The Publishing Pie is Getting Bigger, But Not Enough to Keep Up with The Slices

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast

Episode: The Publishing Pie is Getting Bigger, But Not Enough to Keep Up with The Slices

Date: June 15, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Episode Overview

In this engaging and incisive episode, Jeff and Rebecca tackle the rapidly shifting landscape of publishing, with a central focus on the tension between increased book production and stagnant author incomes. The episode covers recent award announcements, book sales trends, the burgeoning audiobook market, and the economics behind author compensation—plus vibrant discussions on “It” books, the power (and limitations) of literary prizes, the diversity (or lack thereof) in current bestseller lists, and the cultural forces shaping reading today.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dilemma of Delayed Book Awards

Starts at 01:54

• Award Fatigue: The hosts express growing frustration with major literary awards (like the Nebulas, Hugos, and Bram Stokers) being announced up to six months into the following year, making them feel disconnected from the current reading conversation.
  • Rebecca: “What are we doing here... I don't want to hear about the year when it's six months later.” [03:18]
  • Jeff: “If you want to vote, you got to do the reading. And if we say votes gotta be in February 1st... It doesn't take a million years to tabulate the votes in this day and age.” [07:43]
• Barnes & Noble’s Discover Award: Contrast with Barnes & Noble debuting their Best Debut Novels list earlier than ever before, releasing finalists in June. Reasons may include publishers’ early submissions and a push to maximize summer sales impact.
  • Rebecca: “This award is a great sales tool and if you drop it in the middle of the summer... you have less competition and it's a great sales technique.” [03:18]
  • Debate over whether earlier announcements are serendipitous or calculated, especially regarding the buzzy pick "Yesteryear."

2. Award Finalists and the “It” Books of 2026

Starts at 10:56

• Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Finalists:
  • Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke
  • Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
  • Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu
  • Waiting on a Friend by Natalie Adler
  • The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn
  • Up Bound by Woody Brown
• Yesteryear is highlighted for dominating discourse and likely sales, with both hosts debating its overall appeal and odds of winning.
  • Jeff: “It is the it book of the year so far because discourse matters and does it now.” [12:13]
• Rebecca on “Up Bound”: Praised for its innovation, authored by a nonverbal autistic writer using assistive technologies—sparking headlines and some contrived "controversies." [11:08]

3. Best Books Lists: Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble

Starts at 18:21

• Amazon’s Best Books So Far:
  • #1: Kin by Tayari Jones
  • #2: London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • #3: Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burke
  • Notable: Night Objects by Eli Raphael, a debut thriller.
  • Observation: Only 2 of 20 top picks by authors of color.
  • Rebecca: “...only two of these 20 books are by people who aren’t white and we should be doing better than that in 2026.” [21:06]
• The “Discourse” Factor: Yesteryear stands out as a social media and book club talking point, even as editors seem hesitant to “claim” it as a personal favorite.
  • Rebecca: “People want to talk about it with each other...it was among the best discussions they'd ever had. That doesn't mean it's a good book, but it means it's doing something.” [21:59]

4. The Audiobook Boom: Growing Fast, Money Spreading Thin

Starts at 25:49

• Big Numbers: 43% increase in active audiobook titles since 2024 (now 750,000+), but only 9% overall revenue growth.
  • Rebecca: “43% increase in active titles… That is a lot of new audiobooks… Some of that is technology.” [27:34]
  • Jeff: “That means that each individual title is doing less business because ... the number of titles [grows faster than] the dollars flowing in.” [28:08]
• PRH & Indie Audio Integration: Penguin Random House is moving to bring indie audio titles into their system, capitalizing on the lack of "shelf space" pressure for the format.
  • Discussion of whether big publishers might expand further into podcasting as audio consumption habits grow.
  • Rebecca: “It would be interesting to me to see publishers just enter the audio space trying to produce interesting podcasts ... that felt less promotional... Publishers do like to draw pretty straight lines between we made this thing and it was supposed to goose the sales for this other thing.” [30:03]

5. Author Incomes: The Shrinking Slice of a Growing Pie

Starts at 34:31

• Authors Guild Survey: Average author income: ~$10,000/year, down 42% since 2009, even as more books are published than ever before.
  • 4 million books published last year; explosion due to self-publishing and digital/AI tools.
  • Rebecca: “When the number of books in the market is quadrupling … you’re not going to be able to buy books at a rate that would let those authors keep the same average earnings because the pie ... is not getting that much bigger. But the number of authors wanting a slice from it has…” [35:52]
• Library Borrows and Ethics: More affluent readers are likely to borrow from libraries. The Guild frames this as a negative; hosts strongly disagree.
  • Rebecca: “No one is entitled to your dollars. No author is entitled to a customer's dollars in their pocket. Using your library is not taking money out of an author's pocket.” [39:41]
  • Jeff: “The library is not the problem. The library, it's your phone, it's the phone, it's TikTok.” [41:09]
• The Bestseller Headwinds: A few top "phenomenon" authors are absorbing an outsized portion of sales, further thinning returns for the median writer.
  • Jeff: “Not only there are more books in the market competing for your dollars, but they're really getting siphoned. The head is getting fatter, which means the middle [is] even skinnier.” [42:21]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Book Award Timeliness:
  Rebecca: “Mid June is too late. Full stop.” [07:33]
• On Publisher Power and Podcasting:
  Rebecca: “Book publishers want to control the messaging around their titles so tightly that they tend to not allow for what kinds of conversations would really be interesting to readers.” [34:21]
• On The Library Debate:
  Rebecca: “The library is for everyone. It is a resource that everyone's taxes support. [...] Authors do not owe you a purchase.” [39:41]
• On Author Earnings vs. Book Glut:
  Jeff: “The pie is growing, but not as fast as the number of people trying to get a slice.” [37:23]
• On Bestseller Dominance:
  Rebecca: “The attention and the dollars are consolidating around a couple of authors and a couple of properties. When ACOTAR 6 comes out in the fall, we're gonna see that happen again.” [42:21]

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Important Timestamps

• [01:54] – Start of main content: Book award calendar complaints
• [11:08] – Run-down of Barnes & Noble Discover Prize finalists
• [18:21] – Amazon’s Best Books of the Year so Far and diversity discussion
• [25:49] – Audiobook industry overview and strategy
• [34:31] – Authors Guild survey on shrinking writer incomes
• [39:41] – Library debate and commentary on book purchasing ethics
• [47:40] – Frontlist Foyer: Discussion of current reads and recent releases

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Frontlist Foyer: Books Discussed

Starts at 47:40

• Strangers by Belle Burden – A buzzy memoir of a high stakes divorce in America’s social elite; hosts discuss its value more for conversation than literary merit.
  • Rebecca: “I don't know if this is a good book, but I think it is an important one. ... She deserves to tell this story.” [54:55]
• Coyote Land by Vanessa Hua – Suburban drama about a Chinese American family during COVID; praised for representation but critiqued for over-explaining its themes.
• Romp by Heidi Island – Marine biologist’s account of a year with otters; charming but not as narratively memorable as more “literary” nonfiction.
• Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin – Sophisticated exploration of class and power in rural Pakistan; compared to Chekhov, expected to be an awards contender.

