“You should start posting your book reviews publicly.”

She wasn’t telling me to become an influencer.

In fact, I don’t think either of us imagined that word would become attached to what I was doing.

I was already writing long reviews after finishing books, texting recommendations to friends, and talking about literature with anyone who would listen. She simply suggested I move those conversations into a public space. Maybe, she thought, other readers would connect with them, too.

So I created @Brian.Reads on Instagram.

The account wasn’t born with a business plan. It certainly wasn’t created because I thought I’d one day interview bestselling authors, host a podcast, or somehow end up running a book club with RuPaul. It existed for one reason: I wanted to share the books I genuinely loved.

That distinction has mattered every day since.

I wasn’t trying to tell people what not to read.

I was trying to help them discover what to read next.

Over time, the account evolved. I highlighted debut authors whose work deserved more attention. I celebrated upcoming releases that genuinely excited me. I revisited classics I’d somehow missed in my twenties, or books I never got around to reading in high school.

Reading In Cold Blood, Giovanni’s Room, and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil wasn’t about checking literary boxes. Those books helped me find people who were searching for the same thing I was—stories worth falling into.

And I learned something that has become the foundation of everything I’ve built since.

Readers aren’t just looking for books.

They’re looking for someone whose taste they trust.

That’s much harder to build than a large following.

I’ll never forget reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans for the first time.

Share The Sober Millennial

The advance reader copy featured a silhouette of the protagonist, Sybil, sitting at her desk writing letters. I started the novel around 8 p.m., expecting to read a chapter or two before bed. Instead, I found myself reluctantly turning off the light, still thinking about the story. So I set my alarm for 4 a.m., crept upstairs to the small communal library in my apartment building, and finished the book before getting ready for work.

By the final pages, I was a mess.

I messaged Virginia that same day. From that moment on, I couldn’t stop talking about the book.

I recommended it on Instagram. I talked about it on national television. I mentioned it in conversations with producers, publishers, and anyone who asked me what they should read next. I loved building a relationship with Virginia and her publisher, Crown, over the months that followed.

One of my favorite moments was watching each new printing arrive.

First, it read National Bestseller.

Then USA Today Bestseller.

Then, earlier this year, #1 New York Times Bestseller.

Every time Crown mailed me another edition with a new accolade printed across the cover, I felt this little burst of joy. Not because I had anything to do with writing such an extraordinary novel, but because I’d been lucky enough to witness what happens when a remarkable book finds its readers.

Virginia was also one of the very first guests to say yes to appearing on Shelf Care Society.

Watching that journey reinforced something I’ve come to believe about books.

Readers don’t just consume them.

The best readers become advocates.

I feel that same excitement beginning to bubble up again with Ben Reeves’s debut, Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.

It’s my favorite book I’ve read this year, and I think about it almost every day.

The USPS employees at my local post office are probably tired of seeing me walk in with another stack of Media Mail packages, each containing a copy of the novel and a handwritten note explaining why I think the recipient needs to read it.

Maybe that’s what being a creator means to me.

Not convincing people to buy a book.

Being so moved by one that you can’t help but share it.

For a long time, I resisted the word influencer. Honestly, I still cringe a little when someone introduces me that way.

I prefer creator.

Maybe it’s semantics, but “influencer” suggests the goal is influence itself. “Creator” reminds me that my job is to make something useful, thoughtful, or entertaining. If influence follows, wonderful. It should be the byproduct, not the objective.

One decision I made early on shaped almost everything that followed.

I don’t post negative reviews on my social media.

People often assume that’s because I’m trying to stay diplomatic.

That’s part of it.

The publishing world is astonishingly small. Throughout the course of a year, I’ll almost certainly cross paths with that author, their editor, their publicist, or their publisher at a bookstore event, a conference, or over drinks after a panel.

But that’s not the primary reason.

A book isn’t just written, it’s constructed over time with input from many, many people.

Even if a book doesn’t work for me, I can’t ignore the amount of care, hope, and labor that made it possible.

I’d rather spend my energy talking about the books I love than convincing people to dislike the ones I don’t.

Would my platform have grown faster if I’d leaned into outrage?

Probably.

I’ve watched friends build enormous audiences with videos like:

“Five books I loved and five books I hated.”

“Books you should avoid at all costs.”

“The most overrated novels ever written.”

It works.

Social media rewards disagreement. Rage fuels comments. Comments fuel engagement. Engagement tells the algorithm that people can’t stop interacting with the content, so it serves it to even more people.

That’s the flywheel.

The algorithm doesn’t necessarily reward the most thoughtful content.

It rewards the content people can’t stop reacting to.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth.

Sometimes the creator making those videos doesn’t even believe what they’re saying as strongly as the title suggests. They know certainty performs better than nuance. Outrage outperforms curiosity.

I chose a slower path.

Looking back, I’m grateful I did.

Because the platform eventually became something much bigger than Instagram.

It became the foundation for Shelf Care Society, where I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with authors, artists, and changemakers like Malala Yousafzai, Dr. Nicole LePera, Jodi Picoult, André Aciman, R.F. Kuang, Cole Brauer, Matthew Quick, and many others.

It led to speaking engagements, television appearances, relationships with publishers, friendships with authors I once admired from afar and, perhaps most surreal of all, a book deal of my own.

Ironically, none of those opportunities came because I tried to become an influencer.

They came because I kept showing up as a reader.

That’s the distinction I wish more aspiring authors understood.

Building a platform is valuable.

Building a personal brand can become a trap.

One asks:

How can I connect with readers?

The other asks:

How can I get people to pay attention to me?

Those questions sound similar.

They’re not.

The first builds trust.

The second builds dependency on attention.

Writing requires long stretches of invisibility. It asks you to disappear for months, sometimes years, while you wrestle with ideas no one else can see yet.

Algorithms hate that.

Communities understand it.

If you’re an author wondering whether you should become an influencer, my answer is no.

Become someone readers trust.

Share what genuinely excites you. Celebrate other writers. Champion great books. Recommend the overlooked debut. Reread the classics. Participate in the conversations you want to exist.

Build a community.

The readers will find you there.

Looking back, my agent was right.

She never told me to become an influencer.

She told me to become more visible.

There’s a difference.

One is about attracting attention.

The other is about finding your people.

