year’s best debut memoirs, essay collections, and hybrid nonfiction. This year’s edition follows five writers who took very different paths to their first books.

We’ll talk about why those books caught India’s attention, what editors in general notice when deciding which emerging voices to spotlight, and how new writers can attract the attention of literary publications. We’ll also talk about the magazine’s popular “5 Over 50” series, and what it reveals about breaking through later in life.

Since this is a live Q&A, you’ll have the chance to ask India your own questions. Bring good ones!

Wednesday, September 16
1:00 p.m. ET
Live and exclusively for paid Author Insider members

Paid and founding members can register for the live Q&A on the Author Insider Events Calendar.

With a full-time job, three kids, and six pets, I’ve never been able to pull off a daily writing routine. Instead, I write on weekends and the occasional free evening but, most of all, while on vacation (ruining the whole take-it-easy ethos of a vacation, but you have to find time somewhere).

Then a few years ago, a writer-friend to whom I’d been complaining about not getting enough writing done challenged me to write every single day for a month. “Just get up early every morning and write for fifteen minutes.”

It seemed worth a shot. So I did it.

Annnnnd it sucked. I was ridiculously groggy and just wanted to go back to sleep. Worse, I knew that there was no more sleep coming my way, because any minute I’d have to get my kids ready for school, and the whole machinery of the day would kick into gear.

So I shelved the idea of a daily writing habit until recently, when I interviewed Ryan Hawk about his new book, The Price of Becoming. Ryan is the host of The Learning Leader Show, one of the world’s most popular business podcasts, where he’s spent the past decade interviewing hundreds of leaders, entrepreneurs, athletes, and thinkers about what separates good from great. In The Price of Becoming, he distills those conversations, along with his own experience, into a practical guide to sustained high performance.

In his Author Questionnaire, Ryan explains that he woke up early and wrote every morning for 200 consecutive days. Not only is that a wildly impressive feat, it also reflects the central argument of his book: excellence isn’t built through occasional bursts of inspiration but through thousands of small, consistent actions.

While I'm still allergic to 5:30 a.m. writing sessions, I have to admit that he makes a compelling case.

In today's Author Questionnaire, Ryan discusses the books that shaped him, the habits that sustain him, and what he's learned after interviewing hundreds of high performers.

21 Questions with Ryan Hawk

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

Getting up early and writing every morning for 200 consecutive days.

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

The great ones make it look easy. It’s not.

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

Looking at my phone: Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Sometimes. I like to see which parts of my books (or my podcast) are resonating most with people. But my dad told me many years ago: “If you do anything of significance, people will write and talk about you. Don’t get too high from their praise or too low from their criticism. Keep working.” That’s helpful to remember.

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

Send it to my research assistant.

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

Marry: My podcast, The Learning Leader Show, is my full-time job and my favorite thing to do. I’ve been interviewing leaders and go-getters for over 10 years.

Kiss: Speaking. I love getting up on stages and sharing my message with others— it’s exciting and always a little bit different.

Kill: Nothing! I love newsletters too. Both the one I write every week, Mindful Monday, and the ones I read.

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

I write emails to myself on my phone. Some of those stories have made it into my books with very little editing.

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

I go on walks. Sometimes with my wife. Sometimes with just my dog. We live near a beautiful park, and it’s helpful for me to be out in nature. I regularly stop and write in the notes app on my phone, or I write an email to myself.

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

Do what you say you’re gonna do. Follow through. Follow up.

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Morgan Housel and James Clear. Great family men. Incredible writers/thinkers/speakers, and they are genuinely kind and generous people.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

A cup of water.

12. How did you find your agent?

Dave Moldawer has helped a lot of my friends with their proposals over the years. I originally hired him to help me with that. We finished the proposal right as he was becoming a book agent with Writers House. It seemed like a natural fit for him to represent me (he knew the book better than anyone). For my first three books (Welcome to Management, The Pursuit of Excellence, The Score That Matters), I worked with Jim Levine. I got introduced to him by friends/authors who had been on my podcast. He was great, too.

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

What are the writing rules?

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

I work with Claude and ChatGPT. Don’t use the others that much.

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

I grew up playing sports. Went to college on a football scholarship. I learned discipline, consistency, preparation, how to bounce back from losing… So much learning from football. That’s helped me a lot as a writer.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Six or seven.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Wake up at 4:30 am. Stretch. Hydrate. Write for 90 minutes. Lift weights at the gym. Run. Read on the elliptical to cool down. Go on a walk with my wife. Have breakfast with my kids. Put my youngest daughter, Charlie, on the bus. Go to my studio. Record a podcast with a leader who’s putting a positive dent in the world. Have lunch with my wife. Meet with my leadership circle in the afternoon. Get Charlie off the bus at 3:58. Go to the pool/swim with family & friends. Go on a walk with my wife after dinner.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

I try to do it as much as possible. But sometimes I travel for a speaking gig, or our team is working with our clients in person.

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

Probably about sports or movies. I love The Rewatchables. It’s a podcast where Bill Simmons and his co-hosts watch movies and deconstruct them. It’d be fun to do something like that

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

It’s still really hard to write good stuff. And the great ones make it look easy. But I think it’s hard for them too… At least that’s what they tell me.

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

Writing every day.

21. What is your new book about?

The Price of Becoming is about the compounding practices of high performance. It will help you go to bed a little bit better than you were when you woke up.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Ryan’s book here: The Price of Becoming

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• Video Replay: Why the Reader Is the Hero of Your Nonfiction Book

• What Fatherhood Does to the Brain: 21 Questions with Psychologist Darby Saxbe

• Video Replay: The Myth of the Perfect Writing Routine

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

I dread being on camera. It’s hardly a shocking confession: most writers I know find the experience awkward and embarrassing. And yet, like it or not, being in front of a camera is pretty much unavoidable these days. Whether it’s podcasts, Substack Lives, virtual events, social media, or (rare, but it happens) TV appearances, a basic degree of on-camera skill has become essential for authors.

Unfortunately, most of us were never actually taught how to do it well. Case in point: the last Instagram video I shot took me 22 takes, and when I watched the final version, I ran out of the room clawing at my eyes like Oedipus.

So when the chance came up to interview Kim Rittberg, an award-winning video expert, media coach, and former executive producer at Netflix, People, and Us Weekly, of course I jumped at it.

Kim has spent years helping professionals communicate more clearly and confidently on video, combining deep media experience with practical coaching around presence, messaging, and storytelling. For authors, that means learning how to talk about your work in a way that feels both natural and persuasive, not to mention distinctly your own.

During our lively conversation, we covered a number of topics, including:

• How to sound prepared without sounding rehearsed

• Why to use bullet points instead of a teleprompter

• The difference between “supermodel mode” and “teacher mode”

• How to bring “dinner party energy” to an interview or video

• How to create stronger sound bites for podcasts and social media

• Kim’s four-step routine for calming yourself immediately before recording

Paid and founding members can watch the full conversation and read the edited transcript below:

Read more

When I was in college in the ‘90s, we didn't use the word performative yet, at least not outside of philosophy seminars. Still, that didn’t keep students from performing plenty of intellectual theater. The preferred prop was a copy of Derrida or Foucault tucked under your arm (occasionally paired with a clove cigarette, because nothing says brilliance like puffing on a spice).

Emily Eakin's fascinating debut explains how we got there. A senior editor at The New York Times Book Review, she first fell headlong into the world of French theory as an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1980s. A blend of memoir, biography, and intellectual history, The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory, tells the story of how a small group of French philosophers came to wield such extraordinary influence over American campuses, and why their ideas still echo through our culture today.

In today’s Author Questionnaire, Emily talks about reading drafts to her dog, defending long sentences, and the one question every great nonfiction book is trying to answer.

21 Questions with Emily Eakin

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

The Rose Main Reading Room at The New York Public Library in Midtown Manhattan. It was impossible to step into the reading room and not feel inspired. For starters, there was the awesome scale and beauty of the space, stretching nearly two city blocks in length and 52 feet high, to a coffered ceiling inlaid with a mural of the heavens. To gaze up at the dazzling blue sky and pink-tinged clouds was to feel the sublime.

Then there were the dozens of other people just like me, spread out along the massive oak tables, heads bent over a book or a laptop, deep into their own research and writing projects.

Plus, the library turned out to have almost every book I needed, even the most obscure French tome.

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

Cleaning my desk, then my kitchen, then the entire house. I will literally scrub the walls and window sills before sitting down at my desk. External clutter is a reflection of internal chaos. Clean the house, clean the mind. At least that is what I tell myself.

3. Do you read your reviews?

Why not? I know it’s a brutal world out there.

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

Eat a piece of dark chocolate, 70 percent cocoa, minimum.

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

Reading work aloud. If it doesn’t sound good when I read it to the dog, I need to press delete and start again.

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

Meditating. The first sentence of my book came to me while sitting cross-legged and eyes closed on a zafu. If I had started meditating years ago, I might have written more books by now.

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

I read a lot of books for my job as an editor at a book review. Whenever I come across a promising idea, I jot it down on my phone and send myself a text.

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

According to my brilliant editor, Ann Godoff, every good nonfiction book is trying to answer this question: How to live?

9. And the worst?

“Write what you know.”

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

The novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar is a singular genius, endlessly inventive across mediums and genres, delivering books and plays that are at once playful, cerebral, demanding, and unlike anyone else’s. He entertains while making me think.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Galleys of The Radiance, the new novel by Ayad Akhtar, and The Black Shield, a memoir and work of investigative journalism by Wilbert L. Cooper; a reissue of Ordinary People, by Judith Guest; and copies of The Calamity Club, by Katherine Stockett; Language Machines, by Leif Weatherby; and The Children’s Bach, by Helen Garner.

