Planet Money Wrote a Book And Then Dissected The Business of Publishing!

Summary

Podcast Summary:

On the Media Midweek: Planet Money Wrote a Book And Then Dissected The Business of Publishing!
Date: April 15, 2026
Hosts: Michael Olinger (On the Media), Alexei Horowitz-Ghazi, Alex Goldmark (Planet Money), featuring guests Tom Mayer (W.W. Norton), Laura Nolan & Jane Von Mehren (literary agents)
Main Theme:
This episode presents Planet Money’s exploration into the opaque and dramatic world of book publishing—with a meta twist: they went through the process of selling their own book and documented the high-stakes behind-the-scenes action. The story covers the genesis of the Planet Money book, the roles of agents and publishers, the consolidation of the publishing business, and the nail-biting, multi-million dollar auction to sell the rights—all while reflecting on how stories and markets collide in the culture industry.

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Main Sections & Key Discussion Points

1. The Hidden Economy of Books

• [01:30-03:58]
  • Premise: Alexei Horowitz-Ghazi embarks on an investigation into the process and economics behind getting a book published, beginning with Planet Money’s own foray into book-making.
  • Quote: "We live in a world built by books, and yet the economic machine that produces them is shrouded in mystery." (Alexei Horowitz-Ghazi, 03:54)
  • Media Context: Even in the social media/video podcast age, books remain a central, influential cultural technology.

2. Why a Planet Money Book?

• [03:58-08:23]
  • The idea is sparked externally when NPR’s retained literary agents, Laura Nolan and Jane Von Mehren, approach Planet Money as a hot prospect due to their track record in branded content (comic books, live performances).
  • Quote: "We are always thinking, is this idea a book? ...Everything is processed through this lens of is this a book or not?" (Jane/Laura, 06:34)
  • Agents see the show’s engaged audience and creative projects as proof of concept for a potential best-seller.

3. Agents and the Art of the Book Proposal

• [08:23-11:43]
  • Proposal Process: Agents and PM producers brainstorm broad, marketable concepts. Narrow, quirky ideas are set aside in favor of an accessible “field guide to the global economy.”
  • Quote: "The key to selling a big book these days...is figuring out a broad frame that appeals to as many people as possible." (Narrator, 09:02)
  • Alex Mayassi is tapped to write the proposal after an opportune outreach.

4. Courting Publishers: How the Industry Really Works

• [11:43-14:43]
  • Industry Structure: The U.S. publishing industry is dominated by “the Big Five” conglomerates, alongside a handful of large independents like Norton (“the literary dolphin” vs. the “whales”).
  • Publishing has shifted toward safe bets—authors with existing platforms and audiences.
  • Quote: "Publishing is a power law business. 20% of the books make 80% of the money. Many, many books don't sell." (Tom Mayer, 16:45)

5. Pitching Editors: Art, Risk, and Gatekeeping

• [14:43-19:33]
  • Role of Editors: Editors like Tom Mayer are gatekeepers, selecting a tiny fraction of the hundreds of proposals they receive. Most won’t read anything unless it comes vetted by an agent.
  • Tom reflects on the emotional high of seeking the “sparkle”, the next big literary hit.
  • Quote: "Out of 500 proposals, I end up buying 10 or 12 a year." (Tom Mayer, 18:08)
  • Memorable Moment: “I want that uncut nonfiction.” (Tom Mayer, 19:33)

6. The Publisher Dating Game: Meetings, Pitches, and FOMO

• [21:57-23:28]
  • Strong demand: 23 publishers expressed interest, leading to a “Zoom speed dating” gauntlet—23 meetings in four days.
  • Different publishers pitch unique visions; competition is so heated that an “auction” is inevitable.

7. Auctioning the Book: Strategy, Psychology, and Bidding

• [26:20-32:37]
  • The auction is mostly an email affair, but the strategy and drama run high.
  • Auction Formats:
    • Round Robin: Slow and rational; agents may favor to drive up price.
    • One-Round Best Bid: Fast, risky, minimal information, potentially irrational results.
    • Wedding Cake (Two-Round Best Bid): The approach chosen for the Planet Money book—top four advance, then final two, ultimately decided by “beauty contest” factors.
    • Quote: "In the wedding cake auction...the top four bidders advance to the second round...often there will be a third round..." (Tom Mayer, 29:22)
  • Comps: Bidders look at comparable books for sales projections (e.g., 99% Invisible’s book).

8. The Publisher’s Dilemma: Money, Risk, and Emotion

• [32:37-38:06]
  • Norton, as an employee-owned independent, must carefully weigh the risks (not “playing with house money”).
  • First-round bidding: 16 offers, top 10 advance.
  • Editors face the “winner’s curse”—fear of overpaying in a hyper-competitive auction.
  • Emotional stakes are likened to a bidding war over a house—if you win, relief and anxiety ensue; if you lose, potential regret.
  • Quote: "Every editor has memories of books that they've lost...you're kicking yourself for the rest of your life." (Tom Mayer, 37:49)

9. The Beauty Contest: Choosing the Publisher

• [38:06-40:54]
  • Final two: Norton (“the dolphin”) vs. a Big Five whale.
  • The Big Five offers more money and a high-profile rollout; Norton offers a full-color book and a rare play: integration into educational courseware/textbook sales.
  • Quote: "We really liked [Norton's] educational pitch because, like, we have an educational mission, right? ... But there was no apples to apples to make." (Alex Goldmark, 40:15)
  • The final decision balances mission, reach, and money.