I found mine through books.

Leave a comment

What Really Sells Books?

The straight answer is: I do not know.

I am not sure anyone does. If publishing had developed a reliable formula for turning a book into a bestseller, every lead title would earn out, every celebrity book club pick would dominate the charts, and no beautifully written novel would disappear three weeks after publication.

Still, after three years of straddling the influencer and author worlds, I have learned a thing or two about what puts wind in the sales of a book.

Before we go any further, I think it is important to distinguish between fiction and nonfiction, as well as between debut authors and established ones. Selling the sixth novel from an author with a loyal readership is a different exercise from introducing an unknown novelist. Selling a celebrity memoir is different from selling a practical guide written by someone with a modest but highly invested audience.

What I have learned the most about over the past year is the particular challenge in front of me: selling a debut nonfiction book.

My memoir, The Afterparty: An Open Invitation to Sobriety, comes out next year. That means I have entered the strange runway during which a book is finished, but the work of finding its readers has only begun. I am watching everything differently now. Every platform, podcast invitation, bookseller conversation and email signup has become part of a larger question:

How does a person move from knowing that a book exists to spending roughly $30 to own it?

Subscribe now

Welcome to Influencer-landia

I spend a good amount of time in what I call Influencer-landia, a panopticon where every post can be measured and none of the social media channels carry quite the same weight.

My main channels these days are Instagram, my podcast, Shelf Care Society, Substack, LinkedIn and, more recently, Facebook.

Facebook has surprised me. Over the past year, the platform has increasingly rewarded creators for publishing content there, while Instagram’s financial incentives have been less consistent. More importantly for my book, Facebook has introduced me to a substantially different audience.

About 70 percent of my Facebook followers are between 45 and 60, and the audience skews heavily female. My Instagram audience is much younger, with about 80 percent below the age of 40, and is divided more evenly across genders.

Over the coming months, I am curious to see whether Facebook becomes a primary engine for preorders and sales of The Afterparty. My hypothesis: It will become a primary engine.

Although the book is written through a queer lens, because, hello, it is me, I suspect much of its commercial audience will resemble the traditional book-buying public: largely female and somewhat older. That audience tends to read more frequently and has the disposable income to purchase a hardcover book.

I also want The Afterparty to find a meaningful place in the sobriety sphere. Addiction does not discriminate. Reading habits and book-buying behavior, however, are not evenly distributed.

I am grateful that I wrote the book without trying to reverse-engineer an imaginary consumer. I did not sit down and ask what a 52-year-old suburban reader might tolerate from a gay man writing about sex, addiction, shame and reinvention. I wrote the book I needed to write.

Now I have to help the people who may need it find it.

Those are different jobs.

Who Is “Women’s Fiction” For?

I recently had a lively conversation online with my nearly 60,000 followers about the category of “women’s fiction.”

What is it, exactly?

That definition makes sense on the level of craft. On the level of marketing, however, the category often appears to mean something looser: books that publishers believe women are especially likely to purchase.

The conversation with my followers quickly revealed the problem. Readers mentioned books about family, identity, marriage, friendship, motherhood, ambition, grief and reinvention. In other words, books about human existence.

Why are those subjects categorized as women’s fiction when a man’s emotional journey is more likely to be called literary fiction?

There is no broadly used corresponding category called “men’s fiction.” A sprawling novel about male friendship, disappointment, marriage or middle age is allowed to be literature without announcing the presumed gender of its customer.

I understand why the category exists. Publishing is a business, and categories help sales teams pitch books, bookstores shelve them, media outlets assign coverage and readers find stories they are likely to enjoy. Women have also long been among the most active readers, book buyers and book club members. It would be disingenuous to pretend the industry does not organize itself around that reality.

But I suspect the label is moving toward expiration.

Readers are becoming increasingly comfortable moving between prescribed genres. A person may read romantasy on Monday, a presidential biography on Wednesday and an experimental novel on Saturday. The most interesting reading communities online are often built by people whose taste cannot be reduced to their age, sexuality or gender.

As readers, we should be suspicious of any category that tells us who a book is for before we have even opened it.

A Following Helps, but Trust Sells

So, what actually sells books, Brian?

A following on Instagram certainly helps, particularly when that audience is already interested in the subject of your book.

But follower count alone is an almost meaningless number.

A following matters when people have come to trust your opinions. It matters when they know more about you than the smile in your profile picture. They have watched you struggle, change your mind, celebrate, fail, and try again. They believe that when you recommend something, there is a person behind the recommendation.

For a nonfiction author, this relationship can be especially important. Readers are not simply evaluating the book’s premise. They are evaluating whether they want to spend several hours in the author’s company.

Facebook can extend that relationship to a different demographic. Substack can deepen it.

Substack is particularly valuable because it allows an author to collect email addresses and speak directly to the people most invested in the work. Algorithms change. Platforms disappear. Reach rises and falls for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of what you made.

An email list is a group of people who have deliberately opened the door.

Those subscribers are often your ride-or-die supporters. They preorder. They attend events. They recommend the book to their friends. They are the people who notice that publication day has arrived without being reminded by an Instagram Story that disappears after 24 hours.

Every Book Needs Its Devotees

I will also say the quiet part aloud: a book needs its five or ten devotees.

These are the people who understand you, understand the book and are willing to evangelize on its behalf.

Not in a preachy or transactional way. They are simply so excited by the book that talking about it becomes natural. Ideally, they also have channels through which that enthusiasm can travel.

I would not evaluate these people strictly by follower count. Once someone has more than roughly 5,000 engaged followers on a platform (usually called a “micro-influencer”), a passionate recommendation can travel well beyond the audience already following them. Algorithms reward posts that inspire comments, saves and shares. Genuine excitement is legible, both to people and to platforms.

The key word is genuine.

You cannot manufacture a devotee by adding someone to a publicity spreadsheet six weeks before publication.

Over the past few years, I have been able to throw my weight behind perhaps three or four books each year.

These are the books that make me say: Oh my God, everyone I know needs to read this.

Sometimes the book comes from a famous author. More often, it is a debut novel or a nonfiction book that lights up my mind so completely that I want to do what all great booksellers do. I want to hand-sell it.