12. How did you find your agent?

He found me.

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

Long sentences are invariably off-putting to a reader. Contrary to the advice of Gemini, Google’s AI writing assistant, concision is not always better; sometimes an extra beat of explanation, or even just for improved rhythm, is more effective than efficiency.

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

Teaching profile-writing to journalism students taught me the importance of structure. We broke down long-form magazine profiles and diagrammed their structures. Once you have your structure down, the rest really is typing.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

One. It takes me so long to get the words down on the page the way I want them to read that by the time I have a draft, I’m ready to share it.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

A latte, a Sumo Citrus mandarin, a walk to the river with the dog. At my desk by 10 am.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

If I meet two of these four goals, that is a good day.

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

I don’t know how to make anything up; if I did, I would write a novel satirizing journalism (my field) in the age of fake news.

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

How little you can know about what you will say before you start typing. To put this another way: How much thinking takes place through your fingers never ceases to amaze me.

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

Like tech billionaires today: A handful of names will dominate the best-seller lists and the profits, with everyone else vying for crumbs of attention and revenue in their wake.

21. What is your new book about?

Part memoir, part intellectual history, my book chronicles the lives and ideas of the French philosophers who dominated U.S. campuses—and my life—in the 1980s and 1990s.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Emily’s book here: The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• Video Replay: Why the Reader Is the Hero of Your Nonfiction Book

• What Fatherhood Does to the Brain: 21 Questions with Psychologist Darby Saxbe

• Video Replay: The Myth of the Perfect Writing Routine

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

Here’s the scene: You’re a journalist, a professor, or an expert in your field, and you’re writing a nonfiction book. As you work through the latest draft, you keep circling the same fundamental questions: Is my idea original enough? Have I done enough research? Is the structure working? Do I really have the expertise and credibility to write this?

Those are all important questions. But according to book coaches and editors Marisa Solis and Elizabeth Dougherty, coauthors of The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide: Plan, Write, and Publish Your Nonfiction Book, there’s another question that’s just as important, and too often goes unasked:

Who, exactly, is my reader?

After working on more than 600 nonfiction books, they’ve come to believe that many prescriptive nonfiction books go sideways because authors become so focused on what they want to say that they lose sight of who they’re saying it to.

An important caveat: this isn’t true of every kind of nonfiction. Memoir, biography, history, and narrative nonfiction ask something different of the reader. But for books that aim to teach, persuade, or transform, Marisa and Elizabeth argue that the reader isn’t simply the audience—they’re the hero of the story.

It’s a subtle mindset shift, but it has significant consequences. When you begin writing for a specific reader rather than simply about a topic, decisions about structure, voice, anecdotes, chapter organization, and even sentence-level choices become much clearer.

During our live Author Insider Q&A, we explored how this idea plays out in practice, from book proposals and beta readers to introductions, personal stories, and the surprisingly powerful role of empathy in nonfiction.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why the reader—not the author—is the hero of a nonfiction book

• The biggest mistake experts make when writing for a general audience

• How to know whether a personal story belongs in your manuscript

• Why your introduction shouldn’t be about your credentials

• How to use beta readers more effectively

• A simple test for spotting places where you’ve lost sight of your reader

• Why words like should, always, and never can weaken nonfiction

• How planning your manuscript before you write can save months of revision

• What surprised Elizabeth and Marisa most when they became authors themselves

I hope you enjoy the conversation. Thank you, as always, to everyone who joined us live and contributed such thoughtful questions.

For those who’d like to revisit specific sections, or search for a particular topic while working on your own manuscript, the full transcript is available below for paid and founding members.

Full Transcript (Members Only)

Read more

Elite runners know that going all out from the starting line is a great way to lose a race. Yet in the rest of our lives, many of us treat every project like an all-out sprint.

Award-winning science writer Elizabeth Svoboda argues that we’ve forgotten how to pace ourselves. In her new book, The Art of Pacing, she blends research, memoir, and conversations with athletes, psychologists, and entrepreneurs to explore how adjusting our tempo can help us do better work and build more sustainable lives.

In today’s Author Questionnaire, Elizabeth reflects on writing, ambition, and the unhelpful myth behind going 110 percent.

21 Questions with Elizabeth Svoboda

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

The keen and compassionate critical eye of my editor, Kimberly Meilun. After my first editor left her job, I was assigned to Kimberly, and it was the best lottery I ever won.

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

That when writers are churning out books, or getting nationally published, it means they’re making lots of money.

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

This is a little embarrassing, but playing old versions of Oregon Trail, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and other ’80s and ’90s games online. In the midst of global upheaval, these games beam me back to what felt like a simpler, more secure time.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes, but only intermittently. I refuse to get locked into a cycle of reloading Goodreads to scan for new feedback! (Not that I’ve ever done that. Ever.)

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

Collapse, then probably eat a bunch of gummy worms.

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

Before the publicity cycle for my book started, I would have said “kill” to podcasts. But as I had more and more conversations with podcast hosts, I realized how much fun I was actually having. The hosts have been so engaged and passionate that the shows feel like conversations with your favorite smarter-than-you friend.

Speaking gigs? Kiss—with lots of drama swirling around it, because I get stage jitters but do enjoy sharing talks I’ve worked hard on.

Newsletters are a natural marry, since I feel more comfortable with the written word than I do the spoken one.

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

Starting more conversations with amazing writers and artists. I was so intimidated, but I’ve found that when you do reach out, many are kind, hilarious, and supportive! Now I hope to meet more of my online friends in real life.

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

As a baby science writer, I used to mine press releases on newly published studies for ideas. Now, my ideas are much more likely to grow out of pressing questions I have or topics that obsess me. If I’m that drawn into a particular story or inquiry, I figure other people will be too.

I’m not all that good at keeping track of things in general. I do have a bunch of folders in the bookmarks toolbar of my browser, but I spend a lot more time bookmarking interesting sites than actually going back to them.

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

“Write about what you love.”

I know we get told that from grade school on, but so far it’s never steered me wrong.

10. And the worst?

A former Discover magazine editor told me, when my internship ended, that I should look for a job with a small local newspaper covering things like the crime beat. It was tempting to take this person seriously at the time, but I’m glad I didn’t listen.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers.

12. How did you find your agent?

She found me after reading a New York Times article I’d written about mental skills training for athletes, and our discussions later became the framework for The Art of Pacing.

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

The Strunk and White injunction never to use “the fact that.”

The fact is that sometimes that phrase is useful!

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

Otter is invaluable for transcribing audio recordings of interviews—it has saved me hundreds of hours of time and effort.

However, I refuse to allow any AI tool to write stories or other content for me.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

I can’t really boil it down to a number because I’m such a chaotic drafter. I tend to edit and revise as I write rather than moving from one finished draft to the next.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Rise early and take public transit to a new destination, preferably one with lots of coffee shops (that have outlets for my laptop). Then get into writing flow for at least a couple of good long stints, punctuated by breaks to walk around, explore, and eat.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

In practice, I tend to do my first couple of hours of work in my pajamas: catching up on emails, scrolling my feeds, preparing for any interviews that day, brainstorming, etc.

By the time I break to get presentable for the day, I often have a meeting or phone call coming up, so I may not get to leave the house until much later than I’d hoped!

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

Middle-grade or YA fiction, for sure. Books make such an impact on readers at that stage of life—I know they did for me.

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

How writing never gets any easier—and that, in fact, it often feels harder the more experienced you get.

I guess it’s because, as you gain knowledge, you gain awareness of the many ways a story can ring hollow or false.

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

The ones who lean unapologetically into their humanity, instead of leaning on ChatGPT to boost their efficiency.

21. What is your new book about?

The Art of Pacing is about how to pace yourself more thoughtfully and sustainably in a variety of contexts: at work, in community ventures, on creative projects, and more.

There’s so much surface-level cultural messaging out there about pacing: we often get told to “go 110 percent” without respite, and if that fails, to withdraw or “quiet quit.” My book explores how to navigate the entire pacing spectrum in more incremental ways that support long-term, engaged contribution.

Leave a comment

You can learn more about Elizabeth’s new book here: The Art of Pacing: A Guide to Balancing Short-Term Demands with Long-Term Thriving

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• Video Replay: What Is Hybrid Publishing, Really?

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

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

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

I hate being in cold water. I have never once been the first person to jump into a swimming pool. In fact, when I’m at the beach, I enter the ocean with such slow, exaggerated, wincing steps that Mr. Bean would roll his bulging eyes and say that I’m overdoing it. And God forbid the temperature of my shower briefly dips below warm—cue the shrieks of agony and betrayal. The prospect of willingly immersing my body in freezing water has never made any sense to me.

Yet there is a subset of people who love being in cold water. Longtime Sports Illustrated writer Chris Ballard has written a fascinating book about them. In The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water, Chris goes on a three-year journey through the science, history, and community behind this obsession. And though Chris started out as a skeptic, he eventually became such a fan of plunging that he competed in the Ice Swimming World Championships.

In today’s Author Questionnaire, Chris reflects on writing, reporting, and the art of noticing.

21 Questions with Chris Ballard

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

Tilden Park, 2,000 acres of hills and trails near Berkeley. Whenever I got stuck, I’d head up for a hike with our dogs and record voice memos as I went. During editing, I’d bring a backpacking chair, printed-out chapters, and a mug of coffee.

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

That it’s like knitting: you just sit down and do it. Usually, it’s a symphony of false starts, unnecessary tangents, terrible metaphors, and creative procrastination. All writing, as they say, is rewriting.

