Participate to Succeed: The Truth About Publishing

18 May 2025 · 1 min

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A short conversational transcript (YouTube) where TJ Walker and another speaker emphasize that authors must actively participate in promoting and managing their books rather than fully outsourcing to publishers. The speakers share industry skepticism about traditional publishers’ support and an anecdote about Frank Rich as a rare exception who had a positive publisher experience.

And I'm going back to a couple of comments ago that you had. You, you have to participate if you want to be successful. Yes. The CEOs that you've talked to who look back and said, oh, it wasn't quite as successful. I promise you cannot outsource all of this to anybody. You, even if you go to a publisher, there's a lot of gripes about kind of the traditional old school publishing, the big companies that they don't support. And I, that's whether true or not, you have to participate, you have to lean in.
You have to. Personally, by the way, there's only one time in my entire, entire life I've ever met an author who didn't basically hate his book.
Yeah, right.
Having lived in New York City for 20 years, 25 years, and spending a lot of time in network T studio speaking circle, I met a lot of authors. Everybody hates their publisher, with one exception. I was talking to Frank Rich, the famed theater critic of the New York Times, at a column who is, you know, these days, he produces shows like Succession and he had a new book out. So I just said, hey, every, every, every author I know hates a publisher. How's it going with your publisher? He's like, oh, they're great. It's really good. Yeah, but it's, it was easy to get a lot of publicity if your client has a, you know, a three times a week column in the New York Times, as he did. But just, just an aside there.
No, no, no. And to answer.
Mary's writing in, we have some comments from viewers. Mary writes in. Thanks to both of you, I have a question.