In my case, that may mean literally giving copies to friends, inviting the author onto my podcast, posting about it repeatedly or placing it directly in the hands of someone I know will love it.

That type of advocacy is difficult to price because it is not a single post. It is sustained belief.

There is a popular marketing idea that a consumer must encounter a product seven or more times before purchasing it. I initially thought Book Riot had offered a similar formula for books, with fewer encounters required when the recommendation came from a highly trusted source.

But the Book Riot survey I found reached a more interesting conclusion: for most respondents, it was not really about the number of times they encountered a book. Context, timing, trust and the quality of the recommendation mattered more.

That feels true to me.

A single recommendation from your best friend may sell you a book. Eleven generic digital ads may not.

Publicity Creates Recognition

Public relations is another tool that can shift substantial quantities of a book when wielded correctly.

The right podcast appearance can introduce an author to thousands of listeners who already care about the subject. A collaborative social post or well-edited video clip can extend that appearance far beyond the original episode.

Traditional media can still matter enormously. NPR coverage can reach an older, highly engaged audience that already turns to NPR for cultural recommendations. Its Books We Love project alone includes thousands of titles selected by staff members and trusted critics.

Major book club selections can transform a book’s trajectory because they combine three things every author needs: attention, trust and a reason to participate now.

Newspaper and magazine coverage can provide credibility. Regional television can build local recognition. Morning shows, late-night appearances, radio interviews, newsletters, literary festivals and live events all create additional points of contact.

These appearances may not each generate an obvious spike in sales. Think of them as the whipped cream on the sundae. They make the book more visible, more familiar and more likely to receive a second look when someone sees it at a bookstore.

The difficulty is attribution.

A person may hear an author on a podcast, see the jacket on Instagram two days later, read an essay by the author the following week and finally purchase the book during a visit to an independent bookstore. Which appearance made the sale?

Probably all of them.

Booksellers Still Matter Most

Then there are booksellers.

The American Booksellers Association now says it supports more than 3,700 independent bookstores. That is an extraordinary network of people who can rally around a title, place it on a table, add a handwritten staff recommendation and put it directly into a reader’s hands.

Trust me, booksellers are constantly inundated by publishers and sales representatives asking them to bet big on particular titles.

But what makes booksellers different is that many of them actually read the damn book.

They discuss books among themselves, often months before publication. They remember which customer loved a particular memoir or abandoned a certain novel after 50 pages. They understand that the person asking for “something uplifting” may not mean uncomplicated, and that the reader requesting “a book about sobriety” may not want a clinical addiction manual.

A supportive bookseller network is worth his/her/their weight in gold.

These relationships are also cultivated over time. Visit independent bookstores when you travel. Purchase books from them. Attend their events. Follow their social media accounts and engage meaningfully. Learn the names of the people working there. Ask booksellers what they are reading rather than immediately telling them what you wrote.

Offer to sign stock when your book is available. Send a thoughtful note. Thank the event staff. Promote the store when you appear there. Order books through independent stores even when clicking a giant online retailer would be marginally easier.

Do not arrive only when you need something.

What Usually Does Not Sell Books

What am I leaving out?

Ads, for one.

Social media advertisements can generate awareness, video views and website traffic. They can be useful for retargeting people who have already visited an author’s page or interacted with related content. But the path from an ad impression to a book purchase is long and difficult to measure.

Imagine seeing an ad for a memoir on Instagram. Perhaps you watch three seconds of the video. Two weeks later, you hear the author on a podcast. A month later, you notice the book at Barnes & Noble. Then your friend recommends it.

The ad may have planted the first seed, but the sales report will not explain that.

Books are also relatively low-cost products with relatively narrow profit margins. An author can spend hundreds or thousands of dollars serving advertisements without selling enough additional copies to recover that cost. Impressions are not purchases. Views are not readers.

And hiring influencers to promote your book?

No. Just no.

As my dad says, “The time to make friends is not when you need them.”

A large following does not guarantee that an influencer reaches your reader. View counts do not tell you whether the audience buys books. A person who receives a check to mention your memoir may produce a polished post, but viewers can usually tell when the excitement ends with the contract.

You are placing several bets at once: that you selected the right influencer, that the algorithm serves the post, that the audience trusts the recommendation, that they care about the book’s subject and that they are willing to purchase it.

Sometimes it works. Often, it is an expensive prayer.

I love my fellow influencers, but unless you already know that a particular person is one of the book’s natural evangelists, buying an endorsement rarely makes sense to me.

Build the connection along the way, and build it earnestly.

Personally, I am unlikely to accept an ARC directly from an author who has never followed or engaged with my work before appearing in my inbox to ask for coverage. I know many of my counterparts feel similarly.

The outreach feels artificial because it is artificial. The author does not know what I read, what I care about or whether my audience is remotely suited to the book. They saw a follower count and an email address.

That approach does not make me curious about the book. It makes it easier to disregard.

Use the Platforms as Laboratories

One of my favorite tools on Instagram is Trial Reels.

For me, Trial Reels are a sandbox.

I can test content, fonts, hooks, captions, subjects and styles as I pivot from being known primarily as a book influencer and podcaster toward becoming an author in the sobriety and self-help space.

What makes someone stop scrolling?

What makes them share a story about sobriety with a friend?

Which ideas generate thoughtful comments rather than passive views?

When a Trial Reel performs well, I can share it with my existing audience. By then, the content arrives with evidence that people outside my immediate community already find it valuable. That social proof can inspire more engagement, which introduces the video to more people.

That is the flywheel effect of a content machine.

The purpose is not merely to go viral. Virality without relevance can attract thousands of people who will never buy the book.

The purpose is to refine the language that helps the right people recognize themselves in the work.

The Author Is the First Bookseller

Ultimately, the author is the book’s first and best salesperson.

Have your elevator pitch ready. Know how to describe the book without reciting the jacket copy. Be able to explain why you wrote it, why it matters now and who might find something useful inside it.

Be generous with your time. Support fellow authors. Attend events where you are not the person onstage. Engage with booksellers, podcasters, journalists and book influencers whose work you genuinely appreciate.

Talk about your book with enthusiasm, but do not make every conversation a hostage situation.

People are more inclined to support someone who participates in the literary ecosystem than someone who appears at publication time carrying an empty basket and asking everyone else to fill it.

