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You've heard the book publishing podcasts that give you tips for selling a lot of books and the ones that only interview world-famous authors. Now it's time for a book publishing show that reveals what actually goes on behind the cover.
Hosted by New York Times bestselling author Anna David, Behind the Book Cover features interviews with traditionally published authors, independently published entrepreneurs who have used their books too seven figures to their bottom line to build their businesses and more.
Anna David has had books published by HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster and is the founder of Legacy Launch Pad, a boutique book publishing company trusted by high-income entrepreneurs to build seven-figure authority. In other words, she knows both sides—and is willing to share it all.
Come find out what traditional publishers don't want you to know.
Hello, and welcome to behind the book cover with your host, Anna David, New York Times bestselling author of eight books. Today, I'm talking to a real New York Times bestselling author, meaning his book wasn't extended list ebook, but the real deal. His name is Tom Zoellner or Zoellner. There's actually, as he explains, no correct pronunciation of it, which is interesting. Like I said, he's a New York Times bestselling author and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner.
Anna:It's kind of as big as it gets, by the way. He yet, he didn't even pass seventh grade. We get into that. How is he now a professor? Yes.
Anna:A professor. And the author of 10 books. So here are three essential truths you're going to get from this conversation. He talks quite brilliantly about how writing a book is an immense paradox, because it both requires you to be in the world and not in the world. We also discuss how platform building and branding doesn't work for everyone.
Anna:And third, he talks about how the greatest rewards happen not when the book is out for him, but during the writing process. That is not true for everybody. But that's what's cool about this podcast. Everyone's different. We also talk about BISAC codes or b BSAC.
Anna:Again, this is just the episode of who knows how you pronounce things, and why that made his first book about the diamond trade get categorized under jewelry smuggling. I'm sorry. Jewel costume jewelry and how his publisher yelled at him when he tried to amend that. Anyway, all that and more in this episode. So now I give you Tom Zollner or Zollner.
Anna:Okay. So, Tom, thank you for being here.
Tom:It's a real pleasure. Thank you.
Anna:Tom, whose last name I can't pronounce because you won't tell me the correct
Tom:there is no correct pronunciation.
Tom:I say Zollner, others say Zollner. It's just one of
Tom:these awkward Teutonic, you know, nineteenth century immigration names.
Anna:Well, I will be recording the intro later and I will stumble over it. So if we're in the time machine of the way this works, listeners, you have already heard me stumble over it. So okay, so you have a book out a month. Pretty much a month.
Tom:Pretty much, yeah. Released on September 30. It's kind of a quiet little thing, but that's okay. Quiet is good.
Anna:Is quiet good?
Tom:I don't know. You you and I talk about this a lot, the grasping after this idea that this book is going to change the paradigm of Western civilization and that people must, must, must buy it. And, you know, as we both know, that's not always the case. It's almost certainly never the case, and so therefore, is the scramble for publicity, is the hustle really all that worth it? And does it take out more than it gives?
Anna:So what's the answer or is
Tom:it I don't know answer. There is no right pronunciation of this. It comes down to, does the book have a worthwhile message? Should people know the message? As far as promoting myself, I have let go of that idea altogether.
Anna:So we should clarify that you were a New York Times bestselling author who won a massive award that I can't even remember. Which award did you win?
Tom:It was the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Anna:That's like as big as it gets ish.
Tom:Yes, but it was a total dark horse. Book Critics Circle operates off of newspaper reviews. The book got exactly one newspaper review. This was a book released in 2020, right as the pandemic was entering its feverish phase of May 2020, just the worst time ever to have a book come out. And that was that, and I tried to have a fairly serene attitude towards it that, you know, the real audience for this book, believe it or not, is the Library of Congress.
Tom:Not the people who work there, but the library itself, that it's part of the repository of information. Just a twig in the big bonfire, a small electrical circuit in the motherboard, whatever kind of metaphor you want. But it's not about, you know, Hey, look at me, published a book. But it's about what's in the book and does the book contribute to the giant web of scholarship.
Anna:So you have a different attitude than many people. Mean, you're actually, let's just say this sounds so ridiculous, like a true intellectual. You are doing this. You, I mean, I don't, you laugh, but perhaps compared to everyone else I know.