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Other Noteworthy Moments

• [45:26] – News: Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot headed for adaptation; Reese’s Book Club launches NYC event series; Portland Book Festival expands live experiences.
• [63:12] – News: Gilbert Cruz moves from NYT Book Review to “canon editor” role—new canonical lists (books, music, more) forthcoming.

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Overall Tone & Vibe

• The conversation is playful yet critical, with hosts showing both industry-insider savvy and deep care for reader experience and literary culture.
• The tone is sometimes conspiratorial (debating the true motives of big book retailers), often witty, and always candid—particularly when calling out questionable logic in industry reporting and examining ethics.
• Strong reader-first ethos: repeated reminders that no one should feel guilty for using libraries and that readers, not publishers, set the terms of engagement.

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For More

Check out the show notes at bookriot.com/listen or email the hosts at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Rebecca, I know is thrilled to still have 2025 book awards to talk about. You were just like, you know what? I can't believe we're done with 2020. I'm so sad that it's over. I wish I could just linger longer

[Rebecca Schinsky]

talking about what do you really want to do when the year is halfway over and still be talking about the past year? It makes so much sense. Jeff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, we cannot control when these book awards come out. But I think July 1, I don't care who you are. We're not talking about your book award. We're not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If it's from 2025 and maybe from

[Jeff O'Neill]

before, because just under the, under the wire here. I like the Stoker Awards and the Nebula Awards. Are the Hugo's out? I don't know. These are notable especially in genre and stuff that we don't cover that often. I would hate to just to cut them off at the, at the Nice. Especially since the Nebula Award winner is Stephen Graham Jones, who I interviewed and someone I really like a whole lot. One for the Buffalo Hunter for novel. But boy, Rebecca, I'm with you at this point. Like, get your homework in or I'm not going to grade it. I just don't know what to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I just. What are we doing here? Like, I, I am repeating myself at this point because we've talked about this a couple of times in the last month or so that like, unless you are the Pulitzers and you can't give your awards out until the journalism for the calendar year has closed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't want to hear about the year when it's six months later. And you know what is the best piece of evidence to me that we can talk about the year while the year is still happening is that the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, which celebrates debut novelists, released their finalists for 2026 this week and they're going to announce the winner on June 25th. That's early. Usually it comes out in September or October. They have not said why it's earlier this year. But all of the books that. All six of the books that are finalists have come out already or will be out by June 25th. And my best guess is that the way this works is publishers submit titles, Barnes and Noble to be considered for the Discover Awards. So my best guess is that the committee that determines these with booksellers realized that all of their finalists were actually already out. This award is a great sales tool and if you drop it in the middle of the summer, as opposed to the fall, when all the book awards are coming out, you have less competition and it's a great sales technique. So they have managed to read through all of these submitted debut novels for 2026 and do their finalists on like June 8th. So why are we still talking about 2025? Those submissions work the same way. What are we doing here?

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Nebula and Hugo and then I think the Stoker Award, there's a lot more participation from wider bodies. You know, we talked, I think we were talking about the Hugo, where You can become a member and just vote.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, that's true.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. So you and I, we could become a member of the Hugo American Libraries Association. Maybe we got to do is get involved and get organized and be the change we want to see in the world and start voting for something.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Change the machine from the inside.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right. Yeah. It's either that or it's a p. Forks and torches at the gate. Stephen Graham Jones also wins in these Bram Stoker Awards for best novel. So a double pickup there. I mean, maybe most importantly for us, maybe we have a little skin in the game, which is we need points on the board for the fantasy league draft. So that is something we need to work on to get them. We are. I even felt it was long in the tooth when we did the league draft scoring, but we still were missing some of these things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And we didn't include the genre specific awards like the Hugos and the Nebulas and the Stoker Awards in our fantasy league scoring, partially because those don't overlap very much with the. The general kinds of books we're picking for the league. But also these results do come out so late in the year. I know that it's just like I know you're trying to make it possible for. To do community voting and I support that. Like, can we please find a way to do this earlier? Like, what do you think is a reasonable cutoff March?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, the Oscars is what, February?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Late January.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would like the Pulitzers to be the last thing. Kind of like the Oscars are the last thing for the movie season. I think the Pulitzer should be the last thing for the previous year's cycle. You really need to get in. And that's May, and even that feels late. But like you said, there could be something that comes out in the New York or the Atlantic or Texas monthly or whatever. December 22nd, you want to get the journalism in. I understand that now. Again, there's also no rule written on a stone tablet somewhere. This is. The Pulitzers couldn't have staggered awards where the fiction could be in January, February, and listen, the other things could be later. I don't know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would love that if the Pulitzers could award the fiction. Like could do all the books for the year in the fall when the other big book awards are dropping, and then do journalism in the spring when they've had time to review everything. That would be my preference. I'm sure that they have good reasons for not shaking up their whole schedule and doing that. Like, mid June is too Late is my official gavel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I agree with you, but I'm like, if the I, I would. If I were the Pulitzers and I was thinking both in terms of logistics and timing and sort of trying to strike where the iron start, but also not get caught in all the under the end of the year lists, I think I would carve out February or March. Right. You know, give yourself the prestige spot and you can separate yourself from our list, the New York Times list, the public, like the regular north stuff clear out of that and like make it a special thing that Pulitzers are special. But I think maybe you could do March. I mean, do they need four months to judge the journalism?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I know it's a lot. It's a lot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a lot. It's a lot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But they at least have a reason for it to be. Yeah, don't send me your emails justifying the reasons that these other awards have. Mid June is too late. Full stop. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I, since they are sort of civilian, civilian awards, there's a lot of people in these that don't get access to early review copies. So they may be getting stuff in October, November, new releases that they're not reading for a while. But you know what? If you want to vote, you got to do the reading. And if we say votes got to be in February 1st, I also think, Rebecca, it doesn't take a million years to tabulate the votes in this day and age, so we don't have to do six weeks of calling and all that stuff. I will also say from the Bram Stoker and the Nebula, they are not spending a whole lot of time on design. I'll say that out loud. They're ready to rock and roll.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Put on hazmat suits and wading into the discourse.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes we are. We're going to do that in early July, so we'll both be reading it at the end of our vacations and work travel. If you want to participate, you can do that with us. Over on the Patreon. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash. I think one of the first buzzy books of this year came out in January or February. Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu, which you recently read and enjoyed. Waiting on a friend by Natalie Adler, the Golden Boy by Patricia Finn and Up Bound by Woody Brown, which is the book that had made some headlines. We talked about it a month or so ago because the author is a non verbal autistic person who completed the book using different assistive tools and technologies. That caused some. I'm putting controversy in quotation marks in various places but has been praised for the innovation and just also the story that he tells there. So those are the six finalists. Congratulations to everybody. I know you're happy to see yesteryear because you've been lobbying for how well that book is doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, look, we're talking about it books of the year so far and I was just making the case, I think confirmed in resounding fashion by this inclusion here that it is the it book of the year so far because discourse matters and does it now. We will then adjudicate for ourselves the quality situation. But sometimes the quality can be triumphed by sales. It was a pick. It's been on a bunch of lists. We're just have to wait and see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We are going to keep it out there. I'm glad to see Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash because I have that in the fantasy league.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wonderful. And I really thought about picking up Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu, which stay tuned if is the best books of the year so far about to record? Is that a patreon or is that just going to be out when I'm gone? I can't remember.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's just going to be out while you're gone. That'll be in the main feed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, let's just say I deliberated hard over whether or not to see to include Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu, which I talked about on a previous Frontless way which I really enjoyed. That was quite good. I was glad to see that here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, you can always pick it up in one of our switch debut short story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I get some escalators for that if I were you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do you do there. There is some incentive there. So we'll be watching that in a couple weeks. We'll know who the winner is. I think it will be like is Barnes and Humble going to go just for the discourse or they're going to pick yesteryear?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would bet, I would bet money that it's yesteryear. They want to move units.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Rebecca. Yeah, I know we were. We disagreed on a recent episode about whether they would make yesteryear the book of the year. I think you were saying it has that flavor. I don't think that it has the flavor for, like, wide enough appeal for book of the Year, but if they give it, they can give it Discover and still give it a lot of, like, a lot of juice and a lot of visibility in their stores, and then go with something like Kin by Tayari Jones for book of the Year, which is currently still my front runner, and not just because it was Amazon's number one book of the year so far.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You picked it because I got it in the draft. That's why you're cheering.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, the thing is, I really had to decide how I was gonna approach the Keg of Glory, but I called it that. Amazon was gonna make Kin the number one book of the year so far, and I'm gonna celebrate that. Because you were able to get it in our fantasy league. Only because you had first poll. Because you lost last year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm sorry, there's some. There's a noise in the background. I lost you that. We should probably trundle on here. The award winner will be released on June 25th. So they are. No. Moss is gathering on the long list for the discovery. Can we linger on the time here? You really. I mean, all these are out. Sure. So you again. This is not. This is a civic trial, not a criminal trial. So we do not need unity. We just need the preponderance of the evidence here. Do you think the preponderance of the evidence is. We have read the debuts we are going to consider, and guess what, Theresa? They're all already out. Let's just move this thing up. You think that's what happens?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I really do. I went looking for, like, what is the timeline of the Barnes and Noble Discover Awards? And it's totally possible they made changes that I couldn't find, but the publicly available information that I can find was published in, like, 2012 or 2014 when they started the awards. And it's like, here is how this process works. Publishers can submit by these days, we read things and then we'll announce them. So I haven't come across any publicly announced, hey, we're cycling this up. We're going to release it in the summer also. This would not behoove Barnes and Noble to do. If one of these debut novels that they thought was among the best of the year was coming out in November. It would not behoove them to announce it in the middle of the summer, especially if that was contending a serious contender to win. Because then you're saying this is the best debut novel of the year so far, and you all can't buy it for several months, like right? I guess. Yeah, we'll have. We'll kind of have to wait until next year to have a better sense of this if it goes back to being in the fall. But my just spidey sense is that this was a strike while the iron is hot. If you're a little birdie who knows either who can confirm or deny podcastriot.com

