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From Working in Publishing to Entrepreneur (and Author!) with Panio Gianopoulos

Totally Booked with Zibby

Mon Jan 19 2026

Summary

Podcast Summary: Totally Booked with Zibby

Episode: From Working in Publishing to Entrepreneur (and Author!) with Panio Gianopoulos

Date: January 19, 2026
Host: Zibby Owens
Guest: Panio Gianopoulos

Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, Zibby Owens interviews Panio Gianopoulos, author and co-founder/editorial director of the Next Big Idea Club. They discuss Panio’s journey from publishing to entrepreneurship, his process as a fiction writer, the emotional origins of his work, and how personal life events have deeply informed his forthcoming novel. The conversation offers a candid look at the realities of the creative process, the business of books, and the role of storytelling in healing and self-understanding.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Panio’s Career Trajectory: From Publishing to Entrepreneurship

[04:46 – 07:38]

Panio details his longstanding passion for books, starting as an assistant editor at Crown (Penguin Random House), his work at Bloomsbury, and his transition into business school at Stanford.
He reflects on failed entrepreneurial ventures post-Stanford and how they nevertheless revealed his knack for “sourcing talent”—notably, the early work with Kate McKinnon before SNL (05:52).
Panio met Rufus Griscom, leading to his current work with the Next Big Idea Club, a nonfiction book subscription and curation service. This brought him into nonfiction after a career centered on fiction.

"It's always when you don't want something that it shows up. ...You're not looking for a job, suddenly it jumps in your lap."
— Panio Gianopoulos [07:13]

2. Crafting Fiction: Process and Preferences

[07:47 – 10:44]

Zibby praises Panio for his immersive and insightful writing style, especially how he writes about relationships, longing, and subversive behavior.
Panio explains the isolating nature of fiction writing and expresses appreciation for feedback, revealing it took him twelve drafts to complete the first story in his collection.

"I'm just writing these sentences after sentences and it's just like an empty auditorium. ...Is that good? No one's clapping, no one's smiling, no one's laughing..."
— Panio Gianopoulos [08:24]

Discussion about writing groups and the potential pitfalls of sharing drafts too early, mainly the risk of being misdirected before the story finds its direction.

3. On Writing Short Stories vs. Novels

[14:15 – 16:20]

Panio addresses the central challenges of short fiction: “portraying the messiness and contradictions of real human behavior in a compressed space.”
His stories attempt to avoid moralism and instead show the nuanced reality of people—good, bad, wonderful, and selfish all at once.

"I've always been attracted in my reading...to a fiction that just shows you everything. Shows you the good and the bad and shows you that a person, at one moment can be wonderful and kind and another moment, they can be petty and selfish."
— Panio Gianopoulos [13:26]

The motivations for his collection were pragmatic: a busy life made short stories more feasible (“I didn't have time to write a novel...So it was really just the nature of my life.” [16:10])
Inspiration often comes from everyday incidents twisted into fiction—Panio recounted, at length, his failed attempts to befriend a crow, which turned into a story seed.

"So I got in my car. I gave up on becoming the crow's friend. But then I thought, oh, there's a story there. Like, why is this person obsessed with becoming friends to a crow?"
— Panio Gianopoulos [19:07]

4. Central Themes: Validation, Attention, and Alienation

[24:38 – 26:38]

Many stories in Panio’s collection revolve around characters feeling unseen, longing for attention, or validation.
The title story, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, grew from real family interactions and the idea of adult envy toward youthful charisma (“...we all want this 19-year-old to say we're cool. That's bizarre.” [25:34])
Flattery and the hunger for approval—universal at any age—drive much of the emotional content.

5. The New Novel: Family, Grief, and Autobiographical Roots

[27:06 – 34:09]

Panio candidly shares the deeply personal inspiration behind his in-progress novel, centered on his Greek immigrant parents and shaped by traumatic losses: his mother’s accident and protracted illness, and his father’s suicide.
Grief blocked his ability to write anything but stories in which someone died, leading him eventually to confront his experience directly through the novel.
The process has been long (eight years), emotionally taxing, and ultimately therapeutic, allowing him to transform personal pain into a story with enough fictional distance to feel complete.