10. The Deal is Closed: Aftermath and Reflections

• [40:54-44:34]
  • Alex Goldmark chooses Norton for their educational approach.
  • Tom Mayer celebrates the tense victory.
  • Quote: "It was seven figures, as Norton put in a press release ... more than a million dollars but less than two." (Alex Goldmark, 43:06)
  • The advance is large (industry surveys put the average “major deal” at ~$60,000, this was much higher).
  • Agents “walk the bride down the aisle,” then step back as the editor/writer marriage begins.

11. The Book Begins: The Real Hard Part Starts

• [44:34-45:00]
  • The day after the auction, reality sets in—now it’s time to actually make the book, akin to the first day after a wedding.
  • The next phase: crafting the manuscript and executing the vision.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Goals of Book Publishing:
  • “The ways in which the invisible hand determines what books actually get made.” (Alexei Horowitz-Ghazi, 03:58)
• On Selling Out vs. Mission:
  • “Making money was not the point. But here, with the Planet Money book, NPR seemed to smell an opportunity.” (Narrator, 05:06)
• On Editor’s Selection Odds:
  • “Out of 500 proposals, I end up buying 10 or 12 a year.” (Tom Mayer, 18:08)
• On Auction Anxiety:
  • "That's both a cool feeling and a scary feeling, because you're like, yeah, we're winning. But also, oh, my God, did I pay too much?" (Tom Mayer, 36:24)
• On Book Auctions as Relationships:
  • “It does feel a little bit like getting in a bidding war over a house.” (Alex, 37:31)
  • “The beauty contest...Did the author like you? ...Is your plan better than somebody else?” (Tom Mayer, 38:34)

---

Key Timestamps for Segments

• [01:30] — Introduction of the Planet Money book project
• [04:46] — Why write a book? The agents approach NPR
• [06:00] — The agents’ mindset: always asking “is it a book?”
• [09:02] — The importance of a broad frame in selling nonfiction
• [11:38] — Writing and refining the book proposal
• [14:43] — The “whales” and “dolphins” of Big Five vs. Norton
• [16:08] — Publishing as a risky, power-law business
• [18:08] — Editor’s odds: only 2% of agented proposals are acquired
• [19:33] — “I want that uncut nonfiction.”
• [22:18] — 23 publishers vie for a meeting—Zoom speed dating
• [26:27] — Auction formats explained
• [29:22] — The “wedding cake” auction begins
• [33:22] — First round of bidding—nerves and strategies
• [36:24] — Winner’s Curse sets in
• [38:34] — The final beauty contest: publisher visions compared
• [41:11] — The moment Norton wins
• [43:06] — The seven-figure deal, “more than a million, less than two”
• [44:34] — The challenge: now to actually write the book

---

Episode Tone and Style

• Warm, witty, and meta: The hosts and guests embrace the oddness of covering their own story, lacing insights with humor (e.g., “50 Shades of Green” as a book concept, or likening the process to marriage).
• Behind-the-scenes candor: Literary agents and editors are candid about risks, emotions, and secrets (especially the industry's hush-hush approach to advances).
• Robust, anecdotal, accessible: Complex business mechanics (auctions, industry structure) are explained through colorful metaphors (“whale”, “dolphin”, “wedding cake”).

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Conclusion

This episode provides a unique, self-aware, and highly entertaining crash course in how books are bought and sold in today’s media ecosystem. It demystifies the work of agents, editors, and publishers, showing how market forces, personal relationships, and plain old luck combine to decide what stories make it onto the shelves. From secretive bidding wars to the emotional rollercoaster for all involved, listeners learn that the book industry—despite its genteel outward image—is as competitive and unpredictable as any in media.

Don’t miss:

• The emotional high stakes (“winner’s curse”, “beauty contest”) for editors
• The economics and risk calculations behind every bid
• The unexpected power of literary agents as matchmakers and strategists
• The rare transparency on seven-figure deals and what truly matters in choosing a publisher

For next week: The episode leaves off with the challenge of actually making the book—promising further backstage media intrigue and insight.

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Ideal for:
Anyone curious about how books get made, or how a podcast team can “walk the walk” and expose the business of storytelling by telling their own.

Transcript

[WNYC Studios Announcer]

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[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

It's the Smuckers Uncrustables Radio Hour with round, soft pillowy bread filled with delicious PB&J. Here's your host Uncrustables caller on line three. What's eating you? No one crust. Is that you? Ugh. Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, crust. Oh my gosh.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Have you been to Marshall's lately? They have all the brand name and designer pieces you love, but without the

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

jaw dropping price tags. Alright, so here's the you should never have to compromise between quality and price. And at Marshall's, you don't have to.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Marshall's believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff and that's why their buyers

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

hustle around the clock. To make it happen for you, visit a Marshalls store near you or shop

[Michael Olinger]

[e-mail] hey, you're listening to the on the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Oinger. Every now and then in this time slot, we bring you something that was made by another audio team. This week we're presenting you with an episode of the NPR show Planet Money. They're three episodes into a five episode series all about the book industry. It's very media and we think you're

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

going to love it.

