Inside a BOOK auction

Summary

Planet Money — Inside a BOOK Auction

NPR | Host: Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi | Airdate: March 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This engaging episode takes listeners deep into the high-stakes, rarely-glimpsed world behind book publishing deals—focusing on how Planet Money itself landed its own book contract. Host Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi pulls back the curtain to reveal the intricate dance between authors, agents, and publishers, made vivid and dramatic through a step-by-step account of auctioning the Planet Money book proposal. Key themes include publishing industry economics, how creative projects are shaped by market forces, and the emotional rollercoaster behind closed-door negotiations.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Conceiving the Planet Money Book (04:47–12:18)

• Origin Story: The idea for a Planet Money book began not with the team but with two veteran literary agents, Laura Nolan and Jane Von Meren, who were scouting NPR properties with book potential.

  "The first way it got on my radar was when these two literary agents said, hey, we've been retained by NPR...and we think Planet Money could be one."
  — Alex Goldmark, Executive Producer (05:50)

• Agents' Perspective: Jane and Laura constantly assess ideas through their "is this a book?" lens, pondering marketability.

• Editorial Skepticism: Alex Goldmark admits that Planet Money projects have “notoriously lost money,” but acknowledges that the book could extend the brand's reach.

• Developing the Concept: The team and agents brainstormed approaches, ultimately settling on a field guide to the global economy, modeled as a compendium of reported stories.

  “The key to selling a big book these days...is figuring out a broad frame that would appeal to as many people as possible.”
  — Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (10:02)

• Recruiting the Writer: After considering candidates, writer Alex Mayasi—an alum of both the show and book publishing—was tapped to spearhead the proposal.

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2. Understanding the Publishing Landscape (12:51–15:52)

• Industry Structure: The book world is highly consolidated: the "Big Five" publishing conglomerates dominate, each housing many imprints (subsidiaries representing once-independent publishers).

  • “If the publishing world is an aquatic ecosystem, there once were thousands of little fish...until now there are five gargantuan publishing houses.”
    — Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (14:29)

• Why the Big Players Dominate: Publishers increasingly bet on books with built-in audiences—authors who bring an established following.

• Agents’ Strategy: Given Planet Money’s proven merch sales and audience, Jane and Laura aim for a “whale” (major publisher) to maximize impact.

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3. The Publisher's Dilemma – Risk, Art, and Business (16:02–21:25)

• Publisher’s View: Tom Mayer at W.W. Norton (a large independent publisher—a “dolphin”) describes the balancing act of acquiring great books and the business risks involved.

  • “Publishing is a power law business. 20% of the books make 80% of the money. Many, many books don’t sell.”
    — Tom Mayer (17:08)

• Decision Fatigue: Tom receives ~500 proposals/year but acquires only about a dozen (19:01).

• Gatekeeping: Most proposals come through agents; editors rarely consider unsolicited submissions.

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4. Spark and Sell: The Auction Frenzy (21:25–44:38)

Courtship & FOMO (21:25–24:28)

• Generating Buzz: Jane and Laura strategically court editors and build competition, culminating in 23 requests for meetings—an “absolutely...largest number I have ever had in my career.” (23:18)

Auction Mechanics (26:52–36:21)

• Gentle Game: Book auctions are “polite”—conducted via email, not high-drama paddle-raising (27:17).

• Auction Types Explained:

  • Round robin: Bidding increases in turns (28:47).
  • One-round best bid: Each bidder submits a single secret offer—“unpredictable results” (29:21).
  • Wedding Cake Auction: Multi-round, with the top bidders advancing each round; “like little cake toppers” on the last tier (30:19).

• Comp Titles & Risk: Publishers estimate potential sales by comparing to similar titles but such comparisons are “a necessary evil.” (31:28)

• Norton’s Dilemma: As an employee-owned company, Norton can’t “play with house money.” Each bet matters (33:34).

Real-Time, High-Emotion Bidding (34:19–39:04)

• The Numbers Game: Out of 23, 16 bids roll in; 10 advance to round two (35:13).

• Winner’s Curse: Highest first-round bid feels both thrilling and nerve-wracking for the leading publisher (37:21).

  “Yeah, we’re winning, but also like, oh my God, did I pay too much?”
  — Tom Mayer (37:21)

• Beauty Contest Finale: When bids converge, the decision becomes about personal fit, vision, and chemistry.