"Every time I go into it, I'm like reopening the wound, right? ...the first few years writing the book were just like torture. It was awful. But I felt like there was nothing else I could do."
— Panio Gianopoulos [29:10]

He reflects on the malleability of memory in fiction and the need to document real events separately so as not to lose them to the narrative’s revisions.

"My memories of what actually happened have been overwritten a little bit by these fictionalized versions."
— Panio Gianopoulos [34:09]

6. Building Community: Author Insider and Publishing Advice

[35:52 – End]

Panio plugs his newsletter, Author Insider, a Substack for writers to discuss craft, the publishing business, and to counter writers’ isolation.
Zibby credits Panio’s author insider guidance for influencing her own thinking about book publicity.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the need for feedback in writing:
"Writing, storytelling. It's a kind of communication ... It's unreasonable as a pursuit to talk to somebody for that long and not get some sort of feedback, get some sort of connection with them."
— Panio Gianopoulos [08:57]
On why he writes fiction, not nonfiction:
"I feel like I've sort of done both now so deeply that probably the next thing would be for me to actually write a nonfiction book. But I don't want to. I like novels too much. I like making things up."
— Panio Gianopoulos [07:11]
On writing through grief:
"Once you put the trauma down on paper, it frees up your brain...It literally is out of your brain and your brain doesn't feel like it has to remember it all the time."
— Zibby Owens [33:30]
On memory and fiction:
"If you're going to write something that is heavily autobiographical, just take a weekend and ... bullet point what actually happened in your life. So you can just go back when you're done with the book and be like, okay, but these are my memories. Right? The book is not my memories."
— Panio Gianopoulos [34:09]

Timestamps for Important Segments

04:46 — Panio recounts his publishing and business journey
07:47 — Zibby’s praise for Panio’s immersive writing; discussion on feedback and writing groups
10:44 — On reworking stories, the complexity of short fiction, and authorial intentions
14:15 — Exploring character contradictions and the purpose of fiction
16:10 — Why Panio chooses the short story format
19:07 — The “crow story” and how real incidents inspire fiction
24:38 — Themes of validation and origin of the title story
27:06 — Emotional roots of Panio’s novel: grief and family loss
33:30 — Writing as therapy, remembering vs. rewriting personal history
35:52 — The Author Insider newsletter and supporting the writer community

Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, warm, and thoughtful. Both Zibby and Panio speak with humor and vulnerability, sharing both the joys and the difficulties of the writing life. The tone alternates between conversational, introspective, and practical—a reflection of two industry insiders keenly aware of both the art and business of books.

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Transcript

Zibby Owens (0:00)

Hey everyone, it's Zivi. I am so excited to tell you about something I've created just for you, the Zip Membership program. Zip stands for Zivi's Important People. It's for anyone who loves books, stories and wants a little peek behind the scenes at what I'm up to and what's on my mind as a Zip member. You'll get exclusive essays, a new podcast called Zivvy's Voice Notes. No interviews, just usually discounts at Zibby's Bookshop, a free ebook, and more perks. I wanted to create a space to connect authentically and deeply, and I'd love for you to be part of it. If that sounds like your kind of thing, become a Zip today. You're already important to me. Now let's make it official. Go to zibioens.com and click subscribe. And if you already subscribe, you can upgrade to the membership program. And now onto today's episode of Totally Booked with Zibby. Thanks for listening.

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Panio Giannopoulos (2:20)

Foreign.

Jenna Bush Hager (2:23)

Hey guys, I'm Jenna Bush Hager from the Today show and I'm thrilled to bring you my podcast, Open Book with Jenna. Every week I sit down with fascinating people, authors, celebrities and friends to talk about life and the books that shape them.