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

Cleaning the house.

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

Go far away from a computer. Hike, swim, grab a beer with friends. That window of writerly accomplishment is fleeting; you need to maximize it before the internal editor kicks back in and starts nagging you.

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

Starting at the start. I have friends who write the end of their stories first or can begin work on a book with, say, Chapter 5. Not me. Until I have the beginning—whether a lead on a magazine story or the first chapter of a book—the rest doesn’t come, for better or worse.

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

Investing in Nvidia?

Realistically, swimming. I’ve spent my life pounding my joints into submission—basketball, more basketball, half-marathons, tennis. Swimming has allowed me to exercise more, and enjoy it more, without all the injuries. It’s also a wonderfully meditative activity.

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

An old professor of mine had an exercise that I stole and used with my students at the Cal J-School.

Make three columns on a piece of paper. Title one Love, one Hate, and one Fear. Now, free associate and list as many things as you can in each column. Don’t worry about quality. You might love ice cream and your dad. You might hate racism and the Pittsburgh Steelers. You might fear solitude and AI.

The point was that everything on those lists elicits an emotion in you. And if you’re passionate about it, you’re more likely to report the heck out of it, which makes all the difference.

If something appears on two lists—say, you both love and fear your dad—well, then you’ve already got the bedrock of all narrative: conflict.

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

“Do the thing that makes you wake up every morning wanting to do that thing.”

That came from S.L. Price, an author friend and colleague at Sports Illustrated. That really matters with a book idea: Is this a topic you’re excited to wake up to every day for the next three or more years?

9. And the worst?

Anything involving the word “content.”

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Michael Lewis. He parachutes into these arcane worlds, learns about them, then emerges and explains them to the rest of us through seemingly effortless storytelling.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Art Thief, by Michael Finkel.

Sometimes a book works not because of what the writer puts in but because of what they leave out. Finkel tells the whole story in 200 pages when it easily could have been 400.

12. How did you find your agent?

The recommendation of a friend.

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

Don’t start a sentence with “And.”

Of course, I do it way too much. Thank goodness for editors.

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

Reporting: iPhone Voice Memos, TapeACall, Rev (for transcription), and Pilot G-2 gel pens, which aren’t tech at all but to which I’m devoted.

Writing: Scrivener.

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

Noticing stuff.

While reporting, I spend a lot of time thinking, “How would I describe this person to someone else in two sentences or less?” Ideally, you’re finding one or two details that help tell a larger story.

For example, I once wrote a magazine story about professional game show contestants and, during lunch with a subject, he ordered milk and drank it with a straw. Immediately, I knew that had to go in the story.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

For my actual editor, probably dozens.

Prior to that, I send it to a handful of very gracious, very patient friends whom I trust to be honest and, if necessary, ruthless.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Up with the sun, coffee, quick hot tub and cold plunge, hike with a friend and/or our dogs, three hours of work, exercise, lunch, four hours of work, dinner with the family.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

If I’m lucky, that is my actual workday. Most of the time, that flow is interrupted by real-life obligations.

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

Reported fiction like Michael Crichton.

Take an interesting idea, weave a rollicking narrative around it, and, if you’re missing a fact, just invent one.

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

The writing itself never gets easier, no matter how long you’ve been doing it.

John Irving put it best: “The wonderful and terrifying thing about the first page of paper that awaits the first sentence of your next book is that this clean piece of paper is completely unimpressed by your reputation, or lack thereof…”

21. What is your new book about?

Essentially, it’s Born to Run for cold water.

I started out skeptical of cold plunges and all the hype surrounding them. Then, while reporting this book, one thing led to another, and I somehow ended up on the U.S. National Team, competing at the Ice Swimming World Championships in Italy alongside actual Olympians.

Along the way, I traveled across the globe, interviewed scientists, psychologists, and endurance athletes, and explored why so many people are drawn to deliberate discomfort in an age built around comfort and convenience.

The book is partly an adventure story, partly a deep dive into the science of cold, and partly an attempt to answer a larger question: What happens when we choose to do hard things?

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

I’d love to hear about authors’ favorite places to work outside the home that aren’t coffee shops.

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Chris’s Q&A, you can learn more about his new book here: The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, an Unlikely Quest, and the Transformative Power of Cold Water

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• How to Stay Creative in a World That Won’t Stop Distracting You: 9 Takeaways from My Conversation with Austin Kleon

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

• How Pain Becomes a Book: 21 Questions with Darcy Steinke

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

Before founding Zynga, Mark Pincus had already started multiple companies. But it was Zynga—the creator of FarmVille, Words with Friends, and other social gaming hits—that made him one of Silicon Valley’s best-known entrepreneurs. His new book, Life at the Speed of Play, distills decades of product-building into a practical framework for turning ideas into products people actually love.

In this installment of 21 Questions, Mark talks about procrastination, AI, and the lessons that only failure seems willing to teach.

21 Questions with Mark Pincus

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

Thirty years of learning and pattern recognition. Most of the lessons were hard-won and were burned into me over my entire career as an entrepreneur, but pretty much all of them were proven or reiterated while building Zynga. Hyperscaling a company—having to grow a company in four years to one billion users and $1 billion in revenue—forces you to learn really fast and doesn’t give you a lot of room to be wrong.

Other lessons, like separating your winning instincts from your losing ideas (which I write about in the book), were burned into me through failures, like the company I founded, Tribe Networks, and other projects. Still other lessons came from individuals. My father taught me to “be a CEO” and to “control my destiny.” Cadir Lee taught me how to understand technology, software, and engineers, and along with Colleen McCreary, taught me how to motivate teams. Coaches like Fred Wilson, Bing Gordon, and Bill Campbell taught me how to believe in and bet on myself—and how to scale.

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

Writing a book is the ultimate long-form medium. It’s about unapologetically telling something in your own voice and going deep on your stories, without worrying about perfect editing, wording, or how much airtime you’re taking up.

One surprising lesson I learned was that the more fun I had talking about—and then writing about—something, the more fun it was going to be to read.

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

I have what I call a “lazy on-ramp to curiosity.” I am a deeply curious person, but I have extreme ADHD, and I procrastinate about getting started. I need something that forces me to focus—a catalyst—but once I get into it, I’m deep in it.

Katie, my chief of staff, would add, “There is no better example than chapter four, roadmapping. Our coauthor, Carlye, and I forced Mark to sit down and write it one Tuesday under threat of a deadline the next day. He shocked us all and typed it out in one sitting!”

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes. I solicited early feedback and received incredible direction from friends and fellow founders. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup (and now Incorruptible), told me to go deeper on my stories. Fred Wilson was also most interested in the stories. My best friend, Gary Leff, read the book four times and seemed to know my voice better than I did.

Mostly, I like to read reactions on X, where I can reply to what people say because I like to be part of the conversation.

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

Marry podcasts. I love long-form podcasts, both being on them and listening to them.

I’d kiss speaking gigs—but only if they’re informal conversations with multiple people.

Kill newsletters. I never read them.

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

I write in a journal I call the Book of Life in the exact same way every year, both the timing and the process. I always have to do it the same way I did when I started in 1994.

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

There are so many! I wish I had learned music and to play guitar. I write in the book that I regret not dedicating one of my “lost years” to it because I’d still be playing today and thanking my past self.

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

I get ideas as I wander through the world. I don’t keep track of them—the good ones come to the surface.

The best ideas keep coming back, almost to haunt me. Over time, I’ve learned that when that happens, there’s an instinct driving it that’s usually right.

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

The best professional advice I’ve gotten came from Bing Gordon, who was channeling Jeff Bezos, whom he worked with on the Amazon board.

The advice was consistently inspiring, and there were so many facets of it. I immediately acted on whatever Bing told me: never have one-on-ones, train your own “tech assistants” (people who can channel you when you’re not in the room), and remember that it’s more important to be right than to be liked.

10. And the worst?

The worst advice I got came from my VC board members at Support.com and Tribe. In both cases, they wanted me to hire a “scalable CEO.”

Every time I’ve been told to hire a scalable CEO, it’s been the worst advice imaginable. It created a death—or near-death—experience for my company.

11. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Elon, by far, because he’s done it all. He embodies the full definition of a founder: someone who looks for the biggest problems in the world and attacks them within the bounds of physics (and maybe capital).

He’s willing to sacrifice everything—from his ego to his capital to his sleep—in service of his ideas. When everyone is betting against him, he stays calm, convicted, and deep in the details rather than focusing on pleasing investors. And he’s been right.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

About five Dragon Masters books that we’re reading to our four-year-old, Enzo, plus a milk bottle and pacifier for our baby, Chia.

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

I learned through writing this book that I enjoy imperfections. I don’t care if I use bad grammar if it’s the way I naturally communicate.

My favorite example is that I like referring to people by their first names, like Elon or Reid. It was a constant battle with my editors, but I enjoyed saying, “I don’t care.”

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

GPT and Claude are amazing brainstorming partners. I have active conversations with them while I walk around. I have agents work on ideas for me overnight, researching different ideas and playing out debates.

I actively ignore vibe-coding tools. I tried some, like Claude Code, and didn’t think they were ready for prime time.

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

For me, talking rather than writing first was the most helpful way to get ideas onto the page.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

My co-author, Carlye, would say tens—or even a hundred! It took a couple of years of drafts before we both thought the content was good enough to show our editor.

In the end, we cut 80 percent of what we wrote.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

My ideal workday is one that doesn’t feel like work—it feels like play.

It has zero minutes of managing people, because I think every day you manage is a day of work. The bulk of it would be spent with amazingly creative, productive product teams iterating on live ideas in front of users.