Tom:I flunked seventh grade.
Anna:Shut up. And you are a professor?
Tom:Yes.
Anna:At Chapman?
Tom:Chapman University.
Anna:And what are you a professor of?
Tom:Well, I teach in the English department, but mainly, my main interest is history.
Anna:And so let's talk about how this all came to be. You flunk seventh grade.
Tom:Yes.
Anna:But they did advance you to eighth,
Tom:assume. Eventually, after much butt on the floor. Yeah, I did make it to eighth grade.
Anna:Then you made it to high school.
Tom:Then I made it to high school.
Anna:And college. Yeah. And I'm assuming your graduate degree.
Tom:Recently, yeah. I got a PhD a year and a half ago.
Anna:Interesting. Why at this stage in life?
Tom:Why? Well, look, the minute that you say I know everything, I mean, you're fooling yourself, and there's always stuff to learn. For someone who had such a painful experience with school as just a torture chamber, it's God's joke that I wind up teaching in one, as well as continuing to go to school, even in my 50s. Whatever would have prompted that?
Anna:Something something? I mean, you know better than others
Tom:pushing it forward. This this this book, which quietly launched was actually a revised version of my dissertation. So it's a way of double dipping, you might say,
Anna:yes. And so, so okay, so you graduate from college, and do you have this crazy idea I'm going to be a writer?
Tom:I had a crazy idea of becoming a newspaper reporter, which is crazier today than it's ever been, right? I mean, there's a profession that I thought was just a priestly calling. It was gonna be what I was gonna do for the rest of my life, you know, that guy in the back of the city council meeting. And what do you know, the internet came, technology ruined the business and so many of people like me are scattered to the winds not knowing what to do. A lot of us went into PR.
Tom:I had to find a new way to make a living. And that might be the story of the twenty first century, that technology comes, ruins your way of life, and you have to recalibrate.
Anna:A more optimistic way to phrase it might be technology comes provides multiple new opportunities, and gives us a chance to to grow.
Tom:I admire that attitude. I never had that attitude. I was always like, No, don't take this away. I love this. Why is this being destroyed?
Anna:How do you feel then about AI?
Tom:Oh, I hate it. It's a menace. No, Do you gives me creeps? No. It's put in front of me, which it sometimes is in my household for reasons of, you know, here's some things to stir some ideas.
Tom:I'll look at it, insofar as like adopting it, no, I'm going to be dragged kicking and screaming.
Anna:Yeah, yeah, you are the cranky man yelling at people to get off your lawn.
Tom:Get off my AI lawn, get out of my computer, get out of my search results.
Anna:Did you know, did you look up if your books were part of the Claude lawsuit?
Tom:There came a time, as you may remember, when it became a status symbol for authors to
Anna:search their
Tom:own books, publish the screenshot, you know, profess outrage, but then subtly brag.
Anna:Oh, I when The Atlantic published that, I was like, I'm gonna be devastated if my books are not a
Tom:part of it.
Tom:Right. Please rip me off.
Anna:I wasn't savvy enough to post the screenshot, but I am quite proud of it. But that first one happened. But literally on Friday, I found out this seems too good to be true, that if any of your books were part of the anthropic Claude lawsuit, you were entitled up to $3,000 a book. And I found six of my books, you could just go and search. I'll send you the link.
Tom:Ka ching.
Anna:Ka ching more than I made.
Tom:Okay, you're telling me something new. I didn't realize that more than ego was on the on the level here.
Anna:It sounds again, like really, but but that's yeah, I read it. I read it on the Internet, so it must be true. So, okay, so you you're writing for newspapers, which newspapers?
Tom:I started at a biweekly in Nebraska, rural Nebraska.
Anna:And what happened next?
Tom:What happened next? A series of jobs all the way up the chain until a Fortune 500 company bought my last newspaper, the Arizona Republic, and my job became less fun.
Anna:And then you said?
Tom:Pulled the plug, moved to Montana to write short stories, and then ran out of money and borrowed more and moved to New York City to sleep on a French couch and friend's couch Out
Anna:of French couch?
