Building a writing community
How author Brad Listi created something special with Otherppl Podcast
Everyone has a podcast. Your school friend. Your neighbor. That other parent in line at student pick-up wants you to rate, review and subscribe. I can’t count how many people have told me about their podcasts or how many places I’ve read about “so-and-so’s new podcast.” No topic is untouched and no celebrity is safe from doing the rounds: talking to all their friends, who also have their own podcasts with clever catchphrases about mental health and the meaning of life.
One sub-genre of “pods” is the writer interview. The Fresh Air (which also packages its shows as podcasts after they air, of course) style interview with a write about their latest work, whether it be timely news story or newest release, has become a popular set up. With that, though, as with anything today, the market has been flooded with shows that sound and feel the same. Not Brad Listi’s otherppl podcast, though. It stands on its own as a podcast that reaches beyond the mainstream by exploring what it means to be creative as well as the craft and business side of the creative arts.
Listi, a Los Angeles-based author, brings a nuanced angle to his conversations with writers, editors and even agents. He mixes in craft conversations with discussions about the work and also what it means to be a writer today, which, despite what movies still show, is a difficult career path with more roadblocks than ever despite more people buying books but less cash to go around. Listi’s smooth voice is perfect for podcasts and his deep knowledge of the work he’s talking about makes the discussions shine.
Listi is the author of “Be Brief and Tell Them Everything”, “Attention. Deficit. Disorder.”, and “Board” with Justin Benton.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In 2011 podcasts weren’t what they are now, so what made you decide to do this? You're publishing books and you have that writerly life, I assume.
Ish. Yeah, I would say 99 percent of writers have a writerly-ish life. I think that's the common way to go about it or the common outcome. But in 2011 I had been running a lit mag online for about five or six years at that point and there had been some dabbling in audio and there had been some requests to do some kind of podcast. I think, initially, there were people reading their work and it was kind of sharing short stories or whatever in audio. I don't know, I've always loved interviews. Like, when I was coming up as a writer, I remember going online and printing out print interviews or transcripts of audio interviews that existed online and reading one of those every morning as a kind of ritual. I used to fall asleep listening to Terry Gross. I listened to that show addictively and loved listening to two people talk about something of substance at length.
Then podcast interviews started to proliferate around then in a kind of serious way. I remember Marc Maron’s podcast having a big impact on me because it wasn't bound by FCC regulations. I think Howard Stern Show was on satellite at that point. Some of his interviews were getting really interesting, and it was great to hear people talk without any of the boundaries imposed by traditional media. With Maron's show, I think there was also this really great sense of community. It was particularly so in those days because it was so comedy-centric and it was such a new thing at the time for comedians to kind of have a gathering place or people interested in comedy or fans of comedy to have a gathering place where people could really talk. I think all of those things combined had me interested in trying it out.
I think, at the beginning, it was supposed to be a limited experiment. I thought I would do it for a couple of months or 20 episodes. I never thought I would be doing it 15 years later, almost. But it just metastasized.
Well, you have a voice for it, you know, had a voice for it, like this deep voice that works.
I mean, I'm aware of my own voice.
This is going to sound nerdy, but I took radio in high school, not in a really enthusiastic way either. I went to one of these big Midwestern public high schools and it had its own FM radio station and I took radio and my teacher told me that I had a good radio voice.
I guess you sort of know if you have a deep baritone voice or something, but it was nothing I ever aspired to. I never pursued it after that high school class. I never pursued it until I started interviewing people.
I think the one piece of the beginning of the podcast that I forgot to mention, and it's probably maybe the most prominent aspect of it or one of the most prominent aspects, is the fact that I was really frustrated with social media at the time, which is not a new feeling. I continue to be frustrated with social media, but I think in particular, at that time it was a lot of Facebook, Twitter was just underway, people joining in mass, and I got sick of the two dimensionality of it and the curated nature of it and the way that people presented. I wanted to cut through all of that and actually have a conversation with somebody. I still feel that way.
I heard it's gotten better. I've heard somebody bought Twitter and they were supposed to make it better.
Yeah, it's a wonderful place for a lot of good people and it's very well managed and well maintained.
I was thinking too that social media really kind of almost propped up and enhanced this view of the writer's life that people have because the people that are on there who are somewhat successful in those mediums have a certain look and appeal to them. It enhanced a lot of the thoughts I think people had about writers where were like, oh, you're just sitting around doing nothing, but you're being somewhat famous for it. I would see the people that are famous on that site and I would be like, well, I don't know what they wrote, but somehow they're living this magical life where they don't have to have a job and I'm slaving away for $20,000 a year.