[Michael Olinger]

To explain the premise, here's the host of the series, Alexei Horowitz Ghazi For

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

a long time, whenever I entered the cozy refuge of an independent bookstore, I couldn't help but suspect that there was this whole hidden world, this whole economy, lurking behind the bookshelves. And I know in the era of TikTok and polymarket and video podcasting, it can be easy to overlook the humble book. But it is undeniable. Books are one of the most influential technologies ever. From the wealth of nations and Das Kapital to the Art of the Deal or Dreams for my father, books can make us all lean in one day, or suddenly everyone you know is finding life changing magic and tidying up. Even if you haven't picked up a book in years, the forces that shape the marketplace for books have the power to shape everything else in your life. They shape the ideas that make it to the masses. So last year, when my boss informed the team in an editorial meeting that the Planet Money Book, which had been in the works for a while, was now hurtling toward publication. I found myself leaning in. The question on my boss's mind was this. Would anyone on the team like to report out how the book got made to see what it might tell us about the business of books? Would anyone raise their hand? And when I heard the call to tell the tale of the Planet Money book, what do you think I did, reader? I raised it. Hello, and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Alexi Horowitz Ghazi. We live in a world built by books, and yet the economic machine that produces them is shrouded in mystery. The ways in which the invisible hand determines what books actually get made. Today on the show, the first episode in our series, Planet Money, sets out to land a book deal and gets to go backstage to see everything that happens behind the shadowy curtain of the publishing industry. And we see what happens when lofty artistic ideals meet the cold logic of the market. There will be whale fights, corporate speed dating, and a literary shotgun wedding. Okay, so I'd accepted the mission to tell the tale of the Planet Money book. And in order to figure out where it came from, I started with the man who keeps the Planet Money solar system spinning every week.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

I am Alex Goldmark. I am the executive producer of Planet Money. And in that role, it is my job to decide on the structure of the big projects. We do the business side of Planet Money.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

And I guess for disclosure's sake, we should also say, you are my boss.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

That is true.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Or you're actually, you're my boss's boss. You're kind of my grand boss.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Oh, ouch.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

But okay, yeah, sure.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

I think it's cool. Longtime listeners may recall Planet Money's habit for participatory projects. We made a T shirt and followed all the underlying economic threads around the globe. We bought a barrel of oil to follow it from the ground all the way to the pump. We resurrected a superhero to make a comic book. We released a record. We just designed a board game. As to why our latest project is a book, Alex says, you can kind of thank the free market for that.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

When did the first twinkle of a Planet Money book enter your eye?

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

I think, in all honesty, like, the first way it got on my radar was when these two literary agents said, hey, we've been retained by NPR to see if there are any NPR properties that would make for good books, and we think Planet Money could be one.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Alex was, let's say, lukewarm at first because this was kind of the opposite of how Planet Money projects have usually gotten started. Typically, we pick some part of the economy we want to understand better and then dive in to figure out the industry. In practice, we've often failed to turn a profit, but that's okay, because making money was not the point. But here, with the Planet Money book, NPR seemed to smell an opportunity.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And I think at the time, one of my bosses said, hey, will you talk to these people?

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

My great, great, grand boss?

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yes.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And I was like, okay, that sounds potentially fun.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

And that is how Alex first met a pair of seasoned literary agents named Laura Nolan and Jane Von Mehren.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

When you were first starting this, like, were you aware that historically, Planet Money projects have notoriously lost money?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

No.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Alex made a point of not telling us that.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Laura and Jane are a tight knit duo. Their minds are melded so closely, it can be hard to tell where one of Jane's sentences begins and Laura's ends. As literary agents, Jane and Laura do not work directly for a publisher. They help authors sell their book ideas to the publishers. And when Jane and Laura make a sale, they make a commission, usually around 15%. They see themselves as sort of like the spotters within the publishing industry, peering into the vast swirl of infinite would be books and scooping up the ideas they think they might be able to sell.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

We are always thinking, is this idea a book? Is this article a book? Is this conversation I'm having with this random cousin of my husband a book? You know, I mean, it's everything is processed through this lens of is this a book or not?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

And in the case of Planet Money, Laura and Jane had been wondering whether this podcast might be a book for a while. They'd previously helped NPR make a book about women in music and a Wait, wait, don't tell me crossword book. And they saw potential in Planet Money in part because the show had recently sold out a live musical based on our superhero series. That made them even more intrigued by the idea of getting Planet Money between the hardcovers.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Here's an engaged audience of people who will go to a theater because of a character that was created by Planet Money that is actually in a comic book. Was it microfiche?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Microface?

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Micro face? Thank you. And that. We're like, wow, if people are going to pay money to get the comic book and go to the show, this really bodes well for a book.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

So Jane and Laura set up a meeting with Alex at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

What was the point of that first meeting?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

We knew we wanted Planet Money to do A book. It was not clear that Planet Money was ready to do a book that, you know. So I think the point of the first meeting was to try and persuade Alex that now is the time.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Seal the deal. As we say.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Yes.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Yes.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The agents make their case to Alex. They explain that making a book would allow Planet Money to spread the show's signature brand of irreverent economic infotainment. It might even invite new listeners to the podcast by getting into untapped markets,

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

being in airport bookstores, being in libraries, being in schools. There were ways in which a book could do that in a way that a podcast can't.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Talking with Laura and Jane, Alex starts to see how a Planet Money book might be a good way to advance the mission of the show. But there was still the question of what kind of book the show would actually want to make and what would find traction in the crowded marketplace for books. The three of them start brainstorming possible approaches. And at first, Alex is throwing out all sorts of concepts.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And I think I was like, I want pamphlets, and we'll do the first one and then we'll add to it. So over time, we'll have, like 10 different pamphlets, and each one explain an industry or something. And then they were just like, no, like, you gotta stop, Alex.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

We love the energy.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

I think they were like, this is good. You're very generative. Let's keep going. Anything else?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The agents told Alex his ideas were a little bit too narrow. The key to selling a big book these days, they say, is figuring out a broad frame that would appeal to as many people as possible.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

How wide was the spectrum of possible Planet Money books we could have gone down? Is it like, you know, if we're trying to move copies, like, Romantasy's super hot right now. Maybe we do a 50 shades of green.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

50 shades of green.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

I love that.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

That is hilarious.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

We'll save that one for later.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

I think that's gonna be book two.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

