Behind the Book Cover

Hannah Sward’s publishing journey reads like a masterclass in persistence meets divine intervention.

After years of writing short stories for underground literary journals, she stumbled into a free writer’s group at a library—complete with homeless people sleeping on the sidelines.

That’s where she met Jill Sherry Robinson, an 80-year-old bestselling author who essentially kidnapped her and mentored her until she finishe...

if you’re a subscriber, hi! It’s been a minute. And by a minute I mean it’s been almost a year.

That’s because one of the main reasons I do a podcast is so that I can educate myself and after hundreds of interviews, I felt like I’d learned everything I could about how to build authority with a book. I even used many of those interviews in the book I published in 2023, also called On Good Authority.

I was surprised to discove...

Hilary Lifton is not one to boast, and I write that with more understatement than you can imagine.

I was introduced to her recently at a party by someone who said she was a big ghostwriter. When I asked her about her career, she mentioned working on a self-help book.

It was only when I Googled her later that I learned she has written 16 New York Times bestsellers and is one of the most sought-after ghostwriters alive. (While...

Arlina Allen is a force in the recovery movement. Sober for over 30 years, she's been releasing episodes of her top 1% podcast, ODAAT Chat, for over eight.

She's also been working on a book for almost that long—and now it's finally here! The 12-Step Guide for Skeptics: Clearing Up Common Misconceptions of A path to Sobriety is out now and for it, she showed her book-in-progress to people who not only didn't agree with what ...

Dr. Douglas Brackmann isn't like anyone else you meet. He's far more intense and brilliant—the kind of person you find yourself telling your deepest and darkest secrets to when you had just planned to ask him about the weather.

The author of Driven: Understanding and Harnessing the Genetic Gifts Shared by Entrepreneurs, Navy SEALs, Pro Athletes, and Maybe YOU, Brackmann is revered among top entrepreneurs. And while he admit...

Erika Ayers Badan calls herself a “token CEO”, the rare female employee in the highest rank of a bro-roar sports and new media culture—specifically, at Barstool Sports, which she took from a rough-and-tumble sports and betting brand and turned it into a $550 million juggernaut with more than 5 billion monthly video views and 225 million followers.

In her book, Nobody Cares About Your Career: Why Failure Is Good, The Great ...

It’s truly a crime that there’s no TV series about Jill Ishkanian.

The lone female tabloid reporter in a sea of men, Ishkanian has been raided by the FBI, exonerated Meghan Markle and been late to a lunch date with me because she thought she saw Kevin Costner driving. And those are just three of dozens of fascinating facts!

Yet, despite the fact that she’s been technically employed as a writer for decades and knows she has a...

While Mark Gottlieb has agenting in his blood—he’s a second generation lit agent—he’s not your typical agent. He doesn’t specialize in any particular genre but bounces between fiction and nonfiction, with some children's books and graphic novels in between. And though he works with the Big Five publishers, he’s open-minded when it comes to self-publishing and the new wave of publishing.

In this episode we talked about how ...

You know that kindergarten teacher we all wish we'd had?

That's Erin Lee. But part of what makes us all wish she'd been our teacher is the fact that in addition to being a teacher, she's an award-winning children's book author.

Still, as we discuss quite a bit around here, being an amazing author doesn't always guarantee book sales.

But Erin HAS sold thousands of books. So how has she done it? Well, she started dressing up as...

Kevin Anderson never meant to get into the publishing business after growing up in a small town in Canada before getting his PhD and graduating summa cum laude from Harvard and starting a tutoring company.

Nevertheless, that tutoring company transitioned into what is now a massive publishing company that employs 30 writers and editors that have collectively worked on over 200 New York Times bestselling books and sold ov...

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress, activist, and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. Her other books include: Wherever You Go, There They Are, and You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up (coauthored with Jeff Kahn). 

She was the co-host of Dinner & a Movie on TBS and has appeared on NPR, The Today Show, CBS Early Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, PBS, and numerous CNN and...

Dave Chesson is the creator of Kindlepreneur.com, a website devoted to teaching advanced book marketing which even Amazon KDP acknowledges as one of the best by telling users to “Gain insight from Kindlepreneur on how you can optimize marketing for your books.” Having worked with such authors as Orson Scott Card, Ted Dekker and more, his tactics help both fiction and nonfiction authors of all levels get their books discove...

Ashlea Hearn is not only a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserves but also the author of Genesis Mortalis, Book 1 of the Take It Trilogy.

We met when she reached out to me about the upcoming release of that book. But here's what's relevant: by that point, I had noticed this lovely person named Ashlea Hearn reviewing me wherever she could—different books, this podcast, on Google...everywhere.

But here's what I really noticed: sh...

Scott Duffy is an entrepreneur and business strategist who's listed as a “Top 10 Speaker” by Entrepreneur and has been named one of the “Top Influential People To Follow” by Yahoo! Finance.

'But that's not why I brought him on the pod. I brought him on because he's also the author of three different business books on three different topics, from three different publishers and launched in three entirely different ways. When ...

Greg Behrendt is the #1 New York Times best-selling co-author of He’s Just Not That Into You and It’s Called A Breakup Because It’s Broken. He's appeared on every TV show known to man, including Oprah, The Tonight Show and The Today Show, is a life long standup comedian and co-hosts the relationship podcast Don't Take Bullshit From Fuckers.

He's also a life and writing coach, who can walk you through exactly how to write a ...

Katie DePaola is an author, speaker, entrepreneur and the founder of Inner Glow Circle, a company dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs find their glow and live purpose-driven lives.

But most relevantly for our show, she is the author of At Least You Look Good: How to Glow Through What You Go Through, the latest release from Launch Pad Publishing. The book is part memoir, part self-help and all love; it's Katie's story a...

Alex Sanfilippo is the host of the top-rated podcast Podcasting Made Simple, the founder of PodPros.com, a software company focused specifically on the podcasting industry and the co-creator of PodMatch, a service that matches podcast guests and hosts together for interviews. That's not all! He also co-founded PodcastSOP, a project management tool that helps podcasters keep up with their episode releases.

You get it: the gu...

Boy, does Craig Stanland have a story to tell.

It starts with the FBI knocking on his door, followed by two years in prison.

But that's not really what we delve into here. Instead we talk about the book he wrote on his experience—and the one major mistake he made.

Now that he's at work on book number two (title TBD—we get into that in the conversation), he's approaching everything differently.

Find out about that, as well as h...