Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Shana Hallam asks Gary… My husband and I have enjoyed your podcast since the beginning. Thanks so much for enlightening us to the world around us. As many have asked you about the possibility of writing a book about your podcast, I wanted to know what it takes to write a book, get it published, and be on the New York Times bestseller list.

Book publishing has sort of become a ridiculous industry. More and more people are bypassing publishers. Publishers are incredibly slow, do a horrible job of picking what books will be popular, and don’t even do much in terms of promotion. The author has to do most of the work.

The number of sales to make it on the NYT bestseller list is shockingly low. As few as 5,000 sales can be enough for a non-fiction book to make the list. As such, many authors have cooked up all sorts of schemes to get on the list, including buying their own book or using a book as a way to launder bribes.

I really don’t want to shop my book around and go through the process. Throughout my life, I have consistently struggled with systems that rely on gatekeepers, so my inclination is to just publish it independently.