Panio Giannopoulos (5:52)

She wrote two of our books. And she goes, oh, hey, I can't write the third one because I gotta go audition for snl. We're like, okay, fingers crossed. And she's like, hey, I got it. Like, okay, I guess we'll never see you again. So we didn't. Anyway, so I did all that. And then eventually I came back to New York. I'd been living in la, and I thought, okay, well, I'm done with publishing. I'm done with books. I'm going to do something totally different. And then a friend of mine who's a journalist in the New York Times, she said, hey, you should meet this guy. I know. He ran Nerve for a while and he's in the media space and he's looking for a publishing thing. I was like, yeah, I don't want to do publishing anymore. She goes, oh, just meet him. He's an interesting, smart guy. I was like, okay, fine, whatever. I'll get lunch. Never hurts to just chat with somebody. So I went and I sat down with him. His name is Rufus Griscom. And he said, oh, yeah, I'm thinking about doing this, like, nonfictions sort of network for authors. And. And he. And he said, but I need someone who's really editorialist, editorially experienced, and knows the book world inside out, but also has business background. I was like, okay, it's kind of like the Venn diagram. I'm your guy. So I, you know, it's like it's always when you don't want something that it shows up. Like, you know, you don't. Like you're not looking for a girlfriend or boyfriend and suddenly the perfect person meets you. You're not looking for a job, Suddenly it jumps in your lap. Look for a job. You'll spend a year not finding one. So I thought, oh my God, this is great. So I started with that. And so then the past nine, ten years I've been working at a company called the Next Big Idea Club, which is essentially a nonfiction book subscription club. And that's been fascinating because I've always been a fiction devotee. Like I've loved novels. I always published first time novelists. That's been my passion. I write fiction. But for the past decade I've just lived in the trenches of nonfiction. And I mean, obviously it has its strengths and it's got its charms. I feel like I've sort of done both now so deeply that probably the next thing would be for me to actually write a nonfiction book. But I don't want to. I like novels too much. I like making things up. Wow, that was a very long answer.

Panio Giannopoulos (11:08)

It was okay. I thought it was just too, like. Not to say complex. But some of the other stories are much more straightforward, you know, like Murmur, which I wrote later, is just kind of almost like a coming of age story. It's very sweet. It's very, you know, like, you know what you're getting. And that story, you're like, wait, like, is she good? Is she bad? Am I on her side? What's happening? I just worried, like, is it. It's not like a. Like, Come into My house. I mean, that's the title of the book, right? How to get her. It's not like, come in, come in, welcome. Like, Venus and Fur is like a funny story about a guy who's competitive with his girlfriend's tiny little Pomeranian. Like, that's a very straightforward, like, entertaining. And I guess I worried that this story, and that was my struggle when I was writing. It was like. It almost felt like it needed to be a novel because you needed the emotional complexity of, like, here's this woman and she's like, muddling her way through her life. She's, you know, not to give anything away. I mean, you find out she's having this affair with this guy she meets. She doesn't really know why she's doing it. You don't really know much. Cause you don't get her husband's perspective, right? You just get her interior life as a mother. And then there's this twist where. Cause I always thought this was interesting when you. Cause I did see this in real life around me, I'd see people where, like, they were happier when they were having an affair. Like, you're not supposed to say it's like a dirty secret, right? Because it's sort of like. It's like a steam valve. Like whatever resentment she has towards her husband or her family or her situation, kind of get relieved by this exciting thing she's got going on. So I thought, what an interesting kind of reversal or inversion. It's like, here's this woman, and actually her life is going better because this is going on. She's not wracked with guilt, I guess I worry a lot about stories that feel like they're kind of moralistic fables. I don't really feel like that's what fiction's about. I feel like there's kind of two different kinds of fiction. And I know that's a guaranteed bad idea to say. But I feel like there's fiction that represents the world and human behavior and all of its contradictions and messiness and dirtiness and beauty. Don't get me wrong. And all the wonder. And then there's fiction that's kind of like how we want the world to be, right. It's like this is a fantasy version of it. I don't mean elves and dwarves. I just mean, wouldn't it be great if we behave like this? And wouldn't be great if, like, the good guys win at the end. Wouldn't it be great if all this happens? And I've always been attracted in my reading as a. You know, to a fiction that just shows you everything. Shows you the good and the bad and shows you that a person, at one moment can be wonderful and kind and another moment, they can be petty and selfish. And all those contradictions we have are so challenging to write in short fiction because you have very little time to establish enough of a pattern of behavior. So someone says, okay, I know who this character is. She's the kind of person who does this. And that's got it. But then you need to throw in the contradictions because we are not perfect little machines. And we have all these strange turnabouts within us. And it's really hard to do it. So with that story specifically, I thought, how do I create this Persona? How do I show this person who is really multifaceted and there's so much going on in her life and she's all these different people and make it believable. And you still kind of sympathize with her to some degree.