I think the social media of it all — it applies to writers, it applies to everybody — and I think the way that people can present themselves online, it's that curated artificial feeling that leaves you with questions: Is this real? Is this person's life really this good? I can't quite believe it. My bullshit detector is going off.
Or How could they have really watched all of those shows and read all of those books and seen all of those movies?
It's a confusion to me to this day, and I've always had a kind of discomfort with it. And the more that I learn about it, the less comfort I have. I don't think it's great. I don't think it's been great. I really don't. I think that obviously there are some benefits that can be found in building your audience online, but I don't know if that really translates to book sales. I don't know what the point is other than just kind of milking the platforms for some sort of micro-fame.
I haven't seen it either, and I've never really understood it. Your interview with Blake Butler and his story kind of sparked me in a way that was like, “wow, this thing is still just as annoying as it was before,” And you do this wonderful interview with somebody who's very open and honest and then all of a sudden on the Internet it's people screaming at him and people are like, “I'm never reading your book.” And it's like, well, I don't know what that does. I don't know what the purpose of any of this is. If we're all just going to be mad on here.
It can be really ugly.
Especially for something that was so honest and open and enjoyable.
Well, when something goes viral on social media in a toxic way — and I feel like this happens every day with something or other —and every time I see it happening and people are trying to tear someone down, I can't help but feel like they're actually just doing the person a favor in the context of the culture that we live in now. If you really want someone to fail or if you really anti-whatever the person is up to, the best thing you can do, most of the time, is not talk about it. By creating a huge controversy around something, this is one of the only things in the world that actually sells books. It's kind of a dismal reality and it's not something that's necessarily pleasant for the author to experience, but I would imagine Blake's book sales are much higher as a result because people want to know what all the fuss is about. I'm sure he would probably wish that none of it ever happened, but I would imagine that his royalty statements are better because of it.
Maybe he got a royalty statement. That's the other one. A lot of people don't even get that one back.
I'm sure that book is earned out.
I hope so. You do this podcast, you create this community, you've been doing it forever, and I've wondered what it's done to your regular writing. Have you been able to do it? You published a book in 2022, but are you still feeling satisfied by that? Is that enough or has it ever just felt like it's sucks up so much of your time?
Sure, but it's also part of my hustle. I don't have an option to not do it at this point. And you know what? I don't think I want to be just a writer. I mean, I want to have a good attitude about my work and I believe in my work, but the business reality of publishing is such that your statistical odds of writing literary fiction and selling enough books to actually support yourself are astronomically low. I also believe, personally, everybody can do it their own way.
Personally, I don't think I should ever publish a book unless it's the absolute best I can do and I really feel like I have something to say. I'm not just publishing for publishing's sake. I'm not publishing in pursuit of some sort of illusory fame or to keep my name out there or to feel better about myself. Those are not the right reasons for me to publish a book. It has to be my absolute best effort, meaning I have to feel like I've taken it as far as I can possibly take it, which is a long way and it takes a long time for me. I'm not a fast writer and my life circumstances don't allow for that. I also have to feel like I genuinely have something to say that is worth people's time and I'm not just trying to do something frivolous or make some sort of entertainment. That isn't how I work best. So I'm totally content.
I think I've realized I'm totally content to work in my slow and careful way, and I am fine not publishing a book every two years or whatever. I'm cool with it. And I think it's just the way that I work best.
Yeah, I think that's an honest assessment. I do think it's a better assessment to work that way.
It depends. It depends. Everybody's different.
There are some people who I think have maybe more to say than I do. That's possible. There are some people who are more manic in their creativity and just need to write. They have to get books down and they're kind of miserable if they don't. There's all sorts of different ways to skin the cat. But, for me, it's just this way and it's never really bothered me all that much. I'm cool with it.
You have to know yourself. I think it took me longer than it probably should have to reckon with the business realities of contemporary publishing. I was very naive when I started. I really thought that the business of publishing was the way that the business of publishing was in 1925 or something. I had this very antiquated view of what it was going to be like. And I have been disabused of that note.
I think even then, I don't think it was as grand as we think it is now. I think the differences is the checks were more money and to live was less.
Right. It was always hard, but you could be a short story writer in the middle of the 20th Century and support a family and buy a house.
I do think the lack of other places is not helping. By other places, I mean places that pay you money, like magazines and journals and stuff that pay. Money isn't the right word. They pay money, but a fair share of money that allow you to live now, that's just dead. Journalism dead too.
All media and arts are, I feel like, going through a kind of cataclysm. It's really difficult for filmmakers. It's difficult for people — writers, journalists, media professionals, podcasters. It's not easy for anyone. It's kind of like every other part of our economy. It's like the 99 percent and the 1 percent. If you're in the 1 percent, life is great. And if you're in the 99 percent, life is pretty hard and even maybe hellish, you know what I'm saying?