So, what really sells books?

Not one platform. Not one media appearance. Not one influencer. Not one advertisement.

Books sell through accumulated trust.

They sell because a bookseller puts one into a customer’s hand. Because a friend sends a late-night text saying, “You need this.” Because a podcast listener hears an author articulate something they have never been able to name. Because a newsletter subscriber has followed the journey from proposal to publication and feels invested in the outcome.

They sell because five or ten people believe in the book loudly enough that other people begin to believe in it, too.

The frustrating answer is that none of this guarantees success.

The hopeful answer is that the most valuable parts cannot be bought at the last minute. They are built through years of showing up, reading generously, contributing to the community and becoming a person whose recommendation means something.

Perhaps what sells books is not reach.

Perhaps it is the number of people who trust you enough to reach for one.

We are about a year out from the publication of my memoir, The Afterparty: An Open Invitation to Sobriety, which feels both impossibly far away and alarmingly soon.

A year sounds generous until you start breaking it down into copyedits, interior layouts, cover conversations, blurbs, PR meetings, podcast interviews, event wish lists, book tour dreams, book tour stomach knots, and the very normal activity of sitting alone at your desk wondering if one comma has just changed the emotional landscape of an entire sentence. Which, for the record, it can.

I have learned many things during this stage of publishing, but one of the most important is this: a comma is not just a comma. A comma can soften a sentence, sharpen a sentence, flatten a sentence, redirect a sentence, or make you stare at the ceiling for twenty-two minutes while asking yourself, “Is this still what I meant?”

I did not realize how powerful and delicate the written word could feel until I entered the nitty gritty of copyedits.

I also learned what “STET” means. And I have used it abundantly.

For those who have not yet had the pleasure, STET (a Latin word meaning “let it stand”) is the writer’s way of saying: actually, please leave this exactly as it was. It is a tiny word with enormous emotional range. Sometimes STET means, “I see the rule of grammar you are applying, and I respect it.” Sometimes STET means, “The rhythm matters more to me here.” Sometimes STET means, “I promise I know this sentence is weird, but the weirdness is the point.” And sometimes STET means, “If we move this comma, I fear the whole memory loses its pulse.”

Copyedits have made me more aware than ever that writing is not just about accuracy. It is about tone, breath, and the sentence sounding like the person who lived it.

That feels especially true in memoir.

When you write about your own life, you are not simply reporting what happened. You are trying to get close to the texture of it. You are trying to capture not only the event, but the emotional weather around the event:

What did it feel like to be there? What did you know then? What do you know now? Where were you lying to yourself? Where were you protecting yourself? Where were you surviving? Where were you becoming?

That is the strange double vision of memoir. You are both the person in the scene and the person trying to understand the scene. You are actor and director—and, to a certain extent, screenwriter. Or, as I have started thinking of it, you are the quasi-omniscient, mostly reliable narrator of your own life. Mostly.

And unlike fiction, where you can invent the hallway, the argument, the door left open, the family secret, the narrator’s blind spot, in memoir you are working with what was. But you are still building a book and making choices. You are still shaping scenes, pacing revelations, cutting what no longer belongs, and finding the emotional logic beneath the chronology.

I think a lot of people imagine writing a memoir as a linear act. You sit down, begin at the beginning, tell the truth, and arrive at the end transformed.

That has not been my experience.

Writing this book has been less like walking a straight road and more like excavating a house I built in my head, while someone keeps turning the lights on in rooms I forgot existed.

There have been memories that arrive in full paragraphs at inconvenient times. In the shower. On the subway. While making coffee. While trying to fall asleep. Once, in the middle of a Broadway show! And even in the middle of a perfectly normal Wednesday, when suddenly some small detail knocks on the door and says, “Actually, I belong in the book.”

Even now, after developmental edits, after major restructuring, after cutting entire chapters, after bringing the manuscript down from around 110,000 words to about 83,000, the past still finds ways to reintroduce itself.

The few times this has happened late in the process, I have been careful to tell the reader directly. I say, in essence: in an earlier version of writing this book, this part was left off the page.

I want readers to understand that omission is part of memoir, too. Not always because something is being hidden. Sometimes because the writer was not ready (my memory is not a filing cabinet!). It is more like weather. It moves. It changes pressure. It returns when it returns.

That has been one of the great surprises of this process. Publishing has forced me to keep listening.

A book can be “done” and still be alive.

At the same time, there have been parts of this process that feel very much like the classic publishing fantasy. The kind of thing I dreamed about before I knew how much Microsoft Word markup would be involved.

I have been getting interior design layouts back for the book, which is surreal. There is something deeply strange and moving about seeing your words begin to look like a real object—a book—and not just a manuscript you have stared at until your eyes crossed. A book with pages and structure. Hopefully, a book that someone might one day pick up in a store, hold in their hands, flip through, and decide to take home.

Oh! And yes, I have also seen first rounds of cover designs.

I went into the cover process with one very clear idea of what I wanted the book to look like. Let’s just say it involved a disco ball and a neon sign.

I still love that idea, obviously, because I am me. But the funny thing about publishing is that you are constantly being asked to remain open. To your editor’s vision. To your designer’s vision. To the market. To what a book can signal from across a room. To what might invite the right reader in.

Some of the other cover designs have really surprised me. They show promise in ways I did not expect. I am trying to hold my original vision and my curiosity at the same time, which is a very adult sentence I resent having to write.

But this whole process has been an exercise in openness.

For a while, I worried about saying that out loud.

I had this fear that people would hear “sobriety” and immediately retreat into politeness, discomfort, or even judgment. I worried they would think the idea was too niche, too personal, too heavy, too earnest. I worried they would ask, either out loud or silently, “Is this really life-changing?”

And the answer I keep finding, over and over again, is yes.

People are receptive. More than receptive, actually. People are hungry for a different way to talk about sobriety. They are hungry for a conversation about sobriety that is not built entirely around rock bottom, shame, spectacle, or deprivation. They want language for what happens after. They want to know what becomes possible. They want to know if joy comes back and if they can improve their lives.

Of course, there are also the occasional ridiculous follow-up questions.

And the answer is always the same: you will just have to read the book.

