The Podcast Is Back (Essay)

About a year ago, after getting over a million downloads and hitting the top 1% of all podcasts, I decided to retire my podcast On Good Authority.

Anyone who’d been with me a while knew I’d changed and renamed this podcast more than should be legally allowed. But in its final years, I was finally doing what I wanted with it: talking to authors and experts about how to launch a book in a way that builds authority.

I interviewed some awesome people, including Robert Greene and Chris Voss. I learned so much. I was able to use a lot of those interviews in my book by the same name.

And then I just got over it.

Doing a podcast or a Substack or any labor of love when you’re not someone with enough subscribers to actually make money from subscriptions or advertising is a funny thing.

A lot of us decide to do it and then hear things like “You’ll only be successful if you do it every week” and so then we commit to this weekly thing and act like some abusive overlord is forcing us to keep to this schedule and we don’t even ask ourselves if it’s creatively fulfilling and/or giving us any return on our time investment. And then, if we’re me, we wake up and go, “Wait, do I even feel like doing this anymore?”

I’ve gotten much better at knowing how to answer that question and a year ago, the answer when it came to the podcast was a simple no. I figured that would be that.

But then the pod bug started to hit again. A friend and I recorded some episodes and they were really funny but we didn’t really have a theme. I was getting frustrated because I was putting time and money into it without any clear plan and decided that if I was going to co-host a podcast with anyone, I needed them to be doing all the planning and work and I would just show up like a diva and talk.

I’m not kidding when I say that a day after deciding that, the glorious Lisa Smith reached out to me and asked if I wanted to replace her Recovery Rocks co-host Tawny Lara. She literally said, “I’ll do everything; all you have to do is log on and talk.” This is what they mean when they talk about manifestation I guess!

So that’s happening and you can listen to it here. We rejiggered it so that it’s now called Sover Living and focuses on sober firsts: first time going on a date, a trip, celebrating a holiday, whatever sober. Give it a listen!

Somehow knowing I was going to be joining an already active podcast made me start thinking about On Good Authority. Yes, I felt like I’d learned all I could about launching a book, but I hadn’t learned all that could happen after you launched an authority-building book. And I hadn’t really gotten into what I consider the past, present and future of book publishing.

The way I see it is like the image with this post (thank Chat GPT for bringing the vision to life).

And so I decided I wanted to bring the podcast back but with seasons: one focusing on publishing’s past (where I’d interview all my friends from the traditional publishing world), one focusing on publishing’s present (where I’d interview all my clients and other entrepreneurs about how much their books did for them) and one focusing on the future (where I’d interview AI experts and anyone else focused on whatever’s coming next in this industry).

When I started to think about a new name, I realized that I’ve loved writing this Substack so much and since I’ve changed the name shockingly few times for me, why not use it for the podcast, too? And so the podcast is now officially called Behind the Book Cover. If you’re new to me even saying the word podcast or aren’t new to it but never subscribed, it would mean so much if you remedied that now by clicking here. Subscribe on ALL platforms if you want to—it’s not illegal!

I’ve been recording a bunch of episodes, both in person and over Zoom, over the past few months and I’m thrilled to report that starting next week, I’ll be releasing the first one: Hannah Sward on Whether or Not It’s Worth It to Chase a Book Deal. Episodes will come out every other week so on the week of release, I’ll be doing a special write up about the episode here. (Other weeks I’ll just be doing a written post on a topic related to book publishing, like I have been.)

It’s.

Going.

To.

Be.

Cool.

And that’s sort of my point. I’m doing it not because it will make money or because I’ve decided I Must Have a Podcast If I’m Going to Be a Business Owner Today. I’m doing it because it’s fun and interesting and I think you’ll love it.

The super cool part?

Even if you don’t love it—even if no one listens—it will still be worth it because I’ve loved doing it.

(Tho I do hope you’ll listen and love. And subscribe! And rate and review and all the things.)