Tom:A French couch, it was French. And that time honored tradition to try and become a quote unquote real writer, whatever that means.
Anna:What year was that?
Tom:What year was that? That was 02/2004.
Anna:Because we were there and how long did you stay in New York?
Tom:Off and on for the next eight years.
Anna:Because we were there at the same time.
Tom:I hadn't realized that. Do we know each other then?
Anna:I don't think so. But you know what's so funny? I remember the first time I heard your name, and it's very, very random. I don't know why I remember this because this is random. My friend Sherry, a friend at the time I haven't talked to her in years, was getting a manicure, and somehow met someone who knew you this is I swear to God.
Anna:And said, you're a writer, you were single at the time, you need to meet my friend. Oh, wow. Yeah, did you we knew this. You knew this at one time. It's possible you were even set up with her.
Tom:Oh my gosh. Okay, is it this didn't come with a warning? Like watch out for this guy?
Anna:No, it came with a endorsement.
Tom:I'm extremely flattered.
Anna:Although I have no idea who this person was, what her it's not like it was your mother. It was some person who found you to be such a great cat.
Tom:Wait a minute. This might be Sherry Goldhagen.
Anna:It is.
Tom:Yes, of course. Yeah. Sherry now is in Florida.
Anna:She does. Okay. I haven't spoken to her in years.
Tom:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She got married. She she was engaged to a friend of mine, that engagement ended.
Anna:Oh, wait a minute. Because that's the last I that's the last she was yes, I was very good friends with her when she met that guy. Sorry, listeners were going off on a tangent. And so that didn't work out. Okay, got it.
Anna:Right? Moved to Florida
Tom:and she moved to Florida and presumably lives happily ever happily ever after and wrote a wonderful book did very well. Yes. I remember the cover it had. It was a carton of eggs with one broken egg.
Anna:I remember the cover, but I don't. You know, it's funny. No, it's not funny. Yeah, I'm not good at visuals. I couldn't even really tell you what's on the cover of many of my books.
Anna:But I do know I didn't like many of them. Have you liked the covers of your books?
Tom:Half and half.
Anna:Did you share with your publisher? Am not a fan of this.
Tom:Only once did I dig my heels in and say I can't have this as the cover. And it wasn't just like aesthetic judgment, it was a book about a mass shooting at a grocery store. This is non fiction. And one of my friends was gravely wounded and another friend was killed, and the publisher wanted to have a big smear of blood in the lower third part of the cover. And I understand why they did it, but at the same time, it's like, I can't do this.
Tom:This just looks too exploitive.
Anna:Yeah, and they listen to you.
Tom:And yeah, but although I still remember the look on the face of the editor when I said, I'm sorry, I just can't. And it was like that sort of, you know, very pinched thin lip, like, okay, you're that kind of author, was that look? As writers, we sort of dread that look from
Anna:our Oh, it depre Karen, you're a Karen.
Tom:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though it's a friend of yours who got killed and there's blood on the cover and you might not happen exactly like that as an aesthetic, I still am loath to try and tell them what to do. I recognize they are professionals. They know better than me.
Anna:Is absolutely the 100% inaccurate thing you have said. Why? You believe that your publishers know better than you?
Tom:On certain things? Absolutely. They do.
Anna:I would say that the publishers are the last to understand the publishing industry.
Tom:Interesting. Do you have an anecdote that bears this out?
Anna:So many. And I know this sounds really self aggrandizing. But I believe that with my publishing company, there are many things I understand that that traditional publishers do not because they are this God, this sounds really obnoxious. And I and I, okay, I believe that there are people who sort of pave their own path. They are one type of human.
Anna:And there is another type of human that enjoys a paycheck, which is very legitimate, going to an office doing these things where they, you know, it's an old system, that they are taught they are bred not to question. Whereas the other type of human is bred to constantly question. So I think traditional publishing is made up of a lot of people who are employees, who believe that they should listen to the people at the top you in our culture today. Do you believe the people at the top in like, let's say politics know the most?
Tom:Well, the dichotomy you've just laid out is a reflection of what we were talking about earlier with viewing internet and technology as one big opportunity or one big hurricane.
