Episode
Mark Ebner on How to Survive the Death of Publishing (and Still Tell the Truth)
- Podcast
- Behind the Book Cover
- Published
- Dec 30, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2814
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://share.transistor.fm/s/b649d030
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Summary
If you're thinking about writing an authority building book, and I really hope you are, and you don't want to be counting pennies or checking your book sales all the time, you actually want a book that's going to change your life, I can tell you how. Just go to sevenfigurebooks.com. I'm not trying to capture your email or anything. You can just download this PDF that's going to tell you exactly how to turn an authority building book into revenue, speaking, authority, and no exaggeration, a whole new life. Mark Ebner has lived every journalist’s dream. He’s a New York Times bestselling author, Hollywood insider and the guy behind some of the most notorious exposés in entertainment history. But behind the bylines and book deals is a story about an industry that chews up even its most fearless voices—and a writer who found a way to keep telling the truth anyway. In this conversation, Mark and I talk about everything the publishing world doesn’t want you to know—from missing royalty checks and botched releases to what happens when AI starts scraping your life’s work. He opens up about his unlikely friendship with Andrew Breitbart, the chaos of the book business and how he went from bestselling author to private investigator—while somehow staying one of the funniest, most unflinchingly honest people I’ve ever met. Episode Highlights The truth about what it really means to hit the New York Times list (and why it doesn’t make you rich) How HarperCollins mishandled his biggest book deal—and what it taught him about the industry’s dysfunction The unexpected camaraderie between a radical leftist and a far-right pundit and how it produced Hollywood, Interrupted Why bookstores literally killed one of his bestsellers by shelving it in the wrong section The burnout and betrayal that…