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

I really want to write a Black Mirror episode – I have an idea about a society where people from the past are born into a distant future.

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

How long it took to write something good—and how hard and introspective the process was.

At times, it really felt like therapy.

20. What is your new book about?

Life at the Speed of Play is about the product mindset—a playbook for how to approach life and how to build winning products. It’s a guide for anyone with an idea they want to bring to life.

It will massively improve your odds of success because it reduces the likelihood that you’ll fail for the wrong reasons. The book goes deep on the strategies I’ve used to rapidly iterate, test, and build products, as well as how to manage and scale a company once you achieve product-market fit.

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

I’m excited to be part of this broader ongoing conversation around writing, and I’m curious about how writers get better at the craft of product-making.

What’s the last idea you built? What did you learn?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Mark’s Q&A, you can learn more about his new book here: Life at the Speed of Play.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• From Unknown to Bestseller: Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’ Revolution

• 10 Provocations from Seth Godin That Every Writer Needs to Hear

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Launching Your Book

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

For decades, conversations about parenting have focused primarily on mothers. But according to psychologist Darby Saxbe, we’ve been overlooking one of the most interesting transformations in family life: what happens when men become fathers.

A professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, Saxbe has spent more than twenty years studying how relationships shape our brains, bodies, and behavior. In her new book, Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives, she draws on research from around the world to explore a deceptively simple idea: Great fathers are made, not born.

The book argues that fatherhood is less an instinct than a process. Time spent caring for children can reshape men’s brains, alter their hormones, strengthen family bonds, and even influence long-term health. Along the way, Saxbe challenges long-held assumptions about gender, parenting, and what fathers are capable of becoming.

In this installment of 21 Questions, Saxbe discusses academic writing, internet procrastination, and why she’d happily trade psychology for a locked-room murder mystery (at least for one book).

21 Questions with Darby Saxbe

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

Plenty of help, starting with my own dad.

I got interested in fatherhood because of my own dad’s transformation during my childhood. He went from a typical checked-out 1980s dad to a hands-on primary parent after my parents got divorced. But I didn’t actually get to conduct the fatherhood research in my book until I got the support of my university and external grant funders, who gave me the space and resources to collect my data. My graduate students led many of the projects described in the book.

When it came to writing the actual book, I wouldn’t have finished a single chapter without the support of my husband and kids. I spent about a year being even more distracted and preoccupied than usual, and they tolerated my absences with good humor.

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

People think writers can naturally put elegant sentences together and write succinct, compelling prose right off the bat. They should see my shaggy, incoherent drafts, which are full of sentences like “WRITE CONCLUSION” and “Say something funny here.” The work of writing is really in the editing.

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

Snacking is probably number one. Surfing the internet is a close second. Unfortunately, that second habit means I get sucked into arguing about politics and culture online far too frequently. I’ve had some very stern talks with myself about this behavior because I often end up in circular arguments that leave everyone frustrated.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Definitely! I’m not made of stone.

Getting ready to release a book is a little bit like having a new baby and then asking everyone to rate its cuteness. On the one hand, I’m desperate for people to see and admire my new baby. On the other hand, I’m incredibly protective of it and sensitive to any critique.

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

Walk around the block.

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

I’m going to sound like an overachiever because I actually like all three.

I’ll marry newsletters because I’ve gotten a lot out of writing regularly on Substack this past year. It’s been a fun escape from my usual academic writing, and I’ve been able to connect with other writers on the platform. It’s time-consuming, but I find it rewarding.

I’ll kiss speaking gigs because I like getting paid to talk about my work, travel, and meet new people.

I will reluctantly kill podcasts. I enjoy doing podcasts when the host is smart and well prepared, but it can be a grind when the host clearly hasn’t read your work and asks the same generic questions you’ve gotten a dozen times.

I’ve also heard that podcasts can sometimes cannibalize a book’s success because listeners get the gist of a book and feel they don’t need to buy it. I worry about that occasionally when I’m talking about my own book. I don’t want to give all the interesting parts away.

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

Probably started a Substack. I’d have so many more subscribers than I do now! Also, I should have gotten a message to Biden telling him not to run for reelection after his first term.

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

My best ideas pop up when I’m away from my computer—on a walk, at the gym, lying in bed in the middle of the night, or in the shower.

I have a giant Word document saved on my desktop that contains about a decade’s worth of ideas. Most are bad, but every so often I stumble onto a good one.

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

I asked my graduate school mentor when would be the best time to have kids. She said, “You can’t really optimize that. You just have to do it, and you’ll make it work.” She was right.

10. Whose career do you most admire and why?

Sarah Hrdy, the anthropologist who wrote Mother Nature, Mothers and Others, and, most recently, Father Time. She had a serious academic career, but she has also written engaging books that translate her ideas for the public. And in her spare time, she manages an operational walnut farm.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

An alarm clock with a very annoying beep and a toppling stack of books that I’m slowly working my way through, including Elizabeth Preston’s A Creature’s Guide to Caring, Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Lena Dunham’s Famesick, Angela Garbes’s Essential Labor, and Tana French’s The Keeper.

12. How did you find your agent?

I got lucky: One of the graduate students in my lab got engaged partway through graduate school, and her fiancé (now husband) had recently started his career as a literary agent. I mentioned in a lab meeting that I was working on a book idea. She connected us for an informational call, and he introduced me to one of his colleagues. The two of them ended up representing me together.

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

Don’t take your laptop to the beach or the pool. I’ve done both.

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

I don’t use AI for writing, because writing is how I think and solve problems. I often find that I don’t really understand a concept until I’ve explained it in writing. I worry that a shortcut would also short-circuit my thinking.

I also don’t use AI for research, because I’d rather go straight to primary sources.

But now that I’m in book-promotion mode and trying to be more active on social media, I’ve been using it to help design carousels and write scripts for reels that translate ideas from the book. It’s good at summarizing a lot of information concisely. It’s also very handy for writing code for statistical analysis.

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

Being a mom has taught me how to work more efficiently and take the long view. I don’t know if I would have had the persistence to write a whole book if I hadn’t survived parenting during a pandemic, stealing little chunks of the day whenever I could be productive. It taught me not to overthink and to take advantage of small windows of opportunity.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

I love writing in coffee shops, and I also like working outside on nice days. I’m fortunate to live in Los Angeles, where there are plenty of cafés with outdoor seating.

On an ideal workday, I’d get to an exercise class in the morning, make it all the way through my inbox in an hour, and then camp out at a café with a shaded patio where I could enjoy a tasty lunch, a tall iced coffee, and an uninterrupted block of writing time.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

During the academic year, I might get one or two of those glorious café days a week. The rest of the time I’m on campus or in Zoom meetings. My summer schedule loosens up a bit and gives me more flexibility. The problem is that then it’s too hot to work outside.

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

I love classic locked-room murder mysteries in the Agatha Christie vein and have long dreamed of writing a detective novel. Murder in the Laboratory? Murder in the MRI Suite?

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

When I’m not writing, I feel antsy to get back to it and eager to find more writing time. But as soon as I have a nice big block of writing time, I immediately fritter some of it away surfing the internet. The minute I sit down to write, I want to be doing absolutely anything else. Over the years, I’ve figured out how to work through that resistance and fight my tendency to procrastinate.

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

I’d like to fill in the blank with the word human. In fact, I expect we’ll treasure our humanness more than ever in the age of frighteningly competent AI. But I’m not sure I can fill in that blank with total confidence. It’s too soon to say.

21. What is your next book about?

I’ve been working on a book called Underparenting for the last few years. It’s about how to make parenting less stressful by challenging the assumptions behind intensive parenting and examining how culture and the built environment contribute to parental anxiety.

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Darby’s Q&A, you can learn more about her new book here: Dad Brain: The New Science of Fatherhood and How It Shapes Men’s Lives.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• From Unknown to Bestseller: Susan Cain’s ‘Quiet’ Revolution

• 10 Provocations from Seth Godin That Every Writer Needs to Hear

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Launching Your Book

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

Brad Gooch is a poet, novelist, memoirist, and biographer whose subjects have ranged from Keith Haring and Flannery O’Connor to Frank O’Hara and the spiritual landscape of America itself.

His newest book, Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family, turns the lens inward. Part memoir and part family story, it traces an unexpected journey from the downtown New York of the 1970s and ’80s to marriage, parenthood, and family life in the 2020s, a transformation that sometimes leaves even the author wondering, “How did I get here?”

In this edition of 21 Questions, Gooch reflects on memoir, biography, literary obsessions, and the surprises that can emerge over the course of a writing life.

21 Questions with Brad Gooch

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

Living in the 1980s East Village a few degrees of separation away from Keith Haring, the biographical subject of Radiant. (Well, I could have written it but from another p.o.v.)

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

That you can do it anywhere. “Bring your laptop and finish your book here. We’re having a house party. We’ll set you up on the outdoor deck with a cold drink and let you be.”

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

Instagram.

4. Do you read your reviews?

I skim them. If I come across some warm adjectives, I go back and read more closely.

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

Draft of what? For me, unfortunately, every sentence is a draft. I’m a major tinkerer. Word processing has only slowed me down as it’s easier to try out even more variations.

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

I get flak for not listening to podcasts. They’re like radio, right? I still don’t know where to find them. And I can’t think of a single newsletter. Since speaking gigs have turned mostly into live onstage conversations, I’m much happier. I used to treat them as one-act, one-person standup monologues rewritten for each event. It’s nicer to have a partner—hopefully a lively, wordy one—up there on stage blowing in the wind along with you.