For book one, however, the broad idea that Alex and the agents finally land on is a field guide to the global economy. Just like the show, this book could use a series of vividly reported stories to bring our daily lives into economic focus, from how we all work to how we date and pick our mates to how we invest and save for retirement. This, they explain, is the kind of book that might have a mass market appeal. So Alex and the agents had a book idea. The next thing they needed was a book proposal. The proposal gives a sense of what it'll actually be like to read a Prospective book. It lays out the structure of the various chapters, and it makes a business case for why this book and this author would be a good bet for a publisher. Because a book is not just some collection of interesting stories. A book is a product. And book proposals are both the vehicle by which nonfiction books are bought and sold. And they offer publishers a glimpse of how they might sell the book to readers. To get the ball rolling, Alex needed someone to actually help write the proposal. If everything went well, that person could write the actual book.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

Around the same time, by total coincidence, a guy named Alex Miassi reached out and he said, hey, have you ever thought of doing a Planet Money book? I would love to write one. And it was fortuitous.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Fortuitous because Alex Mayasi had reported a few Planet Money episodes over the years. He understood the voice and style of the show, and he'd also worked on a book for Atlas Obscura about food. So he knew the book writing process. After talking to some other candidates, my grand boss Alex finally popped the question. Other Alex, he said, do you want to be our writer? Other Alex said, I do.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And then we had to write the proposal.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Over the next year or so, Alex and Alex and Jane and Laura pass this sort of epic Google Doc back and forth over and over. They come up with some sample writing, draft an outline for the whole book, and they lay out a business case for why readers would be clamoring for just this book at just this moment.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Okay, so at the end of the process, you have the proposal.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Oh, there you go.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

The very proposal. Old, old radio tricks.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Once Jane and Laura and the Alexes had that proposal, it was time to court some publishers. And for months, Jane and Laura had been seeding the marketplace by dropping whispers of a Planet Money book at every power lunch and cocktail hour they could. You see, the publishing industry is so small and connected. They explain, it's a bit like a high school with its own set of unwritten rules and etiquette. And like a high school, a lot of the most important trade information travels from literary agents to book editors and back through word of mouth.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

We will have lunches or breakfasts or drinks. They generally reach out or you reach out to them. I haven't seen you. We should get together. What do you. What are you buying lately? What are you interested in?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

And that is essential information, because each of these editors is a potential buyer representing the publishing house behind them, the Penguins Random House and Simons and Schuster of the world. And the first thing to understand about this market is that over the past half century or so, it's become more and more concentrated in the hands of a few companies.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Once upon a time, these were all independent publishers. And over the many years, they all got swallowed by other publishers and swallowed again. And those people got swallowed, et cetera. So that's why we are down to what they call the Big five, which are major conglomerates that contain inside many, many publishers.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The many, many subsidiary publishers inside a big one are actually known as imprints. And when you look around the bookstore at all the tiny little symbols at the base of a book's spine, a penguin or a campfire or a random little house, those brand markers or colophons, they are signs of all the hundreds of formerly independent publishers that have been gobbled up over the decades.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

So if the publishing world is an aquatic ecosystem, there once were thousands of little fish that have been swallowed successively by larger and larger fish. Until now there are five gargantuan publishing houses.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Correct.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

And a few others who have managed to grow outside of this conglomeration process.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yes.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The consolidation of the publishing industry has made the bottom line more important than ever. And it's changed the kind of books that actually make it to the printing press. There's increasing pressure for publishers to boost their profits by betting on books that aren't as risky. Just like how Hollywood has turned more and more to mining familiar IP and cranking out sequels, publishing has leaned more and more on putting their money behind authors with platforms and built in audiences. There are of course, still more than a hundred small independent presses and academic presses. But Jane and Laura think the Planet Money book could go big. As they pointed out in the proposal, the show had already sold nearly 17,000 comic books and over 20,000 T shirts. In this era, when publishers are betting on whether a would be author's audience might actually buy their book, Jane and Laura were hoping they could lure in one of the biggest fish in the sea of publishers.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

We want a whale. Ideally we do.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yes, exactly.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

We want a big whale that will know how to sell books to every single possible person and get books into every single bookstore.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

So a lot of the editors Jane and Laura are casually courting represent a whale in this world. And one of the people they make sure to tell about the Planet Money book is someone named Tom Mayer.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I was at my desk and I got a call from Laura Nolan and Jane Van Meeren and they said, we've got something really exciting.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Tom is an executive editor at W.W. norton. Now. Norton is not a whale. They're not one of the big five. But they are a major publisher that has managed to stay independent, kind of like a literary dolphin. The House has published fictional sensations like Fight Club and A Clockwork Orange and all sorts of heavy hitting nonfiction like Michael Lewis's Moneyball or the Big Short. We should say Norton Penguin, HarperCollins and several other publishers are financial supporters of NPR. But Tom says the basic business model in publishing, whether you're a whale, a dolphin, or a guppy, is generally the same. Publishers are trying to buy the rights to books based on what they like and what they think will be profitable. Tom is trying to acquire and edit great works of art. But the publisher needs to keep in mind the commerce of it all. Because for the publisher, every book is also a financial risk. So they have to treat each new prospective book like a new prospective investment and check how it would fit into their overall portfolio.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