[Jeff O'Neill]

the the methodology here is not transparent, which, whatever. But I I wonder this thing, I don't know if this is more or less craven than what you were suggesting. That would be serendipitous. And they're like let's strike while the iron is hot. But the iron was, I don't know, justly and fairly warmed. Conspiracy Jeff here wonders Yesteryear is selling if we want to make it our Discover pick, shouldn't we just go ahead and do it now?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, it's already at the top of their Best Books of the Year so Far list, which we talked about a week or so ago. Like they don't rank them, but it's the first title listed there, so it's hard not to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But they don't make shelf talkers for Best of the Year so far they do shelf talkers in every Barnes Noble I go into for a Discover Pick of the Year. They could get this out. Now, to your earlier point about the summer buying, you don't think there's going

[Rebecca Schinsky]

to be displays all over Barnes and Noble about the books from their Best of the Year so Far list?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have not seen them to that extent. But the Discover ones, again, the Best of the books that will then go away when it's wiped away in the fall when they pick their best books of the year. This is going to be out front and center and stores until next year. Like a good 12 month run. But yesterday you're out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, if it wins on June 25, then I think we have a little more in the bag for your evidence.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I get and this is not Evans I said this is conspiracy theory and

[Rebecca Schinsky]

it will have a little more evidence for your conspiracy. I love it when you put on the tinfoil hat because it happens so rarely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think publishing conspiracies would be the least trafficked Reddit channel of all time?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think actually that we might be disappointed by how trafficked it would be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, okay. Yeah. If you've got another take on the peculiar timing of the Discover Book Awards, the Stranger, but with some shred of tether to something grounded in external correlative, please shoot us an [e-mail] you were trying to transition to Amazon's best books of the year while I was still. I was. I didn't quite get my yarn takes off.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was just taking my. I was mostly just taking my victory lap.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Amazon did release their best books of the year so far. They do rank the top 20 for which we praise them. And this is Amazon editors. I saw some folks online being like, Amazon has editors and indeed we do this every year. I know the folks at the Amazon Book Review like, and we've interviewed some of them on the show. You've spoken with people about how these lists get made. They read a ton of books and they are thinking not just about sales but about quality. They're doing the same kinds of math that Barnes and Noble is doing. They want to highlight good books that people are likely to buy. And so they started with number one Kin by Tayari Jones, followed by London Falling by Patrick Radden. Keefe Yesteryear Strangers by Belle Burden and Night Objects by Eli Raphael is number five. It is a debut novel kind of in the mystery thriller suspense zone. This is a huge thing to have happen to your debut novel that has not really gotten any other press.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Amazon, I've seen very good reviews for it. I should.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I started reading it last night because I was like, let's go find out. I'm about 50 pages in, so it's too soon to tell, but I like the setup of it. Amazon is good about doing this. With these lists, they will take a moment to highlight some books that have not been that they think are good that haven't been featured in a bunch of other press. The rest of the top 20 is mostly pretty recognizable. Names Land by Maggie O'. Farrell. Let's see.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Shouts to Gabriel. Talent Crux.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, Crux. Jordan. Ridder Khan's American Men. Cherry Baby by Rainbow Owl. Transcription by our boy Ben Lerner.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thrilled to see that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fame Sick by Lena Dunham.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did I get that in the draft? Who got. Who got transcription?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You got transcription, I think. Oh, that's right. I did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Look at that. Fame Sick by Lena Dunham. A Far flung life by M.L. stedman. I just lost my navigation five by Alona Bannister. Into the Blue by Emma Brody. John of John by Douglas Stewart. Love to see it. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth. The Calamity Club by Katherine Stockett. Number 18.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Little bit of a surprise.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is selling well, but the reviews have not been great, so that is really interesting. Homebound by Portia Elan. And Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hawkhouser. Thank you. I need you to make your author names bigger on your book titles.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, if you keep selling Rachel Hawkhouser, maybe you'll get to that point. A lot of Reese's and book club picks here, I should say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And, and a lot of stuff that is like right in our shared wheelhouse. We've been talking about that this year that like it seems that book discourse is sort of reverting back to our mean Romantasy is not taking up nearly as much space.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there a TikTok pick here? Like is there anything friendly to this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yesteryear is on all the discourses. So yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's potentially a TikTok pick. What else? Into the Blue. Into the Blue is doing really well on social. I've seen. Also do just want to note only two of these 20 books are by people who aren't white and we should be doing better than that in 2026.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Amazon, there's plenty of good books out there. I'll talk about some of them later today. I also speaking of conspiracy, Jeff, I guess he's invited in. I can't get him out of the room.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If you look, get all your takes