Anna:Right.
Tom:And I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that I do prefer those old systems where the rules are known and where you try to excel within those boxes.
Anna:You have said to me several times that your favorite quote from me is what?
Tom:I don't have the constitution for this.
Anna:So you believe
Tom:Well, put that in context first. What that meant was
Anna:Yes.
Tom:We were talking about you had written your I think it was forty seventh book
Anna:Yeah.
Tom:And we were talking about the grind of publicity, and you said, Look, I just don't have the constitution for this. And I was like, Chef's kiss. First of all, for the word constitution, which is just such a bowler hat 1920s kind of a word, loved it.
Anna:I love impressing you with a word.
Tom:Oh, no, it was amazing. And then also just the acknowledgement that, yeah, a big part of this is really tiresome. And I find it sort of contrary to a kind of a Midwestern modesty that I try to emulate, not always successfully, but the idea that it's not about me, it's about what's in the book. And you're not coming to look at my pretty face, you're looking to be interested in these facts.
Anna:And yet, though you really love this quote, I do not have the constitution for this, you still believe that these publishers who set you up to feel that way know best and you prefer that mode of living? Just clarify.
Tom:No, this is good. Dichotomies are not always hard dichotomies, right? There are frames of understanding in which we go about our way of life. I suppose I'd call myself a small C conservative in that way, respecting existing institutions, largely knowing what they're doing. But as you correctly point out, they sometimes do not.
Tom:And they sometimes get it really wrong. And that's when they try and smear blood on your cover, you you say, No, we're not going to do it that way.
Anna:Or for instance, Party Girl, my first book was listed on Amazon as a humorous science fiction.
Tom:Humorous sci fi.
Anna:Yes, I've been accused of many things never being a sci fi writer. When I say it was also listed as published under William Morrow. It was not published under William Morrow. I mean, I had a unique situation, which is that my publisher, Judas Regan was fired in the biggest scandal to ever hit publishing like six months before my book came out.
Tom:So it Oh, was That was on
Tom:that was where she said the big lie. Yes. Yes, I remember that.
Anna:Yes. And I still run into her today, absolutely am a huge fan of her.
Tom:She's someone who once smiled at me from across a room.
Anna:And it made your day?
Tom:Yeah, made my day. She's got a she's got a megawatt smile.
Anna:She's got a megawatt smile. And when I sold when we sold my book to Judith Regan, I thought my life is made. This is this is the king, the queen maker. And, you know, the queen lost her throne six months before my book came out. Now.
Anna:Okay. So so so back to you're you're selling these books, how many how many you too have many?
Tom:Five? This is 10. I think
Anna:10 books 10.
Tom:Yeah, but you've got 47.
Anna:I have I have eight.
Tom:I have more books than you.
Anna:Yes. So 10. I apologize for not knowing this. But I but I did know about the prestigious award that I the name of which I forgot. So you're publishing these books, and are you happy with the experience?
Anna:How did this come about?
Tom:Well, you mentioned Classified as comedic sci fi. And if I could maybe go into the weeds a little bit for listeners who are really, really into this kind of publishing arcana. There's something called the BISOC. B I S O C.
Anna:I don't know.
Tom:I didn't know about it until my own first book came out. It was an investigation into the diamond business and all the shady things that happened within. And, you know, it was a big thrill to walk into the Barnes and Noble and it's like, Oh, where's my book? I want to see my book in Barnes and Noble. And then a big letdown to be directed towards the section labeled Costume Jewelry.
Tom:Like, this is the most this is the silliest possible place to put this book, you know? So I called up Barnes and Noble Corporate and I said, Please, please, please, can you reconsider where you shove this book in all your corporate locations? And forty five minutes goes by and then the phone rings, and it's a very angry person at St. Martin's Press saying, Don't you ever, ever call the chain bookstore yourself. And I'm like, Well, why not?
Tom:It's my book. And they're like, That's our job. You're the author. You stay over here. And this is where I learned about, I don't know the acronym, but it's where there's an internal code that puts keywords on your book and it's a signal to booksellers as to exactly where they should shelve it.