A publisher is kind of like a basket of stocks. You know, we publish 150 books in a year. Some of them are going to do really well, Some of them are going to do okay, some of them are not going to do well. And what you hope to do is generally keep the whole portfolio moving upwards. But it is a balance, and you have to have diversity. You want to have some mysteries and you want to have some nonfiction, and you want to have academic works of sociology, and you want to have cookbooks. And having a diverse and interesting list of books means that there will be successes even as there are failures. Publishing is a power law business. 20% of the books make 80% of the money. Many, many books don't sell.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Are you thinking about risk mitigation in your own annual list of books that you're acquiring? Sort of thing of like, okay, well, these ones seem like they might not sell that much. I should probably try to get some that are more sure fire in some way.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Alexei, every time I try to think like a businessman, I fail. And if I think too hard about, well, I've signed up four music books this year. I can't do another one. Well, then I'll miss the next great music book. If I think I've signed up a bunch of debut novels that might or might not work, I'd better sign up some branded podcast book. Then I will make a mistake. Like, I just. If I think too strategically or too programmatically about my investment choices, I will not make good art.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Now, book editors, Tom explains, wear a few different hats. They are, of course, in the writing trenches with their authors, helping to shape the structure and style of a manuscript. That is the art side. But on the business side, and even more importantly for our story, they are also in charge of acquiring new titles for their houses. These are the buyers that agents like Jane and Laura need to see on something like a Planet Money book. But getting Tom's attention on any given book proposal can be difficult.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I did the math a couple years ago, and I discovered that I receive 500, roughly, proposals from book agents every year.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Wow.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

So that's reputable book agents who have gone through this process of vetting authors and making book proposals. And out of those 500, I'm excited about 30 or 40, and I end up buying 10 or 12 a year. So out of what I'm getting submitted from the entire world that has already been culled, I end up signing up 2% of the things that are sent to me.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

And keep in mind, these days, editors like Tom generally do not read unsolicited proposals or manuscripts that don't come to them through vetted agents. Publishing is, in some ways, an industry built on gatekeeping, and agents are just the first of many.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

The way Tom is thinking about it,

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

every time he opens his inbox and gets a proposal from a trusted source, the thing he's hoping for is the tingly feeling of reading something undeniably great.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I literally don't know what's gonna come in my inbox today. It could be the next Nobel Prize winning novel. It could be garbage. I don't know. And that feeling of, what might it be? Is this gonna be the one that gives me that feeling, that sparkle, that sense that this is the best thing I've ever read? Yes, it might be. Today I might go back to my desk and find an agent has emailed me something incre. That is a feeling I love, and it's part of what I love about my job. And so when agents call and they say, I've got something I'm excited about, I say, great. I know you, agent. I can't wait to see what it is.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

You know, I'm chasing that literary high.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I need my next fix. Give me that good. I want that uncut nonfiction.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

When the Planet Money book proposal hit Tom's inbox, he did not read it right away. It took a few days and a polite reminder from Jane and Laura telling him that other publishers were getting excited before he finally took a look. But when he did, he says he did notice that telltale tingle.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I immediately said, this is a book for Norton. You know, we've published lots of books that explain business and finance and economics. To everyday readers. It's a category of books we know really well and we're good at it.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Tom knew and liked Planet Money. He knew the show had a big following, and he knew that NPR listeners generally buy books.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

And I said, this book is gonna be big. I hope, I expect, I think, and I want to share it with my colleagues right away. So it was kind of a perfect storm. Another famous Norton book. It was a perfect storm of feeling about why I wanted to proceed.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Now, the decision to pursue a book for acquisition isn't solely up to individual editors like Tom. He has to make the case to all of Norton's other editors and department heads at a big editorial meeting about why this is a Norton book and why it's a good bet. And Tom says most of his colleagues were generally on board.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

But honestly, the biggest challenge is what is the valuation? You know, Planet Money is a household name, They've got lots of followers. But this book will sell more than zero copies.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Yeah.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Which is the potential fate of many books. Zero copies sold happens in reality.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Tom says even a total flop will sell at least a few copies. But Tom's colleagues at Norton wondered how many copies would the Planet Money book actually sell? Tom told them about Planet Money selling T shirts and comic books and vinyl records. The proposal was claiming that Planet Money would promote the book in all sorts of ways. They'd talk about it on npr, put endless promos in the feed, maybe even produce a meta reported series about the making of the book. Tom's colleagues pushed back. Would Planet Money actually do any of that? And if they did, would any of it translate to more book sales? Tom did not know the answer to those questions, but he still got the green light to push the process forward to set up a meeting with the agents, Jane and Laura and both of the Alexes. But remember, Tom is not the only editor who Jane and Laura have been courting for this book. A key part of a literary agent's job is to try to give as many editors as possible a sense of FOMO over the book proposal. Of course, that doesn't always work.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

It wasn't clear when we sent it out how many people were going to respond. If we had one publisher only and everybody else didn't like but one publisher loved it, that's all you need is one. But in this case, we were getting absolutely just inundated with requests. Jane and I were then faced with 23 publishers who wanted meetings, which was probably the largest number I have ever had in my career.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Jane and Laura explained to My grand boss Alex, that before the pandemic when a book proposal was hot, the book's author and agents might take a fancy black car all over town to meet all the prospective publishers.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

But we get to do it all on Zoom now.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Hooray.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And I think it was like 17 meetings, or maybe it was 27 meetings. I remember there being a seven in there.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

It was actually 23 meetings, but you get the point. So Jane and Laura set up a sort of speed dating Zoom gauntlet. 23 half hour meetings spread out over four days where Alex and company meet their prospective publishers one by one to pitch each other on why they might be the best fit. One publisher pitches a sort of glossy graphics heavy coffee table version of the book. Tom and his team at Norton pitched the idea of making college courseware based on the book to get it into classrooms and onto economic syllabi. But Alex says the whole thing was kind of a blur. For Jane and Laura, all this interest means one thing. They've got enough potential buyers to hold an auction. If they play their cards right, they should be able to turn this hot hand into cold, hard cash.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Laura and I were behind the scenes talking and strategizing about, okay, how are we going to structure this auction? Because we had created a lot of excitement by having so many meetings, but we wanted to continue that excitement and incentivize publishers to jump high.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

After the break, Jane and Laura come up with an auction plan and this little Planet Money book goes to market.