[Jeff O'Neill]

off before you go on vacation. What the relationship is of the editor's personal favorites to the list. Right. So none of the personal favorite. Well no, that's not true. None of the personal favorites were kin. So maybe they thought because they picked number one, I don't have to shout out for it. But yet someone picked London Falling, which was number two. I think it's weird that no one wanted to put their name behind yesteryear and yet it was number three.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I do think that that goes back to the double incentives that Amazon and then that Barnes and Noble that any retailer has for a list like this where it's a m of highlighting literary quality and highlighting things that are generating sales that you want to pull to your customers attention. So I, I think really the story that we're seeing happen for yesteryear is this book generates discourse. People want to talk about it with each other. Even just this morning when I announced to our Patreon folks like hey, we are going to do this as a book club. A couple people said they had read it with their book clubs and that it was among the best discussions they've ever had. That doesn't mean it's a good book, but it means it's doing something. And so that's kind of what I'm going to read into. We're going to put it on the list, but no editor wants to put their name next to it as their

[Jeff O'Neill]

favorite, which is valuable. I mean, that's a different vector and that definitely is something that goes into the je ne sais quoi of our IT book estimations. And it's a kind of the secret fifth vector. Is, is it have is there something behind it that's interesting for people to think? Does it bring something new and interesting at least into people's living rooms as they're talking over their brunches or wines or whatever they're doing here? Yeah, a good list. I've interviewed Al Woodworth before. These are serious people. Wherever you think about Amazon, and I certainly understand it, you should look at it. I also think looking at the lineup of the editors, you could see something there related to demographics and selections, which is a natural thing that happens. I don't know how, how much, if anything, that comes into discussion here, but there's certainly plenty of worthy candidates. I for my. I'm not doing it from flips foyer now because I'm not done and it's going to be a long time since I get to talk to you again about frontless foyer. Let me say about the first 70 pages of land by Maggie O'. Farrell. I'm not so sure. We'll see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Ah, okay. I was planning to read it this weekend, so maybe we'll. We will have a giant front list foyer when we're both back.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think we've been to a special episode of like let's clean up and put it all in one spot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We should. And in addition, I just want to call out to these top 20 from Amazon. They also have them a bunch of best of lists by category, so biographies and memoir, history, romance, leadership and business, Children's ya middle grade Romantasy. This year they also debuted a list of the best book club selections. Some switcheroos there. Number one is yesteryear. Number two is kin. Number three is London Falling. Number four is transcription, which if you're taking that to your book club,

[Jeff O'Neill]

I need to see your book club. I need to see. I just need to know about it. You don't have to prove anything. You don't have to name five Ben Lerner books. But I'm curious what book club out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a bold book club choice. My hat would be off to anybody who, who wanted to nominate that for like their neighborhood book club and just roll the dice with it. Obviously we love Ben Lerner. We have a bonus episode about transcription. But I found that to be really interesting. We do hear from publishers that there's just a lot of and interest around book club titles because of I think really not the assumption that like people are actually talking about them in their living rooms. But those are the kinds of books that you want to have conversation about

[Jeff O'Neill]

upmarket literary fiction till we die for this kind of stuff. That's just what's going to happen.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Book club title stands in for a lot of those kinds of things. And it's interesting to see that they put yesteryear ahead of kin there any

[Jeff O'Neill]

