Nathan BarryFounder and CEO, Kit · Founder and CEO at Kit

James Clear's Plan to Rebuild Publishing

22 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this interview, host Nathan Barry sits down with James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits, and Madeline Mackintosh, CEO of Penguin Random House US, to explore the publishing landscape from an author's perspective. They outline the four primary goals for authors—maximizing earnings, achieving wide distribution, retaining creative control, and sustaining long‑term sales. The conversation introduces Author's Equity, a venture co‑founded by Clear and Mackintosh that flips the traditional royalty model (which typically gives authors 15‑20% of revenue) to give creators a larger share. They critique how platforms like ACX and Audible disadvantage self‑published authors, explain how Author's Equity selects books that fit its model, and share practical tactics for breaking through to readers, such as front‑loading the first 5,000 words with compelling content to spark word‑of‑mouth promotion.

Chapters

Today I have two legends of the publishing industry. We've got James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, which is the bestselling book of the last decade. It sold 30 million copies.
There are four things that you want as an author. You want to have the best earnings possible. You want to have the widest distribution possible. You want to have creative control, and then you want to have—
And Madeline Mackintosh, who is the CEO of Penguin Random House US, where she's published over 1,000 books.
The author and the publisher's job is to sell the first copy. Then the book has to start selling itself.
What are some of the things that make the biggest difference What's the difference for authors for these books to keep selling?
One of the answers is the probably the most frustrating one, which is that— That's amazing.
Now James and Madeline have co-founded Author's Equity.
ACX and Audible kind of screw self-published authors, and so we can improve your royalty there. On the print side, it's basically the same.
The traditional model gives authors between 15 to 20% of what their book earns. Author's Equity inverts that. James and Madeline walk through exactly who this model is right for, how they select books, and what the publishing industry has refused to fix for 30 years.
With all of the choices that are out there, how do you break through with this book to find your set of readers?
You don't want to, like, bury the best stuff. You want them to read the first 5,000 words and be like, "Damn, this is so good, I have to tell somebody about it." And the thing that has surprised me the most is—