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[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

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[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

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[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

It's getting what's in my head onto the page. But I've been playing with the new WIX Harmony editor and I'm impressed.

[Michael Olinger]

You can literally just tell it what

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

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[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

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[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

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[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

auction, it's not like the, you know, the, the auctioneer who's like, give me your bid, give me your bid. Get a bit. This is all done by email.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Oh man.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

I know there's, I know I want

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

that fast talking, gavel touting kind of flavor.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Unfortunately, there's not going to be.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Maybe we'll move in that direction. That can make it a lot more entertaining.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yeah, exactly. But what we did do was we tried to create a structure and rules that would give us some advantages, to make it a little bit more like that gavel toting situation.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The main thing they're trying to do is to make potential bidders feel motivated by the level of competition without scaring them away. And a lot of this comes down to a kind of information management. For example, normally Jane and Laura would keep something like the number of publishers they'd met with a secret. If there are only a couple of bidders, they don't want to tip their hand. But in the case of the Planet Money book, there were 23 potential bidders. So Laura and Jane strategically let that number slip. Which for Tom Mayer, the book editor who's always chasing the literary dragon, it seems to have had its intended effect.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Oh my God, everybody in town is bidding. All the publishers want this book. What are we going to do next?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The key information Tom needed to come up with a plan for bidding was to know what type of auction format Jane and Laura were going to use to sell the Planet Money Book. Tom says there are a few classic auction formats you generally see in the world of book publishing. The first is what's known as a round robin auction.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

It's sort of a classic poker game style of bidding in which each person can top the prior bid in turn. So One publisher bids $10,000, the next person says $15,000, the person after that says 20, and you just go around until the bidding stops. This produces the most rational price, but it can take a really long time and people's attention can wane.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Agents might prefer this format to push editors to try to one up each other. But if the agents want to capitalize on people's limited attention, Tom says there's one particularly intense auction format known as the one round best bid, one shot.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

You put your best foot forward, your best offer, and you just hope you win. Bidders, they have like almost no information. You don't know what the baseline price is, you don't know what anyone else is thinking. You know nothing. And this leads to really unpredictable results. So it's risky for everyone, it's risky for the authors, it's risky for agents, it's risky for publishers because prices are less rational in that one round low information bidding environment.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Agents might choose this format if they want to keep the auction quick and efficient. The one round best bid auction forces potential publishers to set aside, divide all the flattery and small talk and actually put their money where their mouths are. But luckily for Tom and also maybe everyone else, Laura and Jane decide, because there's so much competitive interest for the planet Money book, the kind of auction they will run is something called the two round best bid. Though there's sometimes a third round. Tom likes to call this one the wedding cake auction because there are tiers of bidding and the pool of bidders gets smaller each round, like the layers of a cake.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

And in the wedding cake auction, the top four bidders advance to the second round. And often there will be a third round where the top two bidders advance and they're sort of sitting on top of the wedding cake like little cake toppers.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Cute, but very adversarial.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yeah, a little bit. Kind of, yeah. Not unlike marriage, it's a complicated relationship, Alexi.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

And the wedding cake auction also requires a complicated beating strategy. Now that Tom's gotten word about what kind of auction he's entering. It's time to do some planning.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

And so now I'm thinking we gotta come up with a strategy to get into that second round. That's the most important thing.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Like, how does he make sure he's able to bid enough to make it to the second stage of the auction without accidentally driving the price to irrational heights? He's got a confab with the sales team, the marketing folks, and come up with a model to justify a range of possible bids. The way they do this is to make sales projections. And one of the big tools there is called a comp or comparable title. Basically, they come up with a selection of similar books, stuff by the same author on the same subject, and they use that to estimate the potential demand. Tom thinks of comps as sort of a necessary evil.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I can't tell you how many books I've been pitched that are like, just as Michael Lewis did in Liars Poker, I will do for the whatever industry. And it's just like, no, it's not going to happen like that. Michael does his own thing. And his book appeared at a particular moment in history and became a phenomenon for its own unique set of reasons. But. But, you know, all the institutions involved do need some kind of metrics to think about stuff. And even though individual comp is anecdotal, you can paint a picture of how big a potential market might be when you look at 10 similar books in a similar category.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Tom wouldn't say which exact books he used as comps to come up with Norton's bid, but he did say he looked into books put out by other prominent podcasts scanning Google. That includes things like the 99% invisible book, which became a New York Times bestseller. So that is how they come up with revenue. The money they estimate might come in next. They gotta think about the cost of publishing the book. There are, of course, the costs of manufacturing and marketing, but the lion's share of the bid will be the advance against royalties. Generally, in the publishing world, the advance helps an author cover their costs while writing the book. And if the book sells enough copies to pay back that advance, then they can start to accrue royalties on every additional copy soldier. So the bigger the advance, the more copies the publisher needs to sell in order to get back into the black. And if the book doesn't end up selling well, the author keeps the advance and the publisher has to eat that loss. So for the first round of bidding for the Planet Money book, Tom and his team are trying to figure out how big of an advance they should offer. And in addition to their own calculations, they have to think strategically because they know they're competing against as many as 22 other editors who are doing the same math. Some of them are surely from the big five, and that is daunting because the big five publishers have much deeper pockets than Norton. You know, there's Harper Collins, owned by News Corp. Of Rupert Murdoch fame. There's Penguin, Random House and McMillan, which are each owned by huge German conglomerates. And Tom says, unlike those companies, Norton is employee owned.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