list that has both yesteryear and and transcription on it is not afraid to do things for better ill. I'll say at the same point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fascinating. It's a fascinating list. So audience. Yeah, I would say that's also I think the last of like the big best of so far lists. New York Times has done it. New Yorker's done it. Barnes and Noble's done it. Amazon has done it. Book riots will be out in July.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I don't know if like Bookshop will have. They tend to not do. Bookshop itself doesn't tend to do it but they will curate and do some other. There's still growing strong. We're not in the double digit growth anymore. This is a report in PW Byline by Ed Nawatka which we cite him a lot on this show. 20.2 2.43 billion according to Audio Publishers associate annual sales survey. More than 750,000 active titles. 43% increase. You know you texted me or DM me I was going to save it for here a new role at PRH which is a VP of Audio strategy. And one of the things they're trying to do is get into self published or indie publishers bringing them into the Penguin Random House fold. And I was thinking about this a little bit. The thing about audiobooks is there is not a shelf space problem. Now you're competing with every other audiobook that exists but unlike print you can put it on your Audible account or wherever and it's just another ISBN. It's just another file on this huge database as a file that people can get. And so the upfront cost to bringing it to mass market through Penguin Ranh House distribution channels digitally is so much lower than everything else. And that is something we saw happen. We've talked about this on the show before of audio first publishers doing very well as the audio boom took off and then the mainstream sort of regular publishers or traditional publishers saying wait a minute, why are we outsourcing our audiobooks to these people when we want it for ourselves. Now we're getting into this other thing which we're coming from the audio native or Audio First Publishers business models directly, not just protecting our own. Right, Rebecca? So that's what I'm kind of seeing here happening at the same time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I want to linger on. 43% increase in active titles over 2024. That is a lot of new audiobooks. It's not the same like 4x increase over the last couple of years that we got in the number of just total books published. Remember, almost four books were published last year. But that's a. That is a big increase and that some of that is technology. And I think holding in mind that the number of available books is increasing rapidly too exponentially is going to be important for one of the other stories. We'll talk about here in a minute.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And as we read between the lines, that means the average title sold fewer copies because revenue grew 9%, but the number of titles grew 43%. So.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I need a little time to do my percentage math here. But like, that means that each individual title is doing less business because there's more titles as outpacing in terms of percentage growth, the dollars flowing in at the same time. General fiction, 27%, science fiction, the Roman, I mean, whatever, humor, general fiction and children's, including ya, were the fastest growing. Audio first publications grew 50% year over year. So that actually did outpace the number of titles. Interesting to see. So this array of growth and how it sort of falls along the P and L. That makes a ton of sense to me for why a traditional publisher is like, we want more of these independent people under our rubric. We want to wet our beak in this and we think we may have something to offer in that particular. This made me think, Rebecca, Spotify into audiobooks because of the war for ears. Is there a world in which a PRH decides to get into podcasting in some way? Like just kind of some other. We're making word content for people now. It's not edited or whatever. Is there some version of this? I'm just, you know, why not grow towards each other? Right. If their strength is going to be the supply side, do they want to be more vertically integrated and have more sort of supply all the way around? I don't know. This is my thought. My orthogonal thought here is like, where is the limits of what a PR might want to do when it comes to audio?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, like prh, most of the big publishers are producing podcasts and have been for years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mostly for publicity purposes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, exactly. For that are they're author interview podcasts that judging by things like the number of ratings and reviews, which are the only publicly visible things that we can use to approximate audience, those shows do not appear to do very well because they are publicity vehicles created by the publisher. Folks just aren't terribly interested in that. But then you get edge. Cases like PRH has produced Namwali Serpell's podcast Passages on Morrison, which you know we talked about with her on Zero to well read recently. And that is it seems to be doing quite well. It's on the Apple Books podcast or Apple Podcast Books chart and each one of those episodes is a stop from her book tour. In conversation about a different one of Toni Morrison's books. I think those kinds of things can do well. It would be interesting to me to see publishers just enter the audio space trying to produce interesting podcasts that are maybe book adjacent or storytelling adjacent but aren't explicit publicity city vehicles. I don't know that we'll see them invest in that. Publishers do like to draw pretty straight lines between we made this thing and it was supposed to goose the sales for this other thing. Did it work or not? But having publishers consider how they compete for people's ears would be I think fascinating to see what they would do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That made me think of it because I was watching, I don't know, one of the HBO shows shows and some of the AAA title HBO shows have a companion podcast. Yes, right. And I was thinking if you have a big book that's coming out, let's just take yesteryear for an example. Would it be interesting on the inside to say there's. We also have a four part mini podcast about this thing with the author, with the editor. Come listen to it now. Sort of supplementary. I'm just trying to think of these other ways people could get to it. I don't know if there's anything there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean I think that would be interesting. Like especially something that you could tack in at the end of the audiobook editions of these of like thanks so much for listening to this Penguin Random House audio production. If you want to hear more about the making of this book, find this podcast or even tap this thing and we'll open the podcast for you. And I think there's potential for some read along kinds of things too. Like Dungeon Crawler Carl. I think it's called hello Crawlers or something. There's a. There is a Dungeon crawler Carl. Read along podcast that's been created by a fan. It's not someone who's associated with the publisher. And it is also doing quite well because those books are everywhere and they are working their way through this. You know, big book series publishers could I think, have an opportunity to get in on that, but they would need to make an effort to like position it with hosts and conversation that was just supplementary and about the thing, but that felt less promotional than most of the author interview shows feel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's going to be a challenge for any of these because I think the, the discussion people want for something like yesteryear is a little more honest and unfiltered than something that a publisher is going to put right next to it. That's, that would be, you know, basically an author interview, which may be good enough by itself. If there's a QR code at the end on Apple podcasts, you can see it there and you can listen to the author talk about the book. And then if someone discovers that feed, there's interviews with all those other people. I think maybe there's some. Maybe, maybe the next step would be better integration of the actual physical book, the ebook and the audiobook in tying it back to some other places where people could go get more seamlessly and then build audiences around those spaces in some.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I think you can, they could. I think it would behoove publishers to be open to something that was a little more interesting than the promotional author interview kinds of conversation. Because if you do think about like the precedent for these podcasts that go with all the big TV shows now were the like after show, actual TV show after shows for things like Game of Thrones. And I believe there was one for the Walking Dead called Talking Dead that Chris Hardwick hosted. And like if you were watching the show live when the episode ended, it would go into the, the live post game analysis basically that had a host who was a media person who was a fan of that property, talking with some of the people associated with the creation. And that person could be like, whoa, that scene. Or like I didn't quite understand this. What were you doing?

[Jeff O'Neill]

How did you decide to do X versus Y and blah blah blah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Book publishers want to control the messaging around their titles so tightly that they tend to not allow for what the kinds of conversations that would really be interesting to readers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, we better trundle along here. Author Gill survey looks at why author income is declining. You mentioned that there might be a, I don't know, a bit of a, A test. What's A tessellated connection where it sort of fits together with what we were just talking about in terms of audiobooks. What did you mean by that? I think I may know, but like,

[Rebecca Schinsky]