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

I prefer writing paragraphs as perfect boxes with no spillover of words into a widow word or phrase onto an extra line. If I add a few new words in the text, creating an untidy last line, I feel a need to rewrite other parts until the perfect box is restored. I don’t carry this mania over into the publishing, so only an alert editor might detect my psychosis.

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

Recording on Voice Memo on my iPhone rather than on my 1980s-style Sony cassette recorder, which is nicely retro but clunky, and its cassettes are more difficult to restock.

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

I try not to find new ideas but to stick to old ideas, at least for biographies. I rely on hunches I’ve had for a subject for at least a decade and have kept coming back to—Frank O’Hara; Flannery O’Connor; Keith Haring. Biographies are so time and labor-intensive that you don’t want to discover midway that you’re bored or repelled by your choice.

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

When I was at Columbia College and upset by not receiving a writing prize whose name I have forgotten, my “Imaginative Writing” instructor, the poet Kenneth Koch, said to me, with his murmur of a stammer, “M-M-Mister Gooch, you rely too much on authority.”

11. And the worst?

When I was a nascent writer with no agent, a friend offered to show some of my writing to a friend of his, a well-known literary agent. She advised me to read more Henry James.

12. What’s on your nightstand right now?

When All the Men Wore Hats, Susan Cheever; City Boy, Edmund White; The School of Night, Karl Ove Knausgaard; New York City’s Best Public Schools and The Manhattan Guide to Private Schools and Selective Public Schools.

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

Only write a memoir if you’re a celebrity.

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

Perhaps the original AI tool was the Thesaurus. If I’m worrying over a dull word or a repetitious word, I no longer stop myself from checking an online Merriam-Webster or WordHippo. Yet most often, the word I finally land on appears on none of their lists of dozens of synonyms. In my experience, lots of AI tools are likewise iffy buzzkills.

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

Introversion.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

My ideal day would be keeping banker’s hours, 9 am to 3 pm, writing in a cork-lined studio.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Pretty closely. My writing studio is not cork-lined but it’s quiet and off-site, a two-block walk from my home. Two days a week I do escape to a trainer at a gym six blocks away.

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

A book for a musical by Stephen Sondheim.

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

I’m always surprised—at book signings or teaching a writing seminar—how many young people still aspire to be writers.

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

Unable to stop writing.

21. What is your new book about?

It’s a memoir about a gay guy from the 1970s (me) who wakes up in the 2020s to find that he is married (to a man) and has two young kids. Often, above my head, hovers the thought balloon, “How did I get here?” This book attempts to answer that question.

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Brad’s Q&A, you can learn more about his new book here: Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• How to Stay Creative in a World That Won’t Stop Distracting You: Q&A with Austin Kleon

• Somehow, This is Working: 21 Questions with Jenny Lawson a.k.a The Bloggess

• The New Rules of Book Publicity

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

That’s why I’m excited to welcome Ari Gersen, owner of Longfellow Books in Portland, Maine, for an upcoming Author Insider Q&A.

Join us on Wednesday, June 24th, at 1 p.m. ET.

Longfellow Books has been serving Portland’s literary community for nearly 25 years, and Ari has had a front-row seat to the way readers browse, buy, recommend, and fall in love with books.

Personally, I’ve known Ari since the late ’90s when we both landed our first jobs in publishing at Crown. I was in editorial, he was in publicity, and we’ve been friends ever since.

We’ll talk about what makes readers pick up one book and pass over another, what booksellers notice that authors often miss, what makes an author event work, and whatever questions you bring to the conversation.

RSVP here → What Bookstores Can Teach Authors About Readers

I hope to see you there,
Panio

P.S. This is a paid-member event, so if you’d like to join us live, you’ll need an active paid or founding membership.

Upgrade my subscription

Coming Up Next

Thursday, June 18th at 4 p.m. ET
Why the Reader Is the Most Important Character in a Nonfiction Book

Why do so many smart, knowledgeable people struggle to write a nonfiction book they’re happy with? Elizabeth Dougherty and Marisa Solis—book coaches, editors, and coauthors of The Complete Expert-to-Author Guide—join me to discuss a simple but powerful idea: the reader isn’t just your audience—it’s the most important character in your book.

RSVP here → Your Book Has a Main Character. It’s Probably Not You.

Subscribe now

And yet, the longer I’ve worked with authors, the more I’ve come to believe that writing and fitness have a lot in common. Both pursuits force us to wrestle with the same questions: How do you stay consistent when life keeps interrupting your plans? How do you keep going when motivation disappears? How do you avoid letting perfectionism become an excuse for inaction?

Those questions are at the heart of Steve Kamb’s work. Steve is the founder of Nerd Fitness and the author of the upcoming book How to Try Again: An Approachable Guide to Navigating Chaos and Making Change That Sticks. While much of his career has focused on health and fitness, the deeper subject has always been behavior change: how we follow through on difficult things, recover from setbacks, and avoid becoming our own worst enemies.

Which is why my recent Author Insider conversation with Steve proved remarkably relevant to writers. During our hour-long Q&A, we discussed a number of topics, including:

• Why most productivity advice breaks down for writers and creative people

• How to experiment with your writing routine instead of judging yourself for not having the “right” one

• Why all-or-nothing thinking so often turns into “all, then nothing”

• How to give your inner critic less voting power

• Why missing a day should be treated more like missing a shower than ruining your life

• How procrastination can sometimes be useful information

For those of you who couldn’t attend live, I’ve included the video replay in this post. I’ll also share the full transcript soon for those who’d like to revisit specific sections or reference Steve’s advice in more detail.

I hope you enjoy our conversation and find something useful in it, whether you’re working on a proposal, drafting a book, trying to revive a creative routine, or simply attempting to be a little less brutal to yourself along the way.

Here’s a link if you’d like to learn more about Steve’s new book, How to Try Again.

Thank you, as always, to everyone who joined live and contributed such thoughtful questions.

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• How to Stay Creative in a World That Won’t Stop Distracting You: Q&A with Austin Kleon

• Somehow, This is Working: 21 Questions with Jenny Lawson a.k.a The Bloggess

• The New Rules of Book Publicity

Millions of people know Eva zu Beck as a YouTube adventurer and National Geographic TV host who documents life far beyond the beaten path. But seven years ago, she was living a very different life, one that looked successful from the outside but felt increasingly wrong on the inside.

Her new memoir, The Wilder Way, traces the journey that followed. From solo horseback riding in Mongolia to getting stuck on an island in Yemen during the COVID lockdown, the book chronicles a decade of adventures, and the personal transformation that accompanied them.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Eva reflects on freedom, focus, and why waiting until you’re ready may be the worst advice of all.

21 Questions with Eva zu Beck

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

Running off to the Arctic Circle in the winter to tear myself away from all distractions, human and otherwise. I needed total silence and singular focus (and little reason to go outside) in order to actually write this book.

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

Playing with my dog. Scrolling. Reading other people’s books.

3. Do you read your reviews?

Absolutely not. I’m at peace with the fact that not everyone will like me or my work, but I also don’t want to spend my precious mental resources obsessing over what people think of me. Besides… even the absolute best books ever written have one-star reviews!

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

Go for a very, very long run.

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

I never write in blue ink. If I’m writing something—anything—by hand, it needs to be in black ink. Always. Blue ink makes me feel like I’m writing a draft, while black ink makes me feel like I’m writing something of substance.

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

Dedicating more time every day to being bored and letting my thoughts wander.

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

I love going for long nature walks and trail runs. Good ideas tend to pop into my head whenever I’m outside, and I’ll capture them via long, rambling voice notes.

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

Once upon a time, I was very concerned with what people on the internet thought about me, and a single negative comment could send me into a spiral of self-doubt. That’s when a friend told me that I need to actively choose to focus on the creative energy I put out into the world, as opposed to absorbing the negativity.

9. And the worst?

“Wait until you’re ready.” This is terrible advice, because you may never feel ready, and you may always feel like an impostor. Some of my biggest achievements have come from saying “yes” to projects that I did not feel ready for in the slightest. The beauty of life is, whenever you take on something new, you learn and grow as you go along.

10. What’s on your nightstand right now?

About ten books, my phone (sadly), and all kinds of natural oil concoctions for my body, face, and hair. Living in a shepherd’s hut in the mountains, you need to find little ways to take care of yourself!

11. How did you find your agent?

They noticed my work on social media and reached out to me, suggesting I should write a book about my adventures!

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

I always thought that books should be written in a linear way: you start at the beginning. When I sat down to write my memoir, starting at the beginning felt too overwhelming, so I simply started in the middle and eventually returned to write the first chapters later on.

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

Most of my first book took shape in Google Docs, which made reviewing and commenting quite easy for my editor and me. I also used online tools to transcribe my voice note into actual written content. As for tools I would not use—that would have to be AI tools like ChatGPT. I just believe that Large Language Models do not have a place in human writing.

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

My delusional optimism: a skill I’ve been cultivating for years, like a muscle. It helps me believe that what I write about matters.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Probably two.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Sit down to write with a big cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Write for a few hours. Then, shut down the laptop and head out for a long walk or run with my dog. In the afternoon, work on my social media, read, recalibrate.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

My “main” job as a travel and adventure filmmaker means I’m often on the road, without any semblance of a routine. Every day looks different, and it’s hard to focus on any one thing for more than an hour at a time. This is why, when I wrote my first book, I escaped to the Arctic Circle for three months to get away from all those distractions. It worked well, so I’ll be doing something similar for my next book(s)!

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

I feel like I would first need to run out of real-world stories in order to even consider fiction writing.

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

Just how difficult it can be for the human brain to focus for a few hours at a time, and just how good it feels when you manage to achieve this state.