We have to be more thoughtful about when we make a bet on a book because we're not playing with a conglomerate's money or private equity money, anything like that. We're not playing with house money when we are bidding on a book. We're bidding with literally our own money.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

So Tom and his team consider all these things. The expected sales, the possible advances, what the competition might be up to. And they finally come up with a number. On Tuesday, March 28, 2023, the bidding window set by Jane and Laura finally opens. Publishers will have until 11am the next day to submit their bids by email. The next morning, at an office building near the Flatiron in New York, Laura and Jane are nervously waiting for the offers to start rolling in. The first one hits their inbox around

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

9:45am and then they just started to trickle in.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Over the next hour or so, the bids keep coming, but Jane and Laura do receive word that one publisher has decided to exit the race. They also hear from a few editors that they won't be submitting a bid because fellow imprints within the same corporate conglomerate had trumped their own offers. And as all of this information is trickling in, Jane and Laura are pacing back and forth between their two glass offices in plain sight of all their colleagues.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

And it was exciting for everybody. Yes, because our colleagues knew that we were having this auction and they could see us. So they could see, and they'd be like, okay, what happened?

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Where are you?

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

What's happening? Oh, that's great. We like that person. Like, they have opinions because they have books with these editors. So it was good to be able to have them around.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

They were rooting for their favorite horses in the race.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Yeah, well, they're shocked. I can't believe they bid. I can't believe they dropped out. You know, they had a lot of feelings to. Yeah, it was pretty dramatic.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

When the bidding window closes at 11am, Jane and Laura have received 16 bids on the book, which is pretty high for a book auction. Now they have to tally up the numbers and figure out which bidders would advance to the next round. They're obviously looking at the top line number, the advance. But each bid is not just the advance. Each bid is a specifically tailored potential contract that also includes a mix of things like the rights to translate the book or to sell it into different international markets. And those are based on. On each publisher's actual strategy for selling the book. All of which means Jane and Laura have to do some math comparing these different packages. And when they finish, they find there are roughly enough ties for 10 editors to make it to the next round.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

So we went back to those 10 people and said, good news, you've made it to the second round. And so by 3pm, we would like your next bid. We told them what our top bid was at that point, so they knew where we were. And that is all we said.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

We didn't say nine other people have made this place too.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Oh, so they didn't know how many people had advanced?

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

No. And they want to know. They want to know.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

They want to know.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Jane and Laura then turn to letting everybody else know that they've fallen out of the race. And they have to do this delicately because Jane and Laura are in this high school dance for the long haul. They need to maintain their reputation so they can pitch the same editors a different book next week. So they reached out to the editors

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

no longer in the running and said, we're really sorry. We're so grateful your interest and support, blah, blah, blah, but you did not make the second round.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

What were their responses?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

There were a couple people who were literally shocked.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

They were shocked.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yeah. Shocked that they had not made the second round.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Cause they had offered what they thought was a very big amount.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

So that's, you know, that's book business, baby.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

What are you gonna do?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yeah, exactly.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

As for Tom Mayer over at Norton,

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

at the end of the first round, Jane and Laura called me and they said, you made the second round. And I said, yes.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Wow.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

All. Oh, my God, now what?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Especially because not only had Norton advanced, Tom learned that the amount of money he'd offered in the first round was actually the highest bid, setting the new floor for the next round of the auction.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Which is both a cool feeling and a scary feeling, because you're like, yeah, we're winning. But also like, oh, my God, did I pay too much?

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Yeah.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

The fear that Tom is describing here has a name in economics. It's called the winner's curse. The idea is that the winner of an auction will often overpay for something, especially if there's a lot of competition and the object in question is difficult to put a value on. With the specter of the winner's curse on their minds, Tom and his competing editors all have to come up with their bid for the second round of the auction. Norton's bid from the first round had set the new minimum bid that all the publishers now had to beat. So all 10 competing editors are now going back and double checking their models to figure out exactly how many more clams they're willing to shell out. And for all involved, including Jane and Laura and the Alexes, the stakes are high. But for the editors like Tom, who are putting so much on the line, this moment is especially emotionally fraught.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

You're thinking about what's gonna happen if I win. I'm gonna be doing this project for three years. I'm really emotionally attached to it, but if I lose, goodbye. I never see them again. So you have this very heightened sense of emotions around the moment.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

It does feel a little bit like getting in a bidding war over a house. And you have to somehow figure out how to make emotional peace with either.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yeah, if you win, you win. Oh, my God. The bottom falls out of your stomach. What have I done? What have I bought? I've just spent all this money on this thing or, nope, somebody else bought it. And actually, no, you don't live here.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Devastating.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

It can be really devastating. Every editor has memories of books that they've lost. And there are books that you lose that fail miserably, and you think, whew, dodged a bullet. And then there are books that you lose that go on to sell really well, and you're kicking yourself for the rest of your life.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

So with all that emotional and financial baggage in tow, that same day, Tom and the other editors in the auction put the rest of their chips on the table, hoping their pile would be just tall enough to beat out their competing editors. Their comp editors, if you will.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

And as it turned out, things were then very close again at the end of the next round because everyone had improved their bid by roughly the same amount. And that's when the beauty contest began.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

The beauty contest.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

The beauty contest is what happens at the very end. It's the end game of a book auction where the numbers are basically the same, and you go back to that value in the chemistry. Did the author like you? Is your plan better than somebody else? Is your vision and strategy more compelling? To them than not.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