why don't you say it first? This survey is interesting and how you interpret it. I think this really is a Rorschach test for where, where we sit in the industry. The Authors Guild has positioned this, which has all kinds of information. But like the, the note that's getting pulled out is that readers earning $75,000 a year or more are the most likely to borrow a book from the library instead of buying it. The Authors Guild seems to think like those people are doing something wrong. They should be buying their books. Publishers Lunch kind of broke this down today. And I'm not going to pull a lot of that language because that's behind a paywall and that's a paywall.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Go subscribe if you like it. They do a hell of a job over there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Exactly. That's a paywall worth paying for. But you get interesting information here about the average author. Earnings are now pegged at about $10,000 annually. And that's declined 42% since 2009, which the report notes is the year that Kendall's entered the March market. Correlation? Sure. Causation questionable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Breaking down the source of where print and ebooks are bought, the survey found that 19% of books in text that's either print or ebook read in just the prior month. And so that prior month piece is an important part of the framing too. While 6% were obtained through a paid subscription and that those paid subscriptions entail lower royalties for authors. The most popular way that readers obtained their most recent book book was at the library. With 29% of readers doing library borrowing, 10% bought them used. 16% borrowed it for free from another source. 19% were from personal collections. And I understand why authors and then the Author's Guild are concerned to see author incomes declining. But when the number of books in the market is quadrupling in like a five year period and we're talking about 4 million books last year, like there are more books. So the like, it stands to reason that unless consumers are getting buying power that increases in tandem with the way the market is increasing. And also if buyers attention is expanding at the same rate that the market is expanding, which it is not, we all only have 24 hours in a day and most people's income is not quadrupling. You're not going to be able to like, like still buy, to buy books at A rate that would let those authors keep the same average earnings because the pie, like the dollar pie is not getting that much bigger. But the number of authors wanting a slice from it has quite.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There it is right there. That is because that's what self publishing makes happen. Right? It's no surprise. It's not the technology, it's that people are self publishing. So there's, there is more money money flowing into. There are more dollars now than in 20,000 in 2009 flowing into author's pocket like by quite a bit frankly, because we didn't, we weren't talking about audiobooks back then which a lot of people are getting in on. So I think it makes sense. You're right that the pie is growing, but not as fast as the number of people trying to get a slice on that particular side. And the to pinpoint library libraries. I, I'm kind of in the middle on the library thing. I've done a lot of work on the library stuff. I've talked to Giganzales, we did stuff for Annotated back in the day about library borrowing and how all this stuff works. I don't know what the equilibrium equilibrium is where we have public library libraries that are available and they're thriving and they're active and they serve their communities versus the publishing industry and authors subsidizing that beyond what is reasonable or expected. I, I honestly don't know what the answer is especially when it comes to digital files because they are in theory infinitely borrowable where a physical book in the old days would wear out or lift a while there was like a logistical thing of thing turning things back and forth. And I will say and I was talking to my son Ames today about he wanted to listen to an audiobook. It's like I'm just going to go to Libby and find something. It's, it's, it's very easy. So I'm sympathetic to the is money coming out of our pockets argument but I also need some more evidence other than other than people who make $75,000 or more are more likely because one thing I know about libraries is they actually I think Kwaiza kept has a higher socioeconomic socioeconomic demographic than people might express because upper middle class people, and I'm raising my hand here on video right here, love their libraries as well. And people who love books tend to have a different demographic. So I think there's several things that go into that same argument. But I think this problem of how to compensate authors for the work that's distributed in libraries and how easy and how many. I think it's a very, very difficult problem and I don't have a good answer to it to be quite honest.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I'm not sure that that's actually the question we should be trying to answer or that the industry should be trying to answer. I think some of this goes to there are too many damn books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are too many books. And I know that publishers are diversifying the catalogs that they have because every book you publish is a ticket to the casino or a ticket to the lotter and they're hoping that having more tickets means that they have more chances to win. But there are so many books out competing for readers attention in dollars and contributing to that glut means that it's more difficult for any one title to attract enough attention and enough buyers to create meaningful sales. Another important part of this too is no one is entitled to your dollars. No author is entitled to a customer's dollars in their pocket. Using your library is not taking money out of an author's pocket. That author is not entitled to that. Like the library setup is set up the way that it is. Just because you make a certain amount of money doesn't mean that you're morally obligated to buy your books instead of going to the library. And that framing really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The publisher's lunch piece I thought did a nice job addressing this. Like the library is for everyone. It is a resource that everyone's taxes support. Support and publishing can address this in some ways if they were willing to decrease the volume of titles they put out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But some of it too is an attitude correction I think for authors like understand that having living, making your living on book sales is exceedingly rare and that readers do not owe you a purchase.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the library is not the problem. The library, it's your phone, it's the phone, it's tick tock.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's these other these non purchase sources that are mentioned in the survey of like they're borrowing from the library, they're borrowing from each other. People are sharing books or they're buying used or they're reading books from their own personal collections. These are all legal ways.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I was like welcome to the 19th century. Like the hot innovations of lens of having personal having enough disposable income to buy books. I think another thing and I don't know, I wonder if someone who knows more about the histories of book sales would know my in the age of the social media phenomenon it are the Top selling. Like the real phenomenons the. The Court of Thorns and Roses, the Yarrows, the Sunrise, the Reaping, are those selling more relative to the median title. Because that's another thing that could happen is if there are more titles and the top titles are pulling more of the dollars away, that would mean there'd be even fewer dollars for the median book to have. Like when Freedom McFadden has six of the top 10 selling books of the year and then Colleen Hoover did. That suggests to me that not only there are more books in the market competing for your dollars, but they're really getting siphoned. The head is getting fatter, which means the middle even skinnier.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's happening right now. Elle Kennedy has three of the top 10 books on the New York Times bestseller list for her Off Campus series, which is another, like hockey romance that's running on Amazon prime right now. Frida McFadden has several books on the bestseller list. Matt Deniman has several Dungeon Crawler Carl books on the bestseller list. Like the Attention and the Dollars are consolidating around a couple of authors and a couple of properties. When ACOTAR 6 comes out in the fall, we're gonna see that happen again. And it's like I. I do think that there's something to that. That if we could do some sort of moderated comparison between pre standard deviation

[Jeff O'Neill]

of is like the top 10 selling titles vers gap.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The gap between the 90th percentile and the 50th percentile I do think is a lot more significant than it used

[Jeff O'Neill]

to be because that's a new thing under the sun. Even since we've been doing the show, to have not. Not just two books on the Bessler, but like four. Like that's. I don't. To my knowledge, that's never happened in the history of keeping tracks of book sales because of the way Backlist happens

[Rebecca Schinsky]