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

…able to prove somehow that their book was not written with the use of AI.

21. What is your new book about?

The Wilder Way is a book about freedom and living authentically, told through the prism of my travels and adventures over the last decade. From solo horseback riding in Mongolia to getting stuck on an island in Yemen during the COVID lockdown, this is a real journey into some of the world’s most remote cultures and places… And the story of how I became a more feral, free, true version of myself along the way.

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Eva’s Q&A, you can learn more about her new book here: The Wilder Way

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• How to Stay Creative in a World That Won’t Stop Distracting You: Q&A with Austin Kleon

• Somehow, This is Working: 21 Questions with Jenny Lawson a.k.a The Bloggess

• The New Rules of Book Publicity

Until next time,
Panio

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

Subscribe now

There's an unusual detail about this week's 21 Questions: our featured author is primarily a novelist. Aside from her first book, a memoir, she writes fiction (she publishes some of it, including her latest book, under a French pen name, Danielle Postel-Vinay).

Danielle’s career is impressive on many levels (not just because she uses a pen name, though I love how old-school that is). Her fiction has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and France’s Prix Bête Noir des Libraires, her books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and she has served both as chair jurist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and as a columnist for The New York Times Book Review.

But perhaps most impressive of all is her willingness to take risks, especially when it comes to genre. Over the course of twenty-five years, she has written nine books across five genres, ranging from memoir to gothic horror to fantasy to suspense, gleefully ignoring the conventional wisdom that writers should stick to one thing.

Her newest book, Murder Most Delicious, marks yet another turn. It’s a cozy Paris-set mystery that follows a former sommelier drawn into a murder investigation alongside an eccentric neighborhood watch led by an agoraphobic detective and her cat.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Danielle reflects on the power of saying no, fountain pens, and why she believes stories can alter reality.

21 Questions with Danielle Postel-Vinay

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

France.

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

It’s a job with regular hours.

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

Instagram.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Only if my editor sends them.

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

This is tough for me because I’ve done all those things, have enjoyed them, and then have stopped doing them. I only engage if I’m 100 percent in. I’m a little like Elizabeth Taylor in this respect: I kiss, marry, then kill in quick succession.

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

I believe that the books I write alter reality, and so I’m careful about what I write.

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

Saying no.

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

Ideas come like lightning. I write them down in a notebook or they will disappear.

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

Don’t dwell on the last project. Look forward. Make “NEXT’ your motto.

10. And the worst?

You must write to the market.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

The Keeper by Tana French.

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

Show don’t tell. Write what you know. I happily break as many as possible.

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

I use Freedom to block the internet on my computer when I write. I use Scrivener and Word for my second draft (my first draft is written with a fountain pen). When organizing my notes for my latest novel, I used AI to put them into an outline, which I then revised into a workable outline. Mostly, I’m an analog author.

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

I’m ridiculously practical.

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

Four.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Coffee, work from 8:00 to 12:30, lunch, nap, back to my desk to revise until 3:00, gym, spend time with my daughter, dinner, bed.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Coffee, work from 8:00 to 12:30, run errands, do social media, attend uninspiring meetings, deal with business-related bullshit, spend time with my daughter, dinner, bed.

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

That I can imagine a story, write it down, and that people read it.

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

Nostalgic.

20. What is your new book about?

It’s a culinary mystery set in Paris called Murder Most Delicious. I wrote it under my married name, Danielle Postel-Vinay. The novel follows a sommelier who has lost her sense of taste as she goes to Paris, becomes embroiled in a murder, and joins a group of quirky French characters to solve the crime.

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

How does everyone discover new books?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Danielle’s Q&A, you can learn more about her new book here: Murder Most Deadly.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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:

• “The Business of Nonfiction” with Hollis Heimbouch, Publisher of Harper Business & Harper Edge

• Somehow, This is Working: 21 Questions with Jenny Lawson a.k.a The Bloggess

• What Is Hybrid Publishing, Really? (Video)

Until next time,
Panio Gianopoulos

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

Subscribe now

Nicholas Epley has spent the last two decades studying one of the stranger contradictions of modern life: human beings are deeply social creatures, yet we often avoid the very interactions that make us happier. A professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago and the author of Mindwise, Epley’s work explores how we misunderstand one another, and what happens when we choose to connect anyway.

His new book, A Little More Social, examines why we so often hesitate to reach out, even when the benefits of connection are well established. Drawing on years of behavioral research, he makes the case that connecting with other people is far easier, and much more rewarding, than we expect.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Epley reflects on writing, collaboration, and why conversation remains one of the most generative forces in his work.

21 Questions with Nicholas Epley

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

Five-pound bags of Dark Voyage blend from Door County Coffee (in Carlsville, Wisconsin). Some might say it’s a problem for me.

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

How fast, and how perfectly, the words pour out of you. Readers see the one final draft, not the hundreds that came before it. That makes it seem easier to do than it actually is. It’s a little bit like watching the Olympics and thinking you could probably nail the quad jump.

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

Reading the news. Not helpful!

4. Do you read your reviews?

For my scientific papers, absolutely. I have to respond to them when I submit a revision. For my books, I try hard not to. I read the first review that came out after I wrote Mindwise in 2014, and it was so painful that I decided I shouldn’t read others.

Even if a book review is positive overall, there will always be some things a reader didn’t like, or things you think the reader might have misunderstood. Unlike reviewers of scientific papers, you can’t respond to the book reviewer. Instead, I just ended up crafting responses in my mind, taking up valuable space in my brain that I didn’t have to spare.

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

Kiss podcasts. I’ve enjoyed almost every one I’ve done. No two conversations are the same.

Marry speaking gigs. After many years of practice, I really enjoy public speaking. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to my dream job of being the lead singer for Metallica (Lars, when James retires, call me!) Plus, I often conduct experiments with the audience in my talks. Having fun and collecting data; what could be better?

Kill newsletters. Too much unedited and unfiltered information. I get too many emails already.

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

Training for the Ironman Triathlon.

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

Behavioral science is the scientific study of everyday life, so ideas can pop up almost anywhere. However, the most common place is in conversation with collaborators in my office. Talking is endlessly generative. I keep track by writing ideas in a document on my phone or in notebooks I take to presentations. As my colleague, Linda Ginzel, likes to say: “If you don’t write an idea down, it didn’t exist.”

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

“Being a professor is the world’s greatest job because it allows you to do so many different things, and you should try everything once.” Dan Wegner, a wonderful social psychologist, told me that in my first year as a professor. He was absolutely right. I’ve tried a lot of interesting things in my job, and even done a few things twice.

9. And the worst?

“That experiment’s not worth doing.” I was once told this by a senior faculty colleague about an experiment that ended up being one of the most impactful I’ve ever conducted.

When you’re trying to be creative, your initial ideas will almost always strike other people as wrong. As a scientist, I almost always seek advice from friends and colleagues when starting a project. However, I don’t always follow their advice. You also have to trust your instincts when you’re passionate about an idea.

10. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Run by Ann Patchett. I met Ann—often referred to as Saint Ann in the literary world— at TED in Vancouver recently. My wife and I had so much fun talking with her. Ann spoke in a session with me about social connections and gave me recommendations for books I should read, as she is famous for doing. Ann said she rarely recommends her own books, but thought she had written one that I would really enjoy. It’s her novel, Run, and I’m enjoying it now.

11. How did you find your agent?

I asked friends and colleagues who had written books in the same genre, and they all uniformly loved their agent. That’s who I went with.

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

If grammatical rules were laws, I’d be in jail. My editor will confirm this.

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

I write today using the same tools I have for my whole career: a computer, attached to the internet, with a spell checker. I don’t use AI for anything. It’s not that I haven’t dreamed that I could take some crap I’ve written and ask AI to polish it into a diamond. In fact, I’ve even tried it. I just found that what came out was nearly just as bad as what I put into it. Plus, when it comes to writing, using AI feels dishonest. When I read something someone has written, I am expecting it has come out of their own heads, in their own words, just as I expect from the students in my classes.

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

Public speaking. A great writer once told me that “Good writing is good speaking.” I’ve taken this to heart. I always read my writing out loud to make sure that it sounds right. It’s also good practice for narrating your audiobook!

15. How many drafts before you show your editor?

My approach to writing book chapters is to start every day at the beginning of the chapter and then edit my way through it until I get to the point where I left off the day before. This means that I’m revising every day. It’s sometimes taken me months to get to the end of a chapter draft. But, once I’m finally at the end, I usually think it’s ready to be read because I’ve been editing it every day. I’m not sure how to count that.

16. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Wake up without an alarm clock around 7 AM. Hug my wife for a while before going to pour a cup of coffee already brewed from the kitchen, because I remembered to schedule it the evening before. Breakfast would be two eggs and toast that I’ll eat with my kids before walking to my office at our little summer cabin in Wisconsin to write all morning. Lunch would then be with a colleague I love to talk about ideas with, followed by meetings with a few collaborators to talk about research projects, and then ending the day with another hour or so of writing before heading to dinner. In the evening, I’ll put the kids to bed and then spend some time reading or watching something funny with my wife. We’ll be in bed by 9 PM.

17. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Only moderately comparable. Our youngest daughter has me up at 5:30 AM every day, which is sweet, but I won’t mind when she learns to sleep in a little longer! I almost never remember to set the coffee schedule, and I’m usually in Chicago rather than out in the woods of Wisconsin.

But, I usually do get my morning to write, and I routinely have meetings with wonderful collaborators in the afternoon. Administrative meetings, scientific manuscript reviews, and university obligations also break up my days. These are important, but not always great fun. However, I can’t complain. I have an unusual degree of flexibility to set my schedule every day. If it’s not my ideal, it’s mostly my fault.