Tom:It's actually a guided decision. And as an author, it's in your best interest to know exactly what codes your publisher is putting on your book, lest you find it, you know, in the cookbook section.
Anna:That's crazy. That's fascinating. Well, yeah, I will say because my company does a lot of keyword research. If you are publishing on your own or with a company like mine, you actually have say so that you're a non science fiction book will not end up being classified as science fiction. And you know, your investigation of the diamond industry won't be classified as costume jewelry.
Anna:But this is something that I do not believe publishers do where they do keyword research, and they look, well, what other books using these keywords, how many copies are they selling a week and all of these things. And that's something that's very possible to do. And then to bake those keywords in a, you know, elegant way into your book description, into your bio, even into reviews, but not that you can control reviews. I mean, that's not something your publisher does.
Tom:Yes, and machines are only as good as the, you know, cogs in the machine. And I don't mean to dehumanize anyone by calling them cogs, but assuming competence, yes, then there should be a reasonably good outcome. Publishing, as you correctly note, is full of incompetence, and I think publishers will acknowledge that, too.
Anna:Did you follow any of that big lawsuit when you know, the Simon and Schuster merger, I think it was 2021?
Tom:Some of those depositions were fairly damning. And, you know, is consolidation a good thing in publishing? No. Does it create more opportunities for those outside those traditional behemoth structures to reach an audience? Yes, actually.
Anna:It creates more opportunities.
Tom:I think so, yes. When the voice becomes monolithic, when monster gets too big, there's always going to be people on the sides of that monster trying to take it down.
Anna:What was interesting to me as somebody who comes from inside that world is I didn't see it having anything to do with authors, all of these pub mammoth, the big the once big five had all these divisions in them and imprints and they will remain Who owns the big monster doesn't seem to make any difference to me. I don't even understand that logic.
Tom:Only in some circumstances is the editorial content really guided? I think of the famous example of HarperCollins being purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and there was an uptick, although certainly not a dominance, of conservative themed titles which resulted.
Anna:Yes, that got a lot of headlines. But I doubt if you look at the percentages that it became a conservative imprint or You anything know, I did six books with them.
Tom:Yeah. And Judith Regan was under the Herbert Collins umbrella at one point. So, it didn't really affect our brand. It was a matter, I think, of curiosity.
Anna:And so what do you remember about that lawsuit? This is not a quiz. What stuck out to you that you learned?
Tom:I just remember shaking my head at some radio reports on it and feeling a sense of helplessness about being able to do anything about it.
Anna:I one of my favorite things that came out of it, the CEO of Random House talked about how the reason Random House worked as a name is success is very random in publishing, and they can't predict it. And I think it was shocking to people that this is an industry where there's no real market research, there's no real, you know, sort of knowledge of what's going to work aside from a track record.
Tom:Which is one of the things I used to actually love about it. There was a kind of a formality about it, a nineteenth century politess surrounding publishing that didn't exist in other creative fields. You would often actually get a reply to a query and it would be a fairly thoughtful response. It seemed to kind of run-in a mentality of mailed letters and even telegraphs. And the lack of market research, as you point out, is I think an inheritance of that tradition.
Tom:And now if you were to start up the publishing industry if one didn't exist today, of course it would look very different. There might not even be a paper product. And there would absolutely be loads of market research thrown at every query that came by. I tend to think of it as kind of institutional drift that, Go ahead.
Anna:To get back to this being an opportunity to evolve rather than stay the same.
Tom:I'm just not that smart. Don't have an idea of how to break out of traditional models.
Anna:So, okay, so let's go back. First book, how did you sell it? What happened?
Tom:What happened? Let me tell you the medium sized version of that story. So I like many other young men, when I got engaged, was persuaded to scrape together two months of my salary, which was not all that much, to buy a diamond ring for my intended. I did so without thinking this is just what you do, isn't it? And after eight months, I became the owner of a used engagement ring.
Tom:We did not get married and so
Anna:I was gonna say this timing and Sherry Goldhagen, was like this is all
Tom:very weird. Was single after that. So what do I do with this ring? I didn't want to, you know, sell it back immediately. That seemed cold and unsentimental.