But even those questions remind me why I wrote it. We still have such limited scripts around sobriety. We still treat it like a punishment, a confession, a phase, a failure of moderation, or a dramatic reveal. I wanted to write into the much larger, stranger, more beautiful truth of it like the ordinary mornings that become miracles precisely because you are awake for them (and not hungover).

This year, I have also been taking time to celebrate my sobriety each day. Not always in a grand way. Sometimes celebration looks like a walk or noticing, with real tenderness, that I am still here. That I built a life I once did not know how to want. That seven years of sobriety is not just a number, but a series of choices, one after another, many of them quiet, many of them invisible, all of them adding up to a life I am so proud of.

That is the part I keep returning to.

Sobriety did not only give me a book. It gave me the life in which I could write one.

And now the book is making its way out into the world in stages.

Blurbs are beginning to roll in, and each one makes me cry.

I mean that sincerely. Every time someone takes the time to read what I have written, digest it, sit with it, and send back a blurb that is thoughtful and so, so generous, I am undone. It is one thing to write alone. It is another thing to realize the work has reached someone. It feels like a pinch-me moment every single time.

People have asked me who I reached out to for blurbs, and the answer is: a lot of different people. Fellow authors. Memoirists. Novelists. Social media personalities. Booksellers. Celebrities. People whose work shaped me. People whose voices I trust. People who understand sobriety, liberation, storytelling, queerness, self-reclamation, or some combination of all of the above.

My motto has been simple: if the outreach is sincere, the worst they can say is no.

And honestly, no is not fatal. No is just no.

But sometimes, someone on your “dream blurb list” says yes. Sometimes they say yes and then send back words about your book that make you cry at your kitchen counter. I don’t every want to forget these moments.

Another major milestone: I am planning to give a copy of the book to my mom for the first time this week. This is huge for me.

My mom has always been one of my first readers. In a different life, she could have been a copy editor. She is precise, thoughtful, and lovingly ruthless in the way only a mother with a sharp eye can be. But with this book, I knew I needed to hold it close for longer. I needed to keep working until the very end. I needed to add and delete chapters. I needed to make sure the shape was right. I needed to understand what I was really trying to say before I handed it to one of the people who knows me best.

I am excited for her to read it. I am also incredibly nervous.

It is a lot about me, which is a hilarious thing to say about a memoir, but still. There is something uniquely vulnerable about giving your life, arranged into chapters, to someone who was there for so much of it. Fortunately, she is one of my best friends. Still, I wanted the book to be as right as I could make it before she read it.

That might be one of the tenderest parts of this process. The book is public, eventually, but first it becomes intimate in all these new ways. Your agent reads it. Your editor reads it. Your early readers read it. Potential blurbers read it. Your family reads it. Publicity teams read it. PR firms read it before deciding whether they want to come on board.

Which brings me to another behind-the-scenes piece of this year: I have been interviewing different PR firms to potentially represent me and the book ahead of release.

Those conversations are ongoing. A lot of firms book out six to eight months in advance, and many ask to read the manuscript before agreeing to come on board. It is another reminder that a book is both art and an object moving through a system called “Publishing.”

I have been putting together my own dream list of podcasts, TV shows, conferences, and industry events I would love to be part of from about three months before publication through the end of next year. It is exciting. It is also terrifying.

Just thinking about book tour puts a knot in my stomach. Not because I do not want to do it. I do. Very much. I want to be in rooms with readers. I want to talk about the book. I want to have the conversations I know this book can open. But book tour is also travel, logistics, vulnerability, performance, hotels, trains, airports, bookstores, calendars, and the emotional whiplash of asking people to come hear you talk about the most personal thing you have ever written.

My hope is that my years of banking Marriott and Amtrak points will finally reveal themselves as part of a larger spiritual plan—at least for the initial East Coast run.

And somehow, in the middle of all this, I am continuing to write.

I completely revised my debut novel, a locked-room thriller set on New York City’s Governors Island. I have been working on that book for close to four years. Four years! There were times when I thought it would never click and wondered if the book was teaching me patience against my will.

But revision, like sobriety, has a way of humbling you into the work.

You show up. You look again—and, again. You cut what is not working. You try to tell the truth more cleanly. You eventually stop trying to rescue every sentence. And finally, you let the book become the book it was trying to be.

I am also getting ready for season two of my podcast, Shelf Care Society, which starts in a couple of weeks. I will be welcoming Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, onto the podcast to discuss his memoir, Dad, Love Me. It is a book about sobriety, but also about family, masculinity, healing, and mental health. I hope it becomes part of the larger conversation around sobriety and mental health, because it deserves to.

Over the next few months, you will also hear and watch conversations with Cole Brauer, the history-making sailor who became the first American woman to race solo, nonstop, and unassisted around the world; Min Jin Lee; André Aciman; R. F. Kuang; Jodi Picoult; Richard Russo; and two debut novelists who have written two of my favorite reads of the year.

There is also one podcast episode I filmed recently with someone whose name I cannot say, because I signed not one, not two, but three NDAs.

All I can say is that it felt like a fever dream, and I am still not entirely sure it actually happened. You will likely be able to watch it later this summer. More on that in the coming months, once the NDA spirits permit me to speak.

So this is where I am, about a year out.

The book is written, but still becoming.

I am celebrating sobriety, protecting sentences, learning the power of STET, looking at covers, reviewing interior pages, gathering blurbs, talking to PR firms, dreaming up tour stops, preparing for my mom to read the book, revising a novel, recording a podcast, and trying to remain open to the unexpected.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the Rumi poem “The Guest House,” particularly the opening idea: this being human is a guest house. Every day, something new arrives.

That feels true of publishing. It feels true of sobriety. And it also feels true of writing a memoir.

A joy arrives. A fear arrives. A ridiculous follow-up question arrives. A blurb arrives. A comma arrives and ruins your afternoon. A memory arrives late and asks to be let in. A cover design arrives that is not what you imagined, but might be what the book needs. A public conversation arrives before you feel ready. A private moment with your mom and the manuscript arrives before the public ever sees it.

The work, I think, is to welcome as much of it as possible.

To entertain them all.

To keep the door open.

To trust that this, too, is part of the afterparty.

xo

Brian

P.S. Feel free to send me a note here or at brianlarson.reads@gmail.com if this resonated with you, or if there’s a podcast, event, bookstore, or reader community you think I should know about as The Afterparty makes its way into the world.