Panio Giannopoulos (16:20)

Okay, well, the truth. So, honestly, as a writer who works in publishing, I knew that publishing a story collection was really stupid tactically, because it's very hard to sell short story collections unless you're, like, George Saunders or Jhumpa Lahiri. Like, you're not going to sell many copies. So I thought, okay, like, career wise, this is dumb. But the truth is that I wrote one novel, like, in my early 20s, tried to sell it, couldn't sell it. Fine. Then I wrote a kind of a second novel after that, which was really tepid and boring because my first book kind of got rejected because there was, like, too much sex and violence. And it was kind of. And the guy's like, no, no, I'm not interested in this, like, angry young man novel. It's like, okay. So then the next one, I was like, oh, I'm going to. I'll show. I'll make this really boring. Nailed it. Nothing happened. It was like, the tension wasn't great. So then that didn't sell either. And at that point, I was in my early 30s, and I had a career, I had a child. So I didn't have time to write a novel. I mean, that was the truth. I thought, okay, I just have to stick with these little things I can actually work on on weekends. So it was really just the nature of my life. I mean, if I could have taken six months to work in a book, I probably would have tried a novel again. But what I found was I liked stories because they let me pursue a question or an idea or just a hunch and then follow it to its end. Whereas with a novel, as, you know, you've written novels, it takes a few years. It's such a commitment. It's like, oh, if writing a story, you can think. Here's an example. There's a short story I want to write, but I started it. But then I put it aside because I've been busy with a novel. But the idea was, I was picking up my daughter from soccer practice. She was 14 at the time. And I pull into the parking lot, and I'm early, so I'm just sitting there by myself. It lives in a small town. And suddenly I see a crow. Okay, the bird, right? And it just lands, like, in a tree nearby. And I get really excited because I think, oh, everybody says crows are really smart. And if you befriend a crow, then it tells other crows. And then suddenly, all the crows love you, and you're just like, a crow bestie. And so I thought, I'm gonna befriend this crowd. And how do you befriend a crow? You, like, give it snacks, right? That's how you befriend animals. So I'm looking at my car, and I'm looking. I was like, God, I need snacks. I need snacks. All I have is, like, a power bar. So in, like, one of those, like, quest bars are all, like. They almost look fake. And we're like. So I was like, all right, whatever. So I break off a piece of chocolate chip cookie power power bar. I get out of the car and I put it on top of, like, this little, you know, this little, like, stair. Little stone staircase. And I back up enough so it's not intimidated by me. And I'm like, hey, crow, here's your little snack. The crow waits a little bit, flies down, looks like, observe. Looks at the thing and is like, nope, flies away. And I was devastated. I was like, ouch. I just got rejected by a crow. This sucks. So then I spent the next few days, like, looking, panning the skies, looking for a crow, thinking I want to redeem myself. Like, I started. I had crackers in the car. Now I'm like, I'm going to make friends with the crow. About a week or two later, I'm in a totally different town again. Pick my daughter. You know, this is. As a parent, you're always driving your kids around, especially in the suburbs. And I see a crow, I'm like, oh, great, great. A bunch of them, they're all on this rooftop. So I start flinging crackers like they're Frisbees. Just, like, flinging them on this rooftop. And they just could not give a crap. Like, they were just not. I was like, crackers? You're turning down crackers? So I got in my car. I gave up on becoming crows, becoming the crow friend. But then I thought, oh, there's a story there. Like, why is this person obsessed with becoming friends to crow? Like, so then I wanted to back into, who is this guy or girl? I mean, I don't know what the gender is yet of the character. What's happened to them that, like, this is their last chance. Like, how socially isolated that they need this. Then I started developing this guy, and he plays video games a lot. And his son is going to leave for college soon. So it's a bit of, like, a preempty nest thing. And maybe he's a little estranged from his wife. And I started putting together the story. Long answer your question. That, to me, is where stories come from. I thought, okay, I can spend a few weeks and just figure out, who's this guy? Why is he obsessed with crows? The guy is you, but he's not anymore. That's the thing, though.