Tom:A great deal of feeling had been imbued in this particular stone. And around that same time, a friend of mine said, Hey, I know this litter agent. She really has a bee in her bonnet about the diamond business and how opaque it all is and want someone to sort of poke around. Would you do this on spec? And I thought, Oh yeah, a lot of work for no money.
Tom:I actually like that. I'll do it.
Anna:You seem to.
Tom:Yeah. And so I went even deeper into debt and paid for a plane ticket to one of the most isolated nations on the African Continent, a place called the Central African Republic, a post independence creation carved out from France. And this had been a big diamond smuggling platform. And so after two weeks in this country, I came back to New York City with a write up of what I'd found, and we packaged it up and sold it to St. Martin's Press, who later, you know, ripped me up one side and down the other for daring to call Barnes and Noble about the BSOC, And the book did well.
Tom:And here's another sort of publishing story. I've never been comfortable with memoir as a form. I mean, like it in others. I'll read other people's memoirs. But the idea of writing one?
Tom:Ugh, no. And they really wanted me, St. Martin's Press did, to really hype up this sort of owner of a used diamond ring thing. Talk about my personal story. What was it like buying that diamond ring?
Tom:And tell me about this breakup, and so on and so forth. And I'm not, you know, I don't have an excessive amount of privacy around it, but nor do I think it's particularly interesting. What's really interesting is what happens in the diamond business. So they really wanted me to lay that on and originally, it was like maybe 2% of the book's content, and it wound up being about 10%.
Anna:And that made you uncomfortable?
Tom:Yeah. And again, it wasn't that I was embarrassed that I was embarrassed at the time that our engagement failed, but I think it was more just sort of, It's not about me, it's about, you know, the subject.
Anna:But that story engages people.
Tom:So to speak. Yeah, people like reading about other people. Yeah. And stories about breakups are interesting. I have to acknowledge that they were, in some sense, had a good editorial vision for it.
Anna:Then you're lucky that it wasn't categorized as a dating book.
Tom:Yeah, it could have been in relationships, exactly. A negative example.
Anna:Are you too classy to talk about money and what you got as an advance?
Tom:No, I can talk about that. It was $15,000 and as you know, that's a figure that sliced and diced all kinds of ways. Agents, taxes, you get it in installments. So magazine writing at that time was a far more profitable thing to do.
Anna:What year? $15,000 in what year?
Tom:This book was published in 02/2006. The deal was made in 02/2004.
Anna:And, oh, again, our timing was
Tom:very Incredible. Parallel Lives.
Anna:My first book, 02/2005, came out in 02/2007.
Tom:And that was Party Girl, right? Yes. But you were living here.
Anna:No, I was living here. Yes, yes.
Tom:Yes. Okay, you got here before I did.
Anna:I got here in '96.
Tom:Did you grow up here?
Anna:No, I just came here right after college. And, and then I went to New York 2007 to 2010. With this belief, well, my agent and my publisher are there, I should be there as if they cared, or I ever saw them. They did not care.
Tom:It was of no interest to them.
Anna:No interest at all. In fact, a bit of an inconvenience.
Tom:Have to take you to lunch.
Anna:Yes, I actually loved my agent. And she dared to say to me after this whole Judah three again debacle, we went to dinner, and she said to me, you might be more successful selling, I might be more successful selling your second book under a pen name. And I was so offended. But that's the truth. If you have a first book where I was paid $50,000 So there were high expectations, and it failed due to no fault of mine, but the fact that there was no publisher anymore, I am considered somebody you don't want to sell to as opposed to an unproven writer.
Tom:Yeah, and you know, a good fictionalization of, of that dynamic and of that sort of skittishness on the part of the agent can be found in the novel The Plot. Jean oh Hemph gosh, what is her last name? I'm suddenly blanking on it. Excellent depiction of a writer whose first book did okay, and then the second book flops, and then suddenly you have a very hard time getting emails returned.
Anna:Very, very, very hard. And my agent was was so wonderful. And Coralitz Jean Hamf Coralitz.