In the case of the Planet Money book, the last round of the auction, the beauty contest, came down to two final contestants. Tom's team at Norton, the Dolphin, and one of the big five publishers, a Whale. The big five publisher only offered to print a two color version of the book, but they also offered more actual money up front. A full court publicity press and a tried and true way of getting the book into airport and indie bookstores around the country. This was the closest thing to a sure bet you can ask for the opportunity to ride a whale potentially all the way to the top of the bestseller list. Norton, on the other hand, was offering slightly less money, but they did offer full color. And the thing that was really different about their pitch was this gambit. In addition to their normal retail book business, Norton is also a big player in the world of textbooks. So they were offering to get the Planet Money book, a retail book, into educational courseware and textbooks. This could potentially mean more sales in the long run, but it wasn't something Norton had really tried before, so there were a lot of unknowns. At the end of the day, it was up to Planet Money's executive producer Alex to make the decision. Jane and Laura explained the last offers in their competing visions for the Planet Money book, and Alex says he was racked with indecision. Norton's educational pitch was compelling.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

We really liked that because, like, we have an educational mission, right? We want like as many people as possible to understand the economy. And so doing it directly like that was, was really appealing. But there was no apples to apples to make. It was like, I don't, I don't know what that's worth. How much is that equal to in advance?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Basically, Alex's decision was between going with Norton and gambling on selling textbooks to the students of tomorrow or taking more money up front and going with the whale. When was the moment that you knew

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

the auction was over?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

When Alex Goldmark told us, yeah, when

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

Alex Goldmark said, I want to do this, I want to marry this publisher, Right.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

After several days of going back and forth, Alex finally made the call.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

I remember going, okay, okay, we're going with Norton. And it felt like this huge thing that I didn't know was going to be good or not. Like I didn't know if it was right or not. It felt right, but it felt great to just have made that decision.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Laura and Jane call Tom to deliver the news.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

And I said, heck yeah, let's. I was so excited. I mean, you know, we wanted to publish this book. We Put so much work into bidding on it and getting excited and making our offers. And the auction had been so tense. So we celebrated. You know, everybody got together. We were like, yeah, we did it. We won.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

It's great.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

You'd made it through the gauntlet of the wedding cake. And Planet Money said, I do.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yeah, they said, I do. And we popped the championship.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

And what was the bid?

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

I'm not gonna talk about numbers.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

It's like a corporate secret.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yeah. In general, there are ways in book publishing that people signal how much they paid for things like there's publishers. Marketplace is a clearinghouse of deals where you can post a deal and you can say it was a big deal, a major deal. There's various adjectives that indicate levels of advance. As a policy, we don't talk about how much we've paid.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

In this publishing house, we believe every deal is a major deal.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

Yes, sir.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Yeah. So publishers are generally not in the habit of disclosing how much they've paid for their books, which makes it difficult to know exactly what an average advance might be for a major book deal. But there are self reported surveys of authors on the Internet that estimate the average advance for a major deal may be somewhere around $60,000. Still, I wanted to know what the Planet Money book had sold for, so I put the question to the agents Laura and Jane.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

So what was the winning bid?

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

We cannot tell.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

We can't talk about money. No, no, let your imagination agents don't really kiss and tell when it comes to how they do these things.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Well, it's not our information to share.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

That's right.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Right. It's my client's information.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

I'll run it by my grand boss.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

You do? Yeah.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

You're free to ask whomever you want. We're not, we can't say.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Right, sorry.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Finally, I did put the question to my grand boss, who was only slightly less evasive.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

We got a lot of money, Alexi. It was seven figures, as Norton put in a press release around the time of buying the book.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

More than a million dollars, but less than two.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

Yeah, I think we can say less than two. Yes, yes. Maybe Book Two, maybe it'll do so well, we'll get that for book two.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Once we shop and auction off 50 Shades of Green, we're gonna be rolling in the deck.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Once Alex signed on the dotted line, Planet Money's agents Jane and Laura got the first installment of their commission. And it was time for them to hand off the baton to pass the Planet Money book on to the next stage.

[Jane or Laura (Literary Agent)]

It's like you give the bride or the groom or whomever to the other person and let them go down the path.

[Literary Agent (Laura or Jane)]

Yeah. Up until we sell the book, we've kind of been driving the process. And then afterwards, it is the editor who becomes the leader.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

With that, Planet Money's agents had successfully walked my grand boss Alex down the aisle to put a contractual ring on the finger of Tom mayer of House W.W. norton. Emerging of two humble dynasties.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

How similar or dissimilar was it to the feeling of proposing or getting proposed to for marriage?

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

Uh, way faster and more like a shotgun wedding kind of situation. Right. Cause I'd only met these people, like, a week earlier.

[Alex (Planet Money Staff, subordinate to Alex Goldmark)]

Right.

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Nevertheless, Planet Money had sealed the coveted book deal. But now for the hard part.

[Tom Mayer (Editor at W.W. Norton)]

That's just it. Guess what? Then the next day, you pick up the phone and you say, hey, let's have a meeting to talk about how we're gonna write this book. Like, suddenly you have to do the whole thing.

[Alex Goldmark (Planet Money Executive Producer)]

And so then it was like a kickoff meeting where it's like, you know, the first day you sort of enter your new home after your wedding, and everybody else is gone, and you. You just have, like, confetti on the floor and a mess, and you're like, what do we do now? Like, how do you actually make a book?

[Planet Money Narrator / Host]

Yeah, how do you actually make a book? That's next week on Planet Money.

[Michael Olinger]

The Planet Money team want you to know that the book is in stores now and they're on tour. Go to their website for more details. Thanks for listening to this week's midweek podcast. Coming up on the big show this week, I sat down with a legend in the business, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman. You're not going to want to miss it. And while I have you, if you want more OTM in your life, follow us on Instagram and TikTok. Go check out our subreddit R onthemedia. We're posting relevant, entertaining videos over there. We'd love to hear what you think. That's my psa. See you Friday. I'm Michael Olinger.

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