  • “The beauty contest is what happens at the very end...is your vision and strategy more compelling to them than not?”
    — Tom Mayer (39:31)

• Emotional Stakes: Bidding is likened to "falling in love with a house" or a "shotgun wedding," underscoring the emotional intensity.

  • “You’re thinking...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.”
    — Tom Mayer (38:15)

Final Choice: Dolphin vs Whale (41:12–44:38)

• Last Two Bidders: The decision is between the “whale” (one of the Big Five, more money, sure-fire distribution) and Norton the “dolphin” (less money, unique educational integration—textbooks and college courseware).

  • “There was no apples to apples...I don’t know what that’s worth. How much is that equal to in advance?”
    — Alex Goldmark (41:29)

• Winning Bid: Decision goes to Norton, swayed by their promise to marry Planet Money’s public education mission with their textbook reach.

  • “We really liked that because...we want as many people as possible to understand the economy."
    — Alex Goldmark (41:12)

• Payouts & Secrecy: Bidding details are not disclosed; it is revealed only that the deal was “seven figures—more than a million dollars, but less than two” (44:03).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Book Auctions:
  “If you’re picturing a dramatic Sotheby style paddle party…it’s not like that…This is all done by email.”
  — Laura Nolan or Jane Von Meren (27:17)
• On Gatekeeping:
  “Publishing is…an industry built on gatekeeping, and agents are just the first of many.”
  — Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (19:32)
• On Emotional Highs:
  “I want that uncut nonfiction.”
  — Tom Mayer (20:33)
• On the Winner’s Curse:
  “Did I pay too much?”
  — Tom Mayer (37:21)
• On the Shotgun Wedding Analogy:
  “Way faster and more like a shotgun wedding kind of situation. Right. ’Cause I’d only met these people like a week earlier.”
  — Alex Goldmark (45:15)
• Publishing Secrets:
  “It’s like a corporate secret...In this publishing house, we believe every deal is a major deal.”
  — Tom Mayer and Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (43:37–43:07)

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Important Timestamps

• [04:47]: Introduction to the agents and first steps.
• [08:15]: Agents explain thinking and prior NPR book projects.
• [13:30]: Publishing landscape and industry consolidation.
• [17:08]: Tom Mayer on “power law” book sales economics.
• [19:01]: Rejection odds in publishing (12/500 proposals).
• [23:18]: 23 publishers express interest—a rare “hot book” auction.
• [27:17]: Book auctions explained as polite, slow email processes.
• [30:19]: “Wedding cake” auction format introduced.
• [33:34]: Norton’s employee-ownership gives bidding weight.
• [37:21]: "Winner’s curse" tensions after the first round.
• [41:12]: Final bids: Dolphin vs Whale; educational mission sways decision.
• [44:03]: Deal confirmed as “seven figures,” specifics withheld.
• [45:31]: “Now comes the hard part”—actually making the book.

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Recap & Takeaways

This episode is both an exposé on how books get made (and sold), and a case study of market forces guiding content into the world. While the outcome is a significant financial win for Planet Money, listeners are also reminded that money is only the first step—the actual creation of the book, the hard part, comes next.

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Next Time

The episode ends with a tease: next week, the Planet Money team explores how you actually make a book, once the confetti of contract-signing settles.

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“How do you actually make a book? That’s next week on Planet Money.”
— Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (45:57)

[For preorders and live events, visit: planetmoneybook.com]

Transcript

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[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

this is Planet Money from NPR.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

For 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 el 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. Foreign.

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Support for this podcast and the following message come from Alexa. Say hello to Alexa and see how the experience is tailored to you. Planning a vacation? Ask Alexa to recommend a trip. Use Alexa to find the name of that song you love. Discover new favorite shows or recipes, and so much more. Ask Alexa anything and now Alexa is free with prime on your Amazon devices like echo and Fire TV. Get get [e-mail] Alexaplus okay, so I'd

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alex Goldmark]

That is true.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Oh, ouch.

[Alex Goldmark]

But okay, yeah, sure.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alex Goldmark]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

And I think at the time, one of my bosses said, hey, will you

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

talk to these people, my great, great, grand boss?

[Tom Mayer]

Yes.

[Alex Goldmark]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

No.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

Alex made a point of not telling us that.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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 Micro Fish, Microface, Micro Face. Thank you. And that. And 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

What was the point of that first meeting?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

Seal the deal as we say yes.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Yes. The agents make their case to Alex. They explained 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,

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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. They were just like, no, like, you gotta stop, Alex.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

We love the energy.