Tom:Heard of this. This guy amazing
Anna:on my wish list. So, so, and I blamed her for the lack of success and left her. Now she's a huge agent. But But did you so were you disappointed with how the book did you were thrilled because it did well they you earn back your advance.
Tom:It did earn back. Yes.
Anna:And then they said, Tom, you're amazing. Do you want to do another book?
Tom:They didn't say that. But I did get to do another book.
Anna:Yes. They said, Tom, you're fine.
Tom:You're okay.
Anna:Would you like to do another book?
Tom:No, I pitched another one.
Anna:And they said yes.
Tom:And they said yes.
Anna:Now your books are extremely research heavy.
Tom:Yes. And
Anna:so when you say you sold it in 02/2004, no, sorry, 02/2006, and it came out in 02/2008, the first one?
Tom:Oh, for deal Oh, six publication,
Anna:yes. And so you, since it takes usually about two years from acquisition to publication, that's pretty quick, including the research. How long are you spending on this research? I think for future books, were spending more or you've done a lot of the research in a bit?
Tom:No, it usually should take about a year and a half. I remember reading something from Agatha Christie, who obviously, you know, wrote very different kinds of books, saying that she thought three months from the minute you write the first word to when you, you know, put it in a package and send it off should be adequate, should be reasonable.
Anna:Good for her.
Tom:Three months.
Anna:She was successful.
Tom:She she cranked them out.
Anna:And I mean, I remember reading Murder by Death. That's the only Agatha Christie I ever read. But it is interesting. I mean, I know people who've written decent books in a weekend,
Tom:a weekend,
Anna:I know somebody. When, when I launched my first book, I was part of this thing called the debutante ball, which I recently found out still exists. It was these five other women said, we're launching our books the same year in 02/2007. Why don't we all blog about our experiences leading up to our releases? And I thought that sounds really fun until all five of their books seem to do better than mine, one of which was written in a weekend.
Tom:A weekend. Well, famously Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in twelve drug fueled days. I had a friend, Charles Bowden, Arizona author, who used to take him about forty two days to punch out a book, although that guy was kind of a machine in his own way, would get up at 02:30 in the morning, that sort of thing. So
Anna:the second book, what year and what happened?
Tom:What year? It came out in 02/2009. It's called uranium, And it's it was about just what it sounds like it was a history of that mineral. And
Anna:so eight more since then.
Tom:Yeah.
Anna:So I do that you one could argue it makes you a bit of a machine.
Tom:Well, you know, here's the thing. For, you know, listeners who are interested in publishing, which I presume many of them are. Yeah. This whole idea of platform and branding and having a kind of a recognizable identity, I've never bought into it. I think it works for others and I applaud them, and I recognize the logic they're in, but that's never worked for me insofar as, you know, I wanna be this guy.
Tom:I wanna have a kind of an aroma. Like when you pick up something by Don Winslow, you know what you're going to get. I don't know. I just have never operated like that.
Anna:And so would you say there was a difference between your experience writing your first book, publishing your first book, and publishing this most recent?
Tom:A long pause here. Yes, the industry's obviously changed. Borders is no longer here, a chain bookstore. The selling of books has atomized even more. The publicity has certainly changed insofar as podcasts were never a thing when I started.
Tom:The regional NPR talk show was a thing. The regional book review was a thing. Papers like the Albuquerque Journal would review a wide array of books. Now, the really only sort of broad frame book reviews in the country are limited to The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and there are signs of slippage even there. And also, I think emotionally, authors put a lot less into the later books, think.
Tom:And the energy is really spent on the next one. And I'll tell you, you may have found this too. The greatest rewards from doing this really happened at the keyboard. They really happened during the composition of the material that kind of those intellectual fires that get lit, the sense of curiosity, the sense of discovery, the publicity rewards, they're nice, don't get me wrong, I'm delighted to be sitting here, But at the same time, it really doesn't compare to the fun you have writing the book.
Anna:That's interesting. The previous guest was telling me how much she hates writing. Everybody's different. But I would say you better enjoy the process because it may not get better from there.
Tom:That's the only thing that gets better, though. I think. Yeah, it's the only thing that can be truly, knock on wood, dependent upon is that you should be in love with your subject. I teach in an MFA program and students and friends will often say, I think I have a book here. Do I?