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

A novel, because my wife loves to read them, and because it’s so completely different from what I write now.

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

How little I feel like I know what I’m doing, despite writing scientific papers for three decades now. Every time I sit down to a blank page to start writing something new, I feel like I have to remind myself how to do it by either reading something I’ve already written or by reading someone whose writing I love.

20. What is your new book about?

Why we’re not social enough for our own good, and how to do better.

For the last 20 years, my colleagues and I have been trying to understand why highly social creatures like us often choose to avoid social interactions that research has shown make us happier and healthier. We’ve found at least one answer: We can be overly pessimistic about how others will respond when you reach out to connect with them. No research I’ve ever been involved with has changed how I live my own life more than this. I hope that learning about our research can do the same for many readers.

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

Just curious: how many of you have told your spouses or friends that the book you just finished will be the last one you ever write, only to come back and do it again not all that long after?

Maybe it’s just me?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Nicholas’s Q&A, you can learn more about her new book here: A Little More Social.

More from Author Insider

Author Insider is where writers get the real story of publishing—thoughtful conversations with industry insiders and bestselling authors, 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 Business of Nonfiction (with Hollis Heimbouch, Publisher of Harper Business & Harper Edge)

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

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

Until next time,
Panio Gianopoulos

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

It’s tough to be a nonfiction author these days. People are overwhelmed with nonfiction content, most of it free, and almost all of it engineered to be as enticing as possible: podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Substack, online courses… not to mention AI models that will instantly answer any question you have. With omnipresent options, and all of our attention spans shrinking like mushrooms in a hot saute pan, what would make someone still want to spend 10 or 15 hours reading a book?

To talk about this new landscape, I sat down with Hollis Heimbouch, publisher of Harper Business and Harper Edge, whose authors include Jim Collins, Chris Voss, Satya Nadella, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Clay Christensen.

During our hour-long Q&A, Hollis spoke candidly about a host of topics, including:

• Why nonfiction publishing has become more challenging post-pandemic

• The difference between having an audience and having a book-buying audience

• What makes editors immediately pay attention to a proposal

• How authors should think about platform, publicity, and positioning

• What makes an author difficult to work with (and how to avoid it)

• Why large advances can sometimes become a liability

• The publishing myths she wishes authors would stop believing

Below is the (lightly edited) transcript from our live Author Insider conversation.

📺 Prefer to watch instead? Watch the video replay here.

📄 Prefer reading offline? Paid and founding members can download a PDF of the transcript at the end of the second section (Why Personality Matters More Than Ever).

What’s Changed in Nonfiction Publishing?

Panio Gianopoulos: Hollis, thank you for joining us. Hollis is a nonfiction legend. She runs Harper Edge and Harper Business and has seen it all and is really in that sweet spot—or at least what I find the sweet spot—of business, social science, and personal development… let’s start off. I have quite a few questions.

Hollis Heimbouch: Go for it. Glad to be here.

Panio: You’ve worked with a lot of the biggest names in nonfiction publishing. So when you look at the market today, 2026, what’s changed in the past five or even ten years?

Hollis: Yes, that’s a great question. We’re all trying to figure that out ourselves. I would say that there’s definitely a dividing line between the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic publishing.

During the pandemic, we were all home and had plenty of time to read, and we were seeing extraordinary book sales of fiction and nonfiction. And particularly for nonfiction, a lot of classics. I think a lot of people felt like, Oh, I’ve always wanted to read that book. Now’s my time.

So we saw a lot of increases in some of what we call our backlist, which are titles that are sort of three years or older, and a lot of interest in that. We saw less interest at that time in new titles and frontlist titles. And I think that’s just because people were going for the tried and true, not feeling like they wanted to take a lot of risks in their lives. They were already feeling like life was pretty risky. So we saw that was an interesting shift.

And coming out of that, I think the landscape is pretty different. There’s been a huge surge in fiction publishing. Publishing is sort of people who do fiction and people who do nonfiction. I’ve always done nonfiction publishing.

On the nonfiction side, we’ve seen a lot of pressure on nonfiction publishing because there are these new and better, to some degree for some people, outlets for getting the information that you want. So the proliferation of podcasts, the proliferation of social media, the Substackers, the audio publication, which is not just necessarily podcasts, but even short-form audio. We really saw a whole new kind of competition for attention for nonfiction.

And in many cases, people might have listened to one podcast and felt like that was sufficient. So I think for book publishers, our challenge is just to make books that make people want to buy them and feel like they’re going to get more than they could possibly get in a post on Substack or in even an hour-long podcast.

So that’s the challenge: to get people to want to buy a book because they feel like it’s going to add more than what they could already get.

I don’t have the statistics on how many books were published, but I don’t know that we’ve seen a decline in the number of books published. But we’ve certainly seen a decline in overall sales across—I’m talking about sort of big trade publishing, which would be the Big Five publishers in New York. The majority of the books published from nonfiction, there’s been an overall decline in the category.

Panio: That’s really interesting. I didn’t realize there was such this switch in types of books post-pandemic. Although it makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of people I know finally busted out Moby-Dick and…

Hollis: The Power Broker. A lot of people bought The Power Broker.

Panio: Yeah. So what I was curious about is you mentioned the podcast. Somebody can be on a podcast, they’ve got a great book, and then someone listens to 45 minutes and then that’s always the fear I think publishers and authors have. They’re like: That was enough. That was good. I get it.

So what do you think as a nonfiction author—say you’re putting together a proposal or even writing the book—what is the element? Is it the personal element? What makes that book more interesting than just, yeah, I get the five basic points. Thanks, ChatGPT.

Subscribe now

Why Personality Matters More Than Ever

Hollis: Well, I think having a personality is really important now. Back in the day when I started publishing business books—this is a long time ago—they really felt more like medicine to be taken. The idea wasn’t that they were fun to read necessarily. They were not entertaining. But they were instructive, and they were necessary to have a better career.

The Malcolm Gladwell era really ushered in a higher quality of writing, more storytelling, more personal anecdote. And I think that’s the playing field today: you do have to have a kind of personal warmth. Use personal anecdotes, use life experience when you can.

And then I think you also have to find a way to say something that is both intuitively true and timely and timeless. It’s hard to do all those, but I think it has to be something that people are urgently feeling like they need to understand right now. But also, because of the life of a book, it needs to be something that matters in five or ten years. Maybe that’s a long life cycle, but at least beyond two weeks. It has to last for a year or two or three.

And then I think somehow when you hear about it, it has to intrigue you, but it also has to speak to you as something that might absolutely be true. It feels true to you, and now you want to know more.

That’s one shorthand to think about what a book proposal needs to do. And then obviously, to do more than just what you could do in a podcast is to offer not just more stories, but more prescription if it’s a more prescriptive book, or more insights, more high-level frameworks—something that can’t be reduced to just a 45-minute podcast.

Read more

To talk about this new landscape, I sat down with Hollis Heimbouch, publisher of Harper Business and Harper Edge, whose authors include Jim Collins, Chris Voss, Satya Nadella, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Clay Christensen.

Hollis shared a surprisingly optimistic perspective on the state of nonfiction: yes, the market is more competitive and fragmented than ever, but strong ideas, distinctive voices, and genuine authority still matter enormously.

During our hour-long Q&A, she spoke candidly about a host of topics, including:

• What publishers are looking for right now

• Why author platforms are misunderstood

• How acquisitions decisions really get made

• What authors tend to get wrong in their book proposals

• Whether bigger advances get bigger publisher support

• What authors should be doing 6–9 months before publication

• What percentage of authors hire outside PR firms (and if it’s worth it)

• Why second books are often harder to write than first books

• And my favorite…. what makes an author difficult to work with

I hope you enjoy our conversation and find something useful in it, whether you’re working on your first proposal or your fifth book.

I’ll also share a full transcript soon for those who’d like to revisit specific sections or reference Hollis’s advice in more detail.

And thank you, as always, to everyone who joined live and contributed such thoughtful questions.

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.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

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

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

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

As a longtime personal tech columnist for The Wall Street Journal and now the founder of the media outlet New Things, Joanna Stern has become one of the sharpest and funniest voices covering how technology shapes daily life. She is a two-time Gerald Loeb Award winner, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the creator of the Emmy-winning 2021 documentary E-Ternal.

Her new book, I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything, chronicles a year spent letting artificial intelligence into nearly every corner of her life, from work and decision-making to parenting and household chores.

In this edition of 21 Questions, Stern reflects on first drafts, AI, and why the hardest part of writing has nothing to do with the words themselves.

21 Questions with Joanna Stern

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

My back patio. I spent most of the summer of 2025 out there, writing day after day, with my dog, Browser. Also Gaby, my barista, who made me an iced latte every morning that summer. She's the first person named in the acknowledgments.

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

It's not the writing that's hard. It's the thinking.

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

Checking social media.

4. Do you read your reviews?

Yes. Are there people who don’t?

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

Marry newsletters — they're the long-term relationship, the thing that actually compounds.

Kiss speaking gigs — thrilling, profitable, over quickly.

Kill podcasts — sorry, I love them but I’ve been on so many of them lately.

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

The first draft of anything important: Google Docs, Arial, 11pt. Any other font and it doesn't feel real.

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

Building my own newsletter audience. For 12 years, I wrote for The Wall Street Journal. I learned a ton and built a great following, but I didn’t build a direct relationship with that audience that I personally owned. Everything I'm doing now at New Things—and launching my first book—would have been much easier if I'd focused on that in 2021.