In this episode, Brian and Cecily discuss how her thirty-day experiment to go alcohol-free changed her life, and how habits like drinking, scrolling, overworking, or staying constantly busy can become “dimmers” that keep us from fully feeling and fully living. They also talk about family history, AA, meditation, found time in sobriety, Big Alcohol, breast cancer, and why Cecily’s Eight Awarenesses offer a more spacious and compassionate path toward freedom.

This is a conversation for anyone who has ever wondered what might become possible if they stopped reaching for the thing that helps them escape and started listening to the life waiting underneath.

This week on Shelf Care Society, I sit down with Kerry Docherty, co-founder of Faherty and author of Selfish, a sharp, deeply personal memoir about unlearning the roles that keep us small.

We start where the book does: on a therapist’s couch, where Kerry and her husband are negotiating Kerry's salary. From there, we unpack the invisible contracts so many of us inherit around marriage, work, ambition, and worth and what it takes to break them. We also discuss "soul contracts"!

In this conversation, we get into:

• Why “selfish” might be the most misunderstood word in personal growth

• The cost of being the reliable one in every room

• How ambition shifts when you stop performing for approval

• What it looks like to rewrite your role inside a marriage, a family, and a business

• The uncomfortable decisions that actually change a life

This is a conversation about telling the truth, even when it disrupts everything around you.

This week on Shelf Care Society, I sit down with Tayari Jones to talk about her stunning new novel, Kin, an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Tayari has a way of writing families that feel both intimate and expansive. In Kin, she turns her attention to legacy and inheritance through the lives of two girls, Niecy and Annie, and the bond that connects them across time. I take a shot at providing an overview of Kin—and Tayari reacts!

We discuss what it means for a novel like Kin to resonate at this moment, and why stories about family, history, and inheritance continue to find us exactly when we need them.

This week on Shelf Care Society, I’m joined by Liz Tran, executive coach and author of AQ: The Agility Quotient. We talk about why agility is becoming the defining skill of our time and how to build it in a world that rarely slows down.

Liz shares how AQ shows up in your career, your relationships, and your identity, especially in moments when everything you thought was stable begins to shift. We get into reinvention, letting go of outdated versions of yourself, and learning how to move forward without a clear roadmap.

If you’ve been feeling stuck or sensing that your life is asking something new of you, this conversation will meet you there.

In this episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast, I sit down with M.J. Corey (@mjcorey) to talk about her new book, Deconstructing the Kardashians: A New Media Manifesto—a sharp, surprisingly expansive look at the most influential family in modern media.

What starts as a conversation about Kim, Kris, and the empire they’ve built quickly becomes something much bigger. M.J. unpacks how the Kardashians didn’t just rise alongside the internet—they helped define it. From reality TV to Instagram to the algorithm-driven attention economy, their story becomes a lens for understanding how media has evolved over the past two decades—and how it’s reshaping our sense of identity, reality, and self.

We talk about narrative as strategy, the blurred line between authenticity and performance, and why the Kardashians function less as celebrities and more as a kind of cultural operating system. M.J. also shares her goal for the book: not to make you love or hate them, but to help you become a more active, intentional consumer of media in a world that’s constantly asking for your attention.

This is one of those conversations that starts in pop culture—but leaves you thinking about power, perception, and the stories we’re all participating in every day.

In this episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast, I sit down with Mason Currey (@masoncurrey) to talk about his new book, Making Art and Making a Living: Adventures in Funding a Creative Life—a fascinating look at how artists across history have navigated the tension between creative ambition and financial reality.

We talk about the myth of the “starving artist,” and why it’s never been quite that simple. From day jobs to patronage to family money to some truly unconventional side hustles, Mason walks through the many ways writers, painters, and musicians have made their work possible.

What emerges is a much more honest picture of creativity: one shaped not just by inspiration, but by constraint, compromise, and resourcefulness. These aren’t stories of perfect routines or overnight success—they’re stories of people figuring it out in real time, often in messy and unexpected ways.

We also get into what this means for creatives today: how to think about time, money, and permission, and why there’s no single “right” way to build a creative life—only the one that allows you to keep going.

This is a conversation for anyone who’s ever wondered if it’s possible to take their creative work seriously and sustain a life around it.

In this episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Nicole LePera (@the.holistic.psychologist) to talk about her new book, Reparenting the Inner Child: The New Science of Our Oldest Wounds and How to Heal Them—a deeply practical guide to understanding where our behaviors come from and how to actually change them.

We talk about how childhood experiences shape the way we show up as adults—why we shut down, people-please, self-sabotage, or stay stuck in the same cycles—and how those patterns are often rooted in an “inner child” still trying to get unmet needs fulfilled.

Nicole breaks down what it really means to “reparent” yourself: creating the safety, boundaries, and emotional regulation you may not have had growing up, and learning how to respond instead of react. Through small, consistent practices, she shows how we can begin to rewrite the stories we’ve carried for years and build a more grounded, self-trusting version of ourselves.

We also get into the gap between awareness and action, the role of the nervous system in healing, and why real change isn’t about perfection—it’s about showing up differently, day by day.

This is one of those conversations that helps you understand not just what needs to change—but how to begin.

In this episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast, I sit down with Michelle Maryk to explore her debut novel The Found Object Society, a layered and inventive story that moves through time, memory, and the artifacts we leave behind.

We talk about the emotional architecture of the novel, the way objects can hold meaning far beyond their material form, and how Michelle approached building a narrative that feels both intimate and expansive. Our conversation moves from craft to curiosity. How do you write a story that spans decades without losing its pulse? What does it mean to preserve a life through fragments? And why are we so drawn to the things people leave behind?

We also get into Michelle’s writing process, the research behind the book, and the quiet tension between what is remembered and what is lost.

This is a conversation about storytelling, but also about legacy, connection, and the strange comfort of knowing that even the smallest objects can carry something lasting.

In this episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast, Brian Larson talks with manifestation coach Matt Cooke, whose work centers on a powerful idea: You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.

Matt shares the story of leaving corporate life with his wife, Corisande, and choosing to trust a vision that had not yet materialized. From the concept of “Option B,” to the practice of building a vision board that actually works, Matt explains how conscious manifestation can reshape the way we think about career, creativity, and purpose.