for a minute when 50 shades of gray was happening.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, because they were all out at the same time or within short order.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. Because Random House was able to put. Put all three of those out at the same time, but those sold so well that every Random House employee from the top to the bottom took home a $5,000 bonus that year. And those total sales do not exceed like what Rebecca Yarros and Acotar have done in the last year. It's just publishing is. Can't afford to splash out that way anymore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Bloomsbury has to make notes in their earnings report whether or not they've got a new Moss book coming out this quarter or not. Like that's how much it is affects the company's bottom line.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Couple quick notes. Marriage Plot is getting adaptation. We're just talking about eugenity somewhere. I don't remember where. It's like does anyone read Marriage Plot? And I don't know if we called it into being, but it looks like we're gonna have a fanning involved or a sink. I can't remember. I'm not looking at the thing. I was just going from memory. Reese's Book Club is also launching a fan fest and I just got a PR reference released today from the Portland Lurie Arts Festival Book fest. Pardon me. And they are expanding. They sold out in the fall and they're doing like a whole bunch of more stuff with like food events and cocktail hours. The people yearn to be with each other around books and Reese is going to get involved in this. I am less interested in the Reese thing than my local one because my opinion of the Reese's Book Club. This is like a celebrity driven thing that's collecting some stuff. But Portland expanding in person, live events given the state of the city and Covid is extremely exciting to me right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah It's a good sign. The Reese thing is not surprising. Jenna Bush Hager launched a Read with Jenna like three day book festival in Nashville last year that sold out and did very well. And this Reese thing is four different events across the summer. The first one is June 16th. They're all in New York and it's like one a month for June, July, August, September, featuring conversations and book signings with Reese's Book Club authors. It's being sponsored by Target. So like Reese's Book Club is making their money there whether you buy a ticket to it or not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. So there's that. All right, let's do Frontless Foyer brought to you by Thriftbooks. Thriftbooks is where you can get all your print books for sure. And you know you can buy a used one that is allowed Authors Guild just to put it out there for you there and you get free shipping on orders of 15 or more new books, used books. And I should just say go check out the prices because I think you're going to find that if you're the kind of person that likes to buy print and you like to be online because you get a little bit of a haircut off the price, but there's a particular retailer you're not interested in supporting, not going to name any names. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how competitive Thriftbooks could be. It's also got DVDs and Blu Rays because physical media is coming back. I think we should bring our Blu Ray to an in person event and really do the full analog lifestyle. Rebecca here. At some point you could get both of those things. Things from thriftbooks.com thanks to them for sponsoring front list foyer. What have you been reading?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just finished listening to Strangers by Belle Burden.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Sick.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Knew I was gonna get there. It's only like seven and a half hours on audio so I don't know what I was waiting for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Less than half of your Spotify credit. For all of you wondering just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's where I listened to it. It is included on Spotify Premium in case I don't know you've been living under a rock. Strangers by Bell Burden is the year in. It is subtitled A memoir of Marriage but it is the year's big buzzy divorce novel. It's buzzy for a couple of reasons. She comes from generational money like you will recognize her parents and grandparents names and then her husband became a fancy hedge fund guy over the course of their marriage. So this was a high financial stakes divorce. But really what Makes the story. I think so. Jaw dropping. The first thing about it, at least that got people talking about it, is it's early Covid when this happens. They have gone to their house on Martha's Vineyard to quarantine with their three kids. And she gets a text from someone who says, hey, I'm looking for Belle. I'm so sorry to tell you my wife is having an affair with your husband. Rough her husband.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Hate to hear it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You do. Her husband confirms this, says, it didn't mean anything. You're the one I want, Everything's fine. And then like shortly after, just turns tail and leaves and calls her and says, actually, I don't want any of it. You can have the kids, you can have the houses. It's like a switch has flipped in me, and I don't want this life that we've been living together for 25 years. So she is alone with their three children in early Covid with a now ex husband and father who doesn't want anything to with do with the family, really. And she had no warning. They had never had any conversations where he indicated that he was unhappy when he was with the kids. He seemed lovely and engaged. They were a couple that other couples around them looked up to. And this book is her working that out. You know, like, she never gets closure from him. He can never articulate for her what changed or, like, you know, why he never said anything to her. There's also a lot of financial shenanigans, like a prenup that should or should not have gotten nullified, things she agreed to for the prenup that she regrets agreeing to ways that he protected his money, at least in her telling from that. Like, that made the run up to finalizing their divorce very messy. And there's of course, been a ton of discourse around this too, because people like to hate on rich people. She's a woman who has told a story about a thing that happened to her. And I wanted to. I just wanted to have my own take on it. And my take is this. I don't care in what ways she might have exaggerated or glossed over details. This man is garbage, and she deserves to tell this story. And she really articulates near the end of the book like she comes from a part of society that has traditionally valued not talking about these things. Men behaved badly, generationally, in like, upper crusty, wealthy white societies. And they protected each other, but also, also the women around them protected those men because you don't want to rock the boat and you don't want anyone to be embarrassed and you also just like, don't want it to be contagious. And even a thing that I've seen in my middle class circles is that when there is a divorce, the single woman gets ostracized from her social circles. Often that like single women stop getting invited to dinner parties because people just don't know what to do with a divorced woman. And she was bell burden just decides like, screw it, I'm going to say the thing, and just starts telling people what happened. He asks her initially to agree on messaging, to say like this, to basically to say that they've consciously uncoupled. And she's like, I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna tell them that you left me and that you don't want anything to do with our kids. He never pursued any custody. There are no arrangements. There have been no dinners. There have been no vacations.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, boy, his kids memoirs are gonna be really something in 20 years.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He sees them for dinner occasionally, but there have been no overnights at his apartment. There have been no vacations. Like, this is egregious to leave a person in this way. And if the thing that you need to do to push back against your own narrative about relationships and your personal value and how to claim power is right about it, tell the story, lady. I'm all for it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm agree. I. I'm with you on that particular point for sure. Like I have seen in my own social circles over the. The last decade as people have gone through their first marriages, you know, some for good and some for ill. There is an a desire in the Midwesternness that in my world might be a little bit different of just like not wanting to make your stuff public because it's seen as ghost or otherwise. What you keep that stuff private. But a lot of times it is the woman. Not always, but a lot of times, most of the time it's the woman that is asked to cover or euphemize or it just didn't work out or, you know, that kind of thing. Thing. But I think, like, in any situation, like Anne Lamott says, if you wanted to talk about you better, you should have treated him better. Yes. And that's. You own your story and you get to talk about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You don't have to if you don't want to deal with that smoke either, because she certainly is. You certainly don't have to get a huge book advance to tell your story. That's a different situation. Which again, that's up to her. And people can have thoughts about that. But in terms of saying, here's what happened, I think you're right. I think, like talking about money itself in any situation, it removes some of the stigma. It lets people connect with other people's stories. It gives them some sense, but also maybe it prevents this sort of stuff happening. It can be blindsided, or they have some tools to deal with it, or. I'm not the only one. Because a lot of things that happen behind those. The thing about being behind closed doors is you're the only one there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's the most difficult thing about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And the book came out of a Modern Love column that she wrote for the New York Times, which she had, I think, written and submitted before the divorce was final. But part of getting published in Modern Love is that you're you. If the person you're writing about is still alive, live, you have to share it with them before the Times will finalize.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They don't want to get sued. Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, it might. That person's reaction might not prevent the publication. But like, the Times wants you to have disclosed it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And their divorce is finalized by the time she shares it with him. But everyone around her is like, aren't you scared of doing this? Can. Is there any way that he can retroactively change your settlement? Aren't you. Don't you think that he might punish you for this? And that women are usually the disadvantaged parties in divorces between straight couples. And there's a lot of financial incentive to just be quiet about things because being able to continue caring for your family is on the line. He had not wanted her to work outside the home once they had kids because it was important for someone to be around and he was working hedge fund hours. So she. She's a trained attorney, but she had only been doing pro bono work for like 15 years. So she did not have. Have. And she had. Oh, I'm so mad about this, Jeff. She had used her trusts to buy their houses, but she had made him a co owner on them.

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No.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And he made his hedge fund money, but kept it all in accounts just with his name on it, which, according to the terms of their prenup, would have allowed him to not give her anything. So they go to court. I. Okay, so to the front list. Foyer of it all. I don't know if this is a good book, but I think it is an important one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, that's useful. Yeah. That's useful distinction.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I don't know if Bell Burden has another book in her. I think that's the question for me. Like, the writing was smooth. It had this frame device that I did not like about this osprey pair that were in their yard. And like, each major section of the book opens with them observing, or her observing the pair of ospreys because they tend to mate for life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it's like, no, we don't need that. I agree with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a tortured symbol that she does not need. But I'm curious. Like, I will read Bell Burden's next book and see what she's got going on there. But I think this is a really powerful and feminist act to have written this. And it doesn't matter. Like, there's not a tax bracket that can protect you from that kind of heartbreak or insulate you from a person behaving really badly. And men have been allowed to behave in this way for way too long.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So there's a story in Seek immediate shelter, not to spoil it, where a father walks away from the family and just sort of disappears. It happens. It happens. And I don't know. I mean, it seems. It's. It's like saying you pulled a giraffe out of your mouth. That seems as likely to me as something that would actually happen. You know, like, it just is so beyond the pale of what I can imagine. But that's interesting to see, and I think that maybe is the best kind of case I've heard, for it is entered into the public sort of emotional record of things that can happen and how you can deal with it. That's super valuable at the same time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You had something else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. I'll just. A quick hit for Coyote Land by Vanessa Hua, which is a novel about a Chinese American family who move into the suburbs outside of San Francisco. It's in the early days of COVID as well. The. They are moving into a house that dad has purchased because he's going to flip it. And he's doing this in a business partnership with a friend of his who lives overseas. But what the family doesn't know is that the dad has lost his job, like his day job, and is increasingly desperate to not tell the family that he has lost his job. While he's scrambling to try to flip this house, they're also interacting with the mostly white neighbors. So you get the sort of like, HOA president kind of figure and the. Really, the. The swim team parents that are way too into it. And then there are like, the two black girls from the high school are also given a lot of screen time. So it moves around. It's like suburban drama. I picked it up because the comp titles were for Celeste Ng and Emma Straub, which is a really interesting yes pair where Ing does like kind of domestic suspense or suburban suspense and there's usually a mystery at the center of it. And then Stroud tends to be like lighter and fluffier but concerned with with family relationships. I didn't find this to be a solid execution of really either of those. There's not like a a big thriller or suspense component to it. It's really like a portrait of these people in this place which can be useful. I I found it also to be like the there are actual coyotes, but the coyotes are clearly a symbol for predatory stuff and racist stuff that's happening in town. And there was way too much just like saying of the point for me I could see a good book in there but wa just hung a lantern too directly onto like and these are things that pe that brown people face and these are things that this in a way that to me feels like it doesn't give the reader enough credit. So I I'm going to go for like fine, but not great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've got a couple to talk about. On audio I listened to Romp by Heidi island which is. She is a marine biologist and she is spends a year narrating her study on sabbatical studying a family of otters on Whidbey island which is two shouts for Whidbey island on the yeah. This year I've not heard of this book. It's fun, it's short, it's like six and a half hours. You learn a lot about otters and it's charming in the scientific life I think. I'm glad I read it. I just have been reading Sedaris. We read Bourdain recently for an upcoming zero to a well just to to spoil it. And in that one of the office hours we were talking about like books about people's work that are elevated or their lives or their quotidian lives. It's non fiction that's elevated because on the writing side, on the idea side and execution that's something special. This is well done. But there weren't particular moments. I could imagine a different sort of comic voice, a different kind of voice making some hay over like scuba diving and these algae radiant ponds and not being able to see anything just in example of that right where it becomes I don't know something other than the Chronicle. And the Chronicle is interesting but I just found myself like, it's hard to do both and it's rare. And so when you talk about Bourdain or someone like that, that can do both, that's why we jump up and down and get excited. But if you're interested in this kind of thing, it was a lot of fun. Romp is of course, one of these several plural nouns given to. To a family of otters. Where the Serpent Lives by Daniel Muin? N Newton. I've tried this. I've got that completely wrong. I'm so sorry. To the entire sort of Pakistani community. This is the new novel.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That came out this earlier this year. His first book, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, which is not easy to do for debut short stories collection. As we have talked about several times, this is largely set in rural Pakistan, but on the estates of. I don't know what they call them. Landed gentry, generational wealth. I don't know enough about the social class to know, but like, these are people that are part of the highest caste system, but because of the way the world works, they do have in their households, in their lives, people from lower caste, different socioeconomic lives, strata that are intimately involved in their lives. And so what happens when one of them becomes something less than family, more than a servant, who starts to see how they operate and think they know them, but then also has ambitions of their own? It's really, really interesting. I didn't read any of the reviews or anything beforehand, but afterhand I saw New York Times. Dwight Garner said it reminds him of Chekhov and some of the Russian stuff about class.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That made a lot of sense to me because it's extraordinarily controlled. That's one thing you and I really like someone who's a really firm task. He knows this world intimately and is willing to, like, give it this letter of precision. There's an emotional acuity, not emotional, like observational acuity, of the emotional traffic between people that are around these kinds of vectors that, you know, Americans especially, I'll throw you and me, with your class and education, we don't really know this, but we know that each milou has its own topography around these things. So you're seeing this world be put together and then I don't want to give anything away because the ending is quite amazing. It's the most gripping novel about cucumber farming I've ever read. I can say that I can. I. I'll put on the limb and say that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A sentence for a Book cover if ever I've heard one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But it's really, really good. Now again, the first 50 or 60 pages took me a little while to get into it. I didn't know really what I was in for, but in hindsight I saw the ground that was being established. We're getting the deep background on some of these characters and you follow them in and around and I thought was really terrific. I oh, I'm so. I will not be surprised to see it win, be on the short list, long list for all the ends of the awards. I know it was on a lot of people's radar because of the first book and I see no reason to I this. There's no reason to think it's going to do any worse. You know, things happen, it's random, blah, blah, blah. But the goods are there if someone wants to traffic at them. So that's where this is where the serpent lives. Some great Bible reference stuff between the title and a meaningful reveal I won't spoil at this particular time. So that's what I'm up to. I'm going to be off for a little while. You'll hear me pop in and out and prerecorded things. What's up next weekend?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Zero to well read My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. The number one book of the century so far. Question mark.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, speaking of that list was curated by Gilbert Cruz, who is moving from the New York Times book reviewed editor to be the role as canon editor. A new role doing a new role of canon editor to do a whole bunch of fancy curation, sourcing organization of things around sort of the great artistic works. I don't. Did you see, was he involved in that songwriting one too? Did you see if he's a byline.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know if he was directly involved in it, but the announcement that he was taking this canon being given this canon editor role or that it was created for him hinged on that he was. He's the guy who recognized there's an opportunity to make these canonical lists that of course started with the best books of the century. But the Times has spun this out to like the best albums of the century so far. They just recently had a list about the best American songwriters. So there's a lot of interesting stuff. And I know he's going to be assembling a whole new team. So it's like get the. Get the Avengers together, figure out who they are and get them together to do this project. I'm really curious and excited for whatever he's going to do and just friend of the show. So congratulations and best wishes to Gilbert.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we look forward to seeing what happens over there. And I guess it proves my earlier contention that that particular list changed the game. We've seen some people imitate it and work around it, but using the full journalistic and impertur resources of the Gray lady to do the best version of a listicle that can possibly be done makes a ton of sense to me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I will they like the functionality that they were able to build around those because they is really good. They have the tech that the New York Times can get. Like I go back to their list of the best the hundred best movies of the century so far to be like, oh yeah, these are ones that I still want to tick off, like when I'm not going to the theater on a given weekend, but I want to watch a movie at home. It's been it's just an incredible resource and he deserves those accolades, so we're happy to see it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, so we'll watch what he does over there with great interest. You can find [e-mail] listen for show notes. Use an email at zero to well red nope podcast epoch.com hey, they go

[Rebecca Schinsky]

to the same inbox, so actually, yeah, they do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I like to at least feel like I have some sense of where I am in the podcasting space anytime. Not always successful Rebecca, thank you so much.

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