[Alex Goldmark]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

50 shades of green.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

I love that. That is hilar.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Save that one for later.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

I think that's gonna be book two.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 perspective 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]

Around the same time, by total coincidence, a guy named Alex Miase 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

And then we had to write the proposal.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 read would be clamoring for just this book at just this moment.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

Oh, there you go.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

The very proposal. Old, old radio tricks.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 in. 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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Correct.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Yes, 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

We want a whale.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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]

Alexi, 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, I. If I think too strategically or too programmatically about my investment choices, I will not make good art now.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 sell on something like a Planet Money book. But getting Tom's attention on any given book proposal can be difficult.

[Tom Mayer]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Wow.

[Tom Mayer]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

The way Tom is thinking about it,

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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 and find an agent has emailed me something incredible. 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

You know, I'm chasing that literary high.

[Tom Mayer]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Tom Mayer]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

In reality. 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 talked 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 Alexs. 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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

But we get to do it all on zoom now.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Hooray.

[Alex Goldmark]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 pitch 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.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Laura and I were behind the scenes talking and strategizing about, okay, how, 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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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[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Nearly a year and a half after book agents Jane and Laura reached out to Planet Money's executive producer Alex about making a book, it was finally time for for all of this careful planning and gamesmanship to come to a head. It was time to take the proposal to auction. But Jane and Laura say, you gotta remember this is a gentle, bookish crowd. So if you're picturing a dramatic Sotheby style paddle party or a rowdy cattle

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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 Host or Reporter]

I know there's, I know I want

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

that fast talking, gavel touting kind of flavor.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Unfortunately, there's not.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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, you know, people's attention can wane.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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, hide 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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Cute, but very adversarial.

[Tom Mayer]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 sold. 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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 mail. 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

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 offer. 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.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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 were like, okay, what happened?

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

Where are you? 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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

They were rooting for their favorite horses in the race.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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 too. It was pretty dramatic.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 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.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Oh.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

So they didn't know how many people had advanced.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

And they want to know. They want to know. They want to know.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

What were their responses?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

There were a couple people who were literally shocked.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

They were shocked.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

What are you gonna do?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

As for Tom Mayer over at Norton,

[Tom Mayer]

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

[NPR Sponsor Announcer]

Wow.

[Tom Mayer]

All right. Oh, my God, now what?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Yeah.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 thing, 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]

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. Like, so you have this, like, very heightened sense of emotions around the moment.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Tom Mayer]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Devastating.

[Tom Mayer]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

The beauty contest.

[Tom Mayer]

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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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 away sale 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]

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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

the auction was over?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

When Alex Goldmark told us, yeah, when

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alex Goldmark]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Laura and Jane call Tom to deliver the news.

[Tom Mayer]

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. It's great.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Tom Mayer]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

And what was the bid?

[Tom Mayer]

I'm not gonna talk about numbers.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

It's like a corporate secret.

[Tom Mayer]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Tom Mayer]

Yes, sir.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

So what was the winning bid?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

We can't not tell.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Well, it's not our information to share.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

That's right.

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

It's my client's information.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

I'll run it by my grand boss.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

You do?

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

Yeah.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Tom Mayer]

Right, sorry.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Alex Goldmark]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

More than a million dollars, but less than two.

[Alex Goldmark]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Planet Money Host or Reporter]

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

[Jane Von Meren or Laura Nolan]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

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

[Alex Goldmark]

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

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi (alternate or interviewer)]

Right.

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

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

[Tom Mayer]

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]

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 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?

[Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi]

Yeah, how do you actually make a book? That's next week on Planet Money. One thing I should mention, my grand boss at the Alex will have a conniption if I don't remind you all. For all of this to work out, for that big advance to be worth it, people need to actually buy the book. And so Alex has come up with some incentives. First one, if you pre order the book before April 7, you'll get a free poster based on our laws of the Office episode. Or if you'd prefer a more personal touch, you can come see Planet Money live on stage around the country. You'll get a copy of the book, a tote bag, and and see us do our thing. Irl. I'll be doing a show and tell about the anatomy of a book in Albuquerque and Boulder for all my high desert real ones. And I'll be sharing some pictures and video I took while recording this series. To pre order the book or get ticket info, go to planetmoneybook.com or check out the show notes. This episode was produced by Willa Rubin with help from Sam Yellowhorse Cat Kessler. It was edited by Jess Jiang, Fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered By Robert Rodriguez Alex Goldmark My grand Boss is our executive producer. I'm Alexi Horowitz Ghazi. This is npr. Thanks for listening.

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