Brian and Matt also explore emotional energy, wave theory, why some emotions expand possibility while others limit it, and how Matt’s philosophy of “Make Monday Great” reframes the way we approach work and ambition.

It is a thoughtful conversation about belief, identity, and the quiet but powerful decision to live as the person your future self already knows you can be.

They discuss Kidia’s acclaimed new book, Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone, which argues that Western mental health care too often treats symptoms while ignoring the larger systems driving distress, including colonialism, racism, inequality, and exploitation. The book draws from Kidia’s clinical work in the United States and his long-running mental health work in Zimbabwe.

In the conversation, Brian and Dr. Kidia explore how Zimbabwe shaped the roots of the book, why Kidia makes the provocative call for “the end of psychiatry,” and how social conditions like debt, housing insecurity, racial inequity, and economic precarity can become health hazards in their own right. They also discuss the limits of a medication-first model, and what more humane alternatives such as social prescribing, Housing First, and community-based care could look like in practice.

Together, they explore Sybil Van Antwerp’s unforgettable voice, the ethics of saying exactly what we mean, and the emotional architecture of letters both sent and unsent. Virginia opens up about writing six novels before finding traditional publication, how rejection became data instead of identity, and what it felt like to watch this book climb slowly, then suddenly, to the top of the bestseller list.

They discuss Ireland, distance, chosen vocation, the evolution of the cover art, and why the epistolary form became the perfect vessel for Sybil’s journey.

Plus: Virginia shares her own “Yes! Moment” that changed her trajectory, and what she’s working on next.

One of the biggest highlights (besides launching Shelf Care Society: The Podcast with Malala Yousafzai as my very first guest) was getting to be a guest reader on Gays Reading with Jason Blitman.

Here’s the episode link:

I’ve long admired because it is not just “for queer listeners.” It is for everyone who loves books, stories, craft, gossip (the literary kind), and the simple pleasure of hearing smart people talk about what they’re reading without making it feel like homework. Over the past couple of years, Jason has also become a friend, and truly, a kind of mentor as I navigate the streams and whirlpools of the publishing world.

And I love Gays Reading for a few very specific reasons:

1) Jason reads voraciously, and he reads the guest’s book.
You might say, “Of course he does,” but trust me, not every podcast host does. Readers can tell. Writers can tell. Jason does the work, and the conversation is better because of it.

2) It is fun and accessible, even when the conversation gets craft-y.
You can go deep on writing without turning it into a craft seminar. Jason somehow makes book talk feel like hanging with a friend who just happens to be extremely literate and slightly dangerous with recommendations.

3) The guests are outrageous (in the best way).
I mean, come on. We are talking about a universe that includes:

• Angie Kim

• Ashley Winstead

• Dolly Alderton

• Catherine Newman

• Gregory Maguire

• Ann Patchett

• Fredrik Backman

• Lily King

• George Saunders

It is the best authors, with incredible banter, and spoiler-free conversations that still leave you feeling like you got the good stuff.

4) In a world where reading remains an act of defiance, Jason champions debut authors like it’s his calling.
That kind of sustained love, especially for debuts and under-the-radar gems, matters. It is generous. It is community-minded. It is the opposite of gatekeeping.

So yes, being a guest gay reader on the podcast is genuinely a dream come true. True fanboy moment. I think as an author, you always hope your work will resonate with people, but you are never really sure. With Jason, he has his finger on the pulse of the literary scene, and he is doing the damn work, week after week after week.

In our episode, we talk about everything from how I developed my love for reading (shout out to my mom, and shout out to Boston Public Library) to re-engaging with reading as an adult (shout out to sobriety, because wow did that rewire my attention span and my joy). We also get into my new book club and podcast, Shelf Care Society, and yes, we absolutely have a mutual fanboy moment about authors we love, including Ashley Winstead and May Cobb. We talk about what I’m reading, what I’m excited to read next, and the fact that I keep a stack of “Gays Reading-approved” books by my desk like it’s a tiny, gay altar.

Most of all, it is just a fun conversation. It is a book kiki.

If you’re looking for something to listen to on a walk, on the subway, while you clean your apartment, or while you dramatically reorganize your shelves, I hope you’ll give it a play.

And truly, do the holy trinity for Gays Reading: like, subscribe, and follow wherever you listen or watch podcasts. Jason deserves it, and your TBR will, too.

More soon. I have so much to share. 📚🏳️‍🌈

Also, in case you missed it, here’s the link to the inaugural episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast with Malala.

The listens, the shares, the comments, the screenshots of you pressing play, the messages that started with “I needed this today,” the notes about what line stayed with you, the friends you tagged and texted, the people who told me they put it on during their commute or listened while doing laundry or hit play while lying on the couch after a long day. I see all of it. I feel all of it.

And I just want to say thank you.

When you put something new into the world, there’s always that tiny moment of panic where you wonder if it will land. Not because you need applause, but because you’re trying to build something real. A space that feels welcoming. A conversation that doesn’t perform. A little room on the internet that people actually want to return to.

In the last 24 hours, you’ve made it clear: the room is real. And you’re in it with me.

I also want to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to Malala Yousafzai and her team for arranging our conversation, and for being so generous with their time, their energy, and their trust. I’m grateful beyond words.

Also, special thank you to Simon & Schuster and the entire Atria team for being publishing rockstars.

And last, thank you to Ginni Media for providing the most incredible space for this conversation to take place.

What I keep thinking about

That episode was everything I hoped this podcast could be: thoughtful, funny, honest, and full of those moments where a single sentence can reframe something you’ve been carrying for a long time.

Since launch, I’ve found myself returning to a few feelings again and again:

• How hungry we are for conversations that aren’t trying to win.

• How much comfort there is in remembering that books are not just stories. They’re companions.

• How powerful it is to hear someone you admire talk about the human parts: the growing, the doubt, the tenderness, the becoming.

• How many of us are quietly rebuilding our lives, one page at a time, and looking for language to describe it.

If you want to keep supporting the show (no cost, big impact)

A lot of you asked how to help this podcast grow. Here are the tiny actions that do the most:

• Follow the show wherever you listen (it’s available wherever you stream podcasts)

• Rate the podcast (and if you can, leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts)

• Share an episode with one friend who will get it immediately

• If you’re watching, subscribe on YouTube, like, and drop a comment

• If you’re on Instagram or TikTok, like and save the post and share it to Stories

It might feel small, but it’s how a brand-new show finds its people.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being early. Thank you for making this feel possible. Thank you for helping Shelf Care Society: The Podcast take its first real steps into the world.

More soon. More conversations. More books. More moments that make our brains click into a new place.

With love,

xx Brian

Listen and Watch on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Follow me: @Brian.Reads on Instagram and TikTok

It’s happening. My first guest episode of Shelf Care Society: The Podcast is live now, and I still cannot believe I get to type this sentence.

My guest is Malala Yousafzai.

You can listen on all podcast platforms, and you can watch the full conversation on Spotify and YouTube.

This episode is exactly what I hoped this podcast would feel like: a real conversation. Curious, honest, surprisingly funny, and full of those small moments where your brain clicks into a new place. It’s also, genuinely, a conversation between two friends, which means it has both depth and the kind of playful tangents that make life feel more livable.

What we talk about

Yes, we talk about books, and we talk about Malala’s gorgeous memoir, “Finding My Way,” [from Simon & Schuster and available to purchase here] including what it means to keep shaping an identity when the world insists on narrating you.

But we also go well beyond the page.

We talk about Malala’s time at Oxford, what that chapter taught her, and how it felt to be in a season of life that was both formative and quietly intense. We also talk about getting therapy support, what it means to tend to your mental health when you’re carrying a lot, and how taking care of your inner life can be an act of strength, not indulgence.

We talk about love, too, including Malala falling in love with her husband, Asser, and the sweetness of building a life with someone who sees you as a whole person, not a headline. And we talk about one of the moments that moved me most: Malala watching young women graduate from her school in Pakistan, and what it means to witness something you fought for become real in the lives of others.

And because this is Shelf Care Society, we also let ourselves have fun. There’s pop culture. There are side quests. We get into Heated Rivalry, we talk Labubus, and yes, Hello Kitty makes an appearance, because sometimes the truest form of self-care is letting yourself be delighted.

How to support the podcast (quick and free)

If you want to help Shelf Care Society: The Podcast grow, these small actions make a real difference:

• Follow the show wherever you listen

• Rate the episode (and if you can, leave a short review on Apple Podcasts)

• Share the link with one friend who would love this conversation

• If you watch on YouTube, subscribe, like, and leave a quick comment

Thank you for being here at the beginning. It means more than I can say. Now come sit at the table with us.

Watch on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen everywhere you find podcasts, too!

Leave a comment

I’m about to launch a podcast called Shelf Care Society, and I have a feeling you’re going to feel very at home here. If your TBR is a personality trait, a coping mechanism, or a love language, welcome. You’re among friends.

Shelf Care Society: The Podcast is where reading meets real life, and where the conversations feel like a room you actually want to return to.

Because for years, I kept having these moments where I’d leave a dinner, an event, a bookstore, a backstage hallway, a quiet coffee, a loud rooftop, whatever it was, and think: I wish I could bring people with me into this. Not as a recap later. Not as a highlight reel. I mean really bring you into it. Let you hear the pauses. The laughter. The honesty. The tiny moments where someone says something and your brain clicks into a new place.

That’s what this podcast is.

Shelf Care Society: The Podcast has its roots in me being a reader. Reading has always mattered to me, but it became something else when I got sober.

When I first got sober, I needed to be transported. I needed to get out of my own head, out of that constant loop of shame and anxiety and “what did I do last night.” So I started reading like it was oxygen. I read to disappear into new worlds. I read to feel less alone. I read because I needed proof that a life could be rebuilt, page by page, day by day.

Suddenly, I was reading 150 plus books a year.

That is the power of sobriety for me. It gave me my attention span back. It gave me my curiosity back. It gave me the ability to sit still long enough to be changed by a story.

And as my sobriety has evolved over the past nearly seven years, it has given me something else too: the chance to show up fully, without performing, in rooms that used to feel like they belonged to other people. Book launches. Screenings. Panels. Dinners. Conversations with authors, activists, artists, and genuinely fascinating humans whose work makes me think differently about ambition, creativity, identity, belonging, wellness, and what it really takes to build a life that feels like yours.

That’s what you’re going to hear on Shelf Care Society.

Some episodes will feel like you’re eavesdropping, in the best way. Real conversation, not a performance. There might be an author you already love, and you’ll hear them talk about something you’ve never heard them say out loud before. There might be someone you’ve never heard of, and you’ll finish the episode thinking, wait, how did I live without this person’s brain in my life?

We’re going to talk about books, obviously, because that’s the root system here. But we’re also going to talk about the stuff underneath the books. The stuff the books are really about.

How we heal. How we restart. How we find purpose. How we survive heartbreak. How we create. How we stop performing a life and start living one.

If any of this feels familiar, you’re in the right place.

This show is for the people who stack books on their nightstand like they’re building a tiny emotional support skyline. For the people who bring a book everywhere “just in case,” and the case is always that you need ten minutes of peace. For the people who know reading is not just entertainment. It’s perspective. It’s companionship. It’s a lifeline. It’s a reset button.

Here’s what I want Shelf Care Society to feel like: welcoming. Like you can show up exactly as you are, curious, tired, ambitious, anxious, hopeful, all of it. Like the friend who texts you, “Okay, I know you’re spiraling, but hear me out, I have a book recommendation.” Like a room you actually want to return to, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s real.

Episode one drops tomorrow (January 28, 2026) at 12:00pm EST. Subscribe now so it lands where you already listen. And if you know one person who needs this kind of room, send it to them.

Subscribe on Spotify
Watch on YouTube
Follow on Apple Podcasts
Follow me: @Brian.Reads on Instagram

If you want to support Shelf Care Society: The Podcast and help it reach more readers and listeners, here are the no-cost moves that make a real difference across platforms: follow the show wherever you listen, turn on notifications or auto-download so new episodes land automatically, and leave a rating or review (it takes five seconds and it helps more than you think). If you’re watching on YouTube, subscribe and drop a quick comment. Those tiny actions tell the algorithms, “More of this,” and they help this new little podcast room grow.