Jenna Bush Hager (21:30)

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Panio Giannopoulos (27:06)

Right. Well, the new novel is very different than anything I've written because even though, as we've talked about, a story might be generated by an idea or an anecdote or something happens to me, this one is very, very autobiographical in the sense that it's based on my parents. And my parents were originally from Greece, and they came to America, my dad, when he was 19. And so I always wanted to write about them. I thought it was an interesting story, but I didn't really know the way in, because, as you know, like, you can have a great story, but you're like, how do I start it? What's the drama? And then, very sadly, my mom. My mother had a terrible accident. She fell down the stairs, which is so, like, pedestrian. You think, like, oh, people die from, like, cancer. They get hit by a car. But my mom just fell down the stairs. Nobody knows how or why, and she hit her head. She had this traumatic brain injury. This is way back in 2011. And from then on, she was really, really incapacitated. She was in the hospital for a month. I flew to Greece to be with my family. My sister already lives there. And anyway, that was what happened personally to me. And then she started to get a little better, but not really. She was still struggling. And my father, who'd always battled depression but had kind of managed it, then he killed himself two months later. It was obviously devastating. And I felt terrible. I felt guilty. I felt. I was so focused on my mother and her recovery that I felt like I was. Not that I was dismissive of my father. I mean, I was sympathetic to him, but I didn't really understand the intensity of what he was going through. And so I don't know if you've ever survived suicide, had somebody who died. It's a different kind of grief in the sense of, like, you know, somebody dies who's close to you, and you miss them, and you love them and you care about them. But when someone takes their own life, in my experience, you do feel this constant, like, what if. Like, oh, what if I talked to him more? What if I'd stayed in Greece to spend time? So I felt so racked with guilt. And so that from then on, I found that I couldn't write anything. Actually, anytime I would start a story. Cause I was still writing stories, it would constantly veer into. Somebody would die. I mean, it's like, very. I'd start a story about one thing, and then by the end, like, the sister would die, and then I'd start another, and the kid would die. And I'm like, oh, my God. Every time I'm so preoccupied, just unconsciously, that I'm either gonna write nothing or I'm gonna write about this. And so, to be honest, another year went by before I wrote anything, because it was so devastating. And then I started writing this book. And the hard part about it is every time I go into it, I'm like reopening the wound, right? I'm writing about my mother's injury. I'm writing about my father's death. And it's so unpleasant. It's terrible to say. I mean, look, every writer I know says writing is hard and they struggle with it and they kind of hate it and they like it when it's done. But the truth is, I like writing. Or at least I used to. It's music. It's a kind of music, but it has a meaning in it. And you're trying to mix in story. And so the first few years writing the book were just like torture. It was awful. But I felt like there was nothing else I could do. There's nothing else I could write. And then finally, once I got to my second draft, my third draft, years went by and then it just felt like something I just had to get out. Not like it was a poison or a toxin, but it was just. It kept changing my relationship to. It kept changing. And then finally, in this last draft, and I really swear this is my last draft, I'm close. I'm on the last two chapters, I finally had enough distance where it had changed, enough where I could think, okay, this actually isn't me anymore. This isn't a memoir. At one point I thought, should I just write this, his memoir? But I decided against it. You know, I. I changed it enough that I could suddenly start making big alterations that would help the story because I no longer felt personally connected to it. So the mother was really no longer my mother. The father was. No, I was. You know, I break myself into two brothers and I thought, oh, I can make one of these brothers really awful and not feel like I'm, you know, outing myself as a bad person. Because this is a different character for me. And I pray I never have to write another book like this because it has been just like heart wrenching and devastating. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of it. I like the book, but I would love to write something just a little less close to home and a little less about grief. Wow.