Episode
A radical fix for the broken book business, with Madeline McIntosh
- Podcast
- Rapid Response
- Published
- Jun 5, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1755
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/rapid-response-730938/episodes/a-radical-fix-for-the-broken-book-business-with-madeline-mcintosh/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/rapid-response-730938/a-radical-fix-for-the-broken-book-business-with-madeline-mcintosh.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
The book industry has a problem, and it isn't a lack of content. Madeline McIntosh spent decades navigating publishing's biggest upheavals, from the e-commerce revolution at Amazon to leading Penguin Random House as CEO. Now she's betting that the whole model needs to be rebuilt from scratch. She joins Rapid Response to explain why she walked away from one of the most powerful seats in publishing to co-found Authors Equity, and what a small startup can do that a global giant simply can't. McIntosh also takes on AI's limits as a creative force, explains why BookTok is rewriting the rules of the marketplace, and makes the case that in an age of scale, hyper-focus might be the most powerful competitive advantage of all. Visit the Rapid Response website here: https://www.rapidresponseshow.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .