# Tom Zoellner on Letting Go of the Hustle to Find Meaning in Writing Rather than Publishing

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349/tom-zoellner-on-letting-go-of-the-hustle-to-find-meaning-in-writing-rather-than-publishing
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349/tom-zoellner-on-letting-go-of-the-hustle-to-find-meaning-in-writing-rather-than-publishing.md
Podcast: [Behind the Book Cover](https://stenobird.com/podcast/behind-the-book-cover-737349)
Published: 2025-12-16T00:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/76186fff
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/76186fff/b9f221b2.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/behind-the-book-cover-737349/episodes/tom-zoellner-on-letting-go-of-the-hustle-to-find-meaning-in-writing-rather-than-publishing
Duration seconds: 2636

## Resource

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. Tom Zoellner has no illusions about fame, sales or the myth of the “life-changing book.” A National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times bestselling author, Zoellner has written nine acclaimed works of nonfiction including Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire , which also became a finalist for the Bancroft Prize and the California Book Award. But despite the accolades, he’s learned to see writing not as a climb toward visibility but as a lifelong meditation on curiosity and craft. In this episode, he and I had a lively debate about such things as whether technology is the death knell of creativity or an amazing opportunity, if one should be writing to build authority or to simply to experience the satisfaction of delving deeply into a topic and even how to pronounce BISAC (not to mention his last name). We also talk about how I once said a sentence to him summarizing how I feel about book publishing that he quotes back to me all the time. Tom may be my polar opposite in terms of using a book to strategically advance but I do admire the way he writes, as he says, to add one small spark to the larger fire of human knowledge. Listen in to find where you may lie on the spectrum of creativity and commercialism (and where the tw…

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## Transcript

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