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

My mother-in-law asking me why her iPhone is doing "that thing." Other parents complaining to me at kids’ birthday parties. The gap between what tech companies promise and what we all actually experience. My best ideas come when I'm not looking at my phone or laptop. I keep track of them on a phone or a laptop.

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

Find what you love to do and the money will come.

10. And the worst?

Find what you love to do and the money will come.

11. What’s on your nightstand right now?

Ice water and a Theragun. Launching a book has not been good for my back.

12. How did you find your agent?

Through trusted friends.

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

“Kill your darlings.” I keep mine. In fact, I feed them. If I wrote a joke I still laugh at on the fourth read, it’s staying, and my editor can (and will) fight me.

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

This question could be a new book on its own. The short version: ChatGPT and Claude daily, for editing myself, brainstorming, fact-checking, and talking me out of bad ideas. Notion for to-do lists, meeting notes, and shared calendars with my team. Otter for transcripts. Google Docs for pretty much everything else.

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

My sense of humor and my reporting. I don’t consider myself a particularly good writer, but I know how to find a story and present it in a way that’s direct, clear, and occasionally makes someone laugh.

16. How many drafts before you show your editor?

My AI editor or my human editor? AI, one. Human, two.

17. Can you describe your ideal workday?

Up at 8. Coffee. Shoot some fun video in my studio or out in the world. Writing, scripting, brainstorming. Done by 6. Put the kids to bed. No email after 8.

18. How does that compare to your actual workday?

Meetings all morning. Lunch. More meetings. Begin writing or scripting. Break for dinner. Email until midnight.

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

A children’s book! Working title: Goodnight iPad. But seriously, something like that!

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

When I was really in the throes of writing the book, I was surprised by how torturous it was not to have a simple end-word count. As a columnist or newsletter writer, you know the length you need to hit, and that constraint makes you more thoughtful about every paragraph. With a book, the boundaries are a lot blurrier because some chapters or sections can be longer than others. It was freeing, but not always in a good way!

21. Fill in the blank: In five years, successful authors will _____

Allow AI to interact with our books in productive ways. I don’t want my book to be completely sucked up by a large language model, but what if people could use a large language model after buying the book to ask questions or go deeper into my source material?

Leave a comment

If you enjoyed Joanna’s Q&A, you can learn more about her new book here: I Am Not a Robot.

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.

• Oliver Burkeman Knows You Don’t Have Time

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

Until next time,

Panio Gianopoulos

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 dread being on camera. This is hardly a surprising confession: most writers I know find the experience awkward and embarrassing. And yet, like it or not, being in front of a camera is pretty much unavoidable these days. Whether it’s podcasts, Substack Lives, virtual events, social media, or (rare, but it happens) TV appearances, a basic degree of on-camera skill has become essential for authors.

Unfortunately, most of us were never actually taught how to do it well. Case in point: the last Instagram video I shot took me 22 takes, and when I watched the final version, I ran out of the room clawing at my eyes like Oedipus.

Which brings me to the good news:

On Wednesday, May 27, at 1 p.m. ET, I’ll be hosting a live, members-only conversation with Kim Rittberg, an award-winning video expert, media coach, and former executive producer at Netflix, People, and Us Weekly.

Kim has spent years helping professionals communicate more clearly and confidently on video, combining deep media experience with practical coaching around presence, messaging, and storytelling. She’s the real deal.

Kim and I will talk about:

• How to look and sound more confident on camera

• Common mistakes people make on video

• How to feel more natural without sounding overly polished or fake

• Tips for interviews, livestreams, and social video

• How authors can use video strategically without becoming full-time content creators

If you’d like to learn how to communicate your ideas more effectively, how to stop cringing in front of a camera (raises hand), or if you’re really ambitious, how to thrive on BookTok, this is the conversation for you.

👉 RSVP here to get the link: How Authors Can Look and Sound More Confident🔒 Exclusively for paid and founding members of Author Insider

I hope to see you there.

— Panio

Today, I’m going to walk you through how I think about book launches, which is perhaps the most strategic and least “drafting-by-candlelight-at-Walden-Pond” part of being an author. Alas, if you want your book to have an impact, you have to do your part to get the word out.

When I published my debut back in 2023, I wish I had a step-by-step guide to follow, so here’s my attempt to create one for you ahead of my sophomore release (which comes out today!)

1 year before publication: Tend to your own garden

So much ink has already been spilled on how to build your author platform, so I won’t add much. But a year before your book launches, you should have at least four things set in place:

• a website

• a spreadsheet with a consolidated list of your contacts (both personal and professional),

• a newsletter

• at least one strategy for generating awareness for said newsletter

You don’t need to write weekly 3,000-word Substack essays, but at a minimum, give your community a place to sign up for updates on your book. Tend to your garden now, so that you can plant seeds and later reap what you sow.

9 months before publication: Identify your big fish

You may have heard of the Pareto principle: 80% of the results tend to come from 20 percent of the effort. Well, book publishing is more like the 95/5. Given the nature of attention and influence these days, there are a few influential people/platforms that have an outsized ability to bring awareness to your book. It’s worth identifying who those potential big fish are for you. For a business/self-help author, perhaps it’s a certain podcast. For a novel, perhaps it’s a book club. For a memoirist, perhaps it’s an influencer.

As my friend Tim Grahl likes to say, promoting a book can be boiled down to three steps: get influential people to share about the book, get fans to buy the book, and get fans to share about the book. Your big fish sit at the intersection of who is influential for the readers you hope to reach and who you might have access to. Nine months out is a good time to identify who they are and start making inroads.

6 months before publication: Start pitching long-lead media

I hate to put it in such crass marketing terms, but getting attention for your book, like so much of life, is a funnel. You might need to pitch a hundred podcast producers to get fifteen interested in reading a galley to record five episodes. It’s unlikely that Ezra Klein or Good Morning America will come knocking at your door, so you have to come up with a strategy for proactive outreach. The two channels that require the longest lead times are events and podcasts.

Events: I like to break events into two categories: existing audiences that might be interested in your book (companies, conferences, affinity groups) and book tour stops. Not everyone wants to go on a book tour (and traditional publishers are increasingly wary that the juice isn’t worth the squeeze), but I’d recommend identifying a few possible destinations for each category. Six months out is a good time to start reaching out.

Podcasts: When it comes to pitching media, podcasts, radio, newspapers, TV, and magazines all work on their own timelines. But six months out is a good time to start pitching to large, nationally syndicated shows, since you should have galleys to send out and they book out further in advance. As a journalist, I’m always asking myself four questions when I pitch:

• What’s the story?

• Why should people care?

• Why am I the person to write it?

• Why is now the time to write it?

The latter two are the ones people most often neglect.

4 months out: Set up your pre-order campaign

One word separates successful and unsuccessful pre-order campaigns: incentives. Sure, some of your loved ones will pre-order your book to support you, but the vast majority of readers will not pre-order your book unless there’s something in it for them. To create an enticing pre-order campaign, you need offers that are both compelling and urgent. The most typical pre-order offers are bonus content (a companion guide, a bonus chapter), exclusive access to the author (a live webinar/workshop), or some sort of physical tchotchke (a bookmark! a pin!).

In my opinion, pre-order campaigns are really hard to pull off well. Sure, generating a lot of pre-orders increases your chances of hitting a bestseller list as all pre-orders get lumped together with week-one sales, but most campaigns don’t move that many copies. Think about your own book purchasing behavior: How likely are you to pre-order a book that isn’t written by a friend? This isn’t to say that it’s not worth creating some pre-order incentives, just proceed with tempered expectations.

3 months out: Identify targets for excerpts and original writing

You’re officially in the splash radius of publication day. It’s time to get your name out there. One of the best ways to do so is through original writing. This is around the time you start to see authors appear on what I like to think of as the “personal essay circuit.” The types of original writing you put out will vary based on your genre, but you should look at your manuscript from the perspective of what can be easily adapted for shorter pieces. For nonfiction authors, this often means pitching op-eds. For fiction authors, you might write something about craft or adapt a part of your novel.

It’s around this time that I start thinking about the old advertising adage: a customer must hear about a product 7 times before they make a purchase. Rather than consistent drips of attention over the course of months, you want to try to concentrate as many of those impressions as possible in the period around your pub day—one concentrated splash rather than many drawn-out drips.

1 month before publication: Mise en place

Now’s the time to put everything in place for pub week. Follow up with everyone who received a galley. Create a list of supporters who will help spread the word. Pre-write the social media posts and emails you’ll send. Prime your supporters on how they can help: buy the book, leave a review on Goodreads, and share the book with a friend.

I’ve found that people genuinely want to help—especially if you make it easy—but no one will care about your book launch as much as you. Make your asks explicit. Remember, if you believe in your book—if you believe reading it is genuinely worthwhile—asking them to buy a copy isn’t about doing you a favor, it’s about adding value to their lives.

Pub week: Don’t forget to celebrate

This is where I am now—my book officially comes out today, but god knows I didn’t write this post last night. Successful book launches are part preparation, part perspiration, and part luck. As my friend Marisa told me after her book became a New York Times bestseller, book launches are not the time to be meek. They require you to be at least somewhat shameless.

If you’re anything like me (or the many other authors I’ve spoken to about this), pub week can feel both like the most important week of your life and wildly anticlimactic. My advice is to make sure you carve out some space to celebrate how far you’ve come. After all, the launch is just the beginning.

If you got value from this post, please share it with someone who’s about to launch a book. And if you want to go above and beyond, please consider ordering a copy of How To Not Know on Amazon or Bookshop.org (see, shameless!). It’s about how to get better at dealing with uncertainty, and as Lori Gottlieb says, it’s “a must-read for our time.”