Tom:And I'll say, well, ask three questions. The first is, is there really enough there for a manuscript of 90,000 words? Do you really have the raw material? The second question, are you going to be happy marinating with this material for a year and a half to three years, or are you gonna get sick of it? And the third question is, does the universe really need this book?
Tom:Is there a spiritual void, not within you, but within the world that would welcome the addition of this particular discourse? Is it gonna help? Is it gonna fill in a gap? Is it going to be of use to somebody and a jam? And that's the hardest question to answer.
Tom:Is there a metaphysical need for this book?
Anna:How can you know always?
Tom:Yeah, you only have suppositions. It almost has a theological kind of angle to the question.
Anna:So releasing this book, which was a month ago, was there any emotion around it? What did you do for it? You had a party.
Tom:I had a party.
Anna:I was invited. It was too far away.
Tom:That's okay.
Anna:Know, two year old.
Tom:Yeah, two year old. It was, you know, also my birthday. And so
Anna:I wanted to neglect both.
Tom:There was a cake. Yeah, thanks a lot. Yeah. It was in a suburban house, you know, 30 miles from downtown. No traffic.
Tom:A good friend of mine looks around and says, What are you thinking? I'm like, Yeah, you know, you have kids and your life stops becoming interesting, and that's not a priority anymore.
Anna:You and I talked about this. I disagree. We disagree on many things.
Tom:That's all right. There is creativity and frijon within the difference.
Anna:So in terms of the launch, you had a party. Do you always recommend having a party?
Tom:Yes, absolutely. If you're launching a book sorry, I hate that word launch, let me correct that. If you are publishing a book, if a book's coming out with your name on it, have yourself a party by all means.
Anna:Because?
Tom:Because it's an emotional milestone. And even if only a few people show up, you know, it's a way, it's an anchor in the sea of time, to paraphrase Stephen Harrigan. It's a way that when you look back on it, you can remember that moment of this was when it happened. This creative project deserves a premiere. Pub dates, I think all of us know, are only notional concepts.
Tom:Know, it's not like that's the day when every bookstore in the country, you know, employees take a box cutter to the parcels that are kept under wraps until that very moment. No, it's a sliding concept. It's almost a fiction, but it's a way for you to create that demarcation in between, you know, this is the time of the buildup and now it's finally here.
Anna:Well, we have to wrap up. Is there anything I've neglected to ask you?
Tom:Oh my gosh. Well, we've talked about cover fights, we've talked about the key questions when it comes time I launching the want to say that there's an immense paradox about writing a book in many ways. You should know the business, but at the same time you should not care about the business. You should let go of it. You shouldn't get too wrapped up in who's my agent and you know, what are my sales figures?
Tom:Really let go and let God on that. There's also a paradox in terms of solitude that writing a book, as you know, is incredibly lonely. You shut yourself up in a room. It is strictly a just me and the keyboard sort of affair. But writing a book also requires a deep involvement in life.
Tom:Even if we're not out researching as nonfiction authors, even if we're just writing a novel, we still have to be participants in this very strange exercise of life and understanding the way that people relate to one another and understanding people and talking to people and being out. So it is solitude, but it's also the opposite of solitude.
Anna:Yeah, that's fascinating. Well, great note to end on. If people want to find out more about you, find your books. Where should they go?
Tom:Tomzoellner.com.
Anna:If you can spell that,
Tom:Spell it or pronounce it. T0mz0ellner.com. The latest book is called The Road Was Full of Running for Freedom in the American Civil War.
Anna:Tom, thank you so much for being here.
Tom:It's been fantastic. Thank you.
Anna:Listeners, thank you for being listeners, and I will see you next time. Thanks for listening to behind the book cover. If you loved it, I hope you'll consider liking and subscribing because it helps more people find the show. And look, you can like and subscribe even if you only liked and didn't love it. But if you hated it, you can skip the review or who am I kidding?
Anna:I'll take one from YouTube.
Tom:We'll talk about the money or the lack thereof. The research rabbit holes and who they pissed off behind the book cover. Let's get weird asking the questions that you've always feared.