I don't think it's a sustainable way for things to continue and I don't think it has to be this way. I think it's the way things are because of a lot of different forces happening that have created the world that we live in. And it's worth changing. I think there's a better way to go about it. There has to be.
There's got to be, I can't do it much longer.
With the podcast, I love the craft episodes. It’s not so much that I want to study craft anymore, but I'm always fascinated how other people work and what they see and what you see. And then bringing in agents too, have you learned more about this business as you've gone along through the podcast? Has it opened you up to being like, wow, this is even more different than I first assumed and then later learned through my experience?
I think that's part of the reason why I keep doing it. I learn so much from it.
I think that the episodes that focus on the business of publishing and the craft of writing are very popular with my audience. That's kind of an evolution in recent times that I've been making and will continue to make because my audience is sort of telling me that this is what they want. I think it's kind of a response to the massive proliferation of podcasts and interview shows and people promoting shit on podcasts. That's great and I love interviews, like I've said, but I do think that audiences are at a saturation point in some respects with regard to how many interviews and interview shows are coming at them on these podcast platforms. So there's a subtle but important shift that happens when you do a business of publishing show or you do a craft episode where it's a lot more customer focused. It's a lot more listener focused. It's about them. It's not necessarily primarily about the author and his or her moment in the spotlight or my moment in the spotlight for that matter. Do you know what I'm saying? I've noticed that audiences like it when you make them the central focus in a really explicit way.
Readers also like that. Even when you're writing for yourself. I appreciate being treated as an equal on the page or as a reader. I want the writer's trust, which is what I've been talking about lately with people. I want them to trust how smart I am, or if I'm not smart, make me feel smart. So I think those podcasts do a good job of balancing the inside baseball with the here is the thousand foot view. You do a really good job digging deep, but also explaining how that fits into the bigger cycle of these people's lives. The people you're interviewing too, I'm sure they appreciate it as well.
There's that a lot of things that writers have in common when they set about to navigate the business of publishing or set about navigating trying to get a book done. Everybody does have a slightly different road, and it's always fascinating to hear what people go through and what challenges they had to respond to, and it's interesting to hear or how things turned out for them in the marketplace.
I've talked to writers who have had extraordinary success selling books, and I've talked to writers who have won awards and can barely sell a book to save their life. It sort of runs the gamut, and I think people can find, if nothing else, comfort in hearing those stories or maybe a little bit of inspiration
It could be, just me, but I don't think so, but I think that there's a shift happening where people are like, “Stop entertaining me. Help me.” They want help. They don't want entertainment. They've got plenty of entertainment. There's so much fucking entertainment in the world, and it's great. You have options if you want to be entertained. But I think that a lot of people want to learn and they want to better themselves.
And they want to come away from an episode feeling like they got something of real value that they can apply in their own lives, into their own work.
Well, I've thought about this podcast is not only for writers. Readers don't often understand how a book gets made. There is a sense of, oh, these people don't just send it somewhere and it magically gets found and somebody prints it and then I get it in my hands? It takes years and all the little things add up and help people understand the process and why books cost so much money.
I think that's right. I think there are people who listen to my show who are just big readers and who love to hear writers talk about their work and about how they got their work done. There are people who are curious how the sausage gets made. And I think that the publishing business is opaque. It's a very difficult business to understand unless, I guess, you're working on the inside of it. This really applies to writers, in my experience — people who are working on it, usually their first book, but not necessarily — who are dying to know how the business works. There's a lot of resources out there at this point, but it can still feel like a big mystery. So anytime you can get somebody on who can be demystify it a little bit, it tends to resonate
There's just so many sources and sometimes the way they're written is for people that already know, or it's written in a way for people that don't know, but it feels kind of condescending where you're like, I don't really know if this person's being mean to me or not, or how can I trust them? It's hard. And I think one of the biggest mysteries is agents and you bringing them on is fascinating.
I'm not sure if most agents understand how it works. It's kind of like the Hollywood thing: Nobody knows anything. It's a very tough business, publishing, especially for literary writers.
A lot of the money, advance money, as I understand it, goes to big name authors and celebrities. It's these big books and the backlist classics that fuel the industry and allow them to take chances on authors who don't have great sales track records or who are just making their debuts. It's a speculative business on that front and it's not easy. I sympathize with agents who are out there trying to sell books because it's a big challenge trying to sell a book by somebody, especially, I think, somebody who has published but who has not done gangbuster sales. That's a tough sell because a lot of these editors just look at the numbers and say, “No.” They don't care about the merits of the manuscript. They care about the track record. It's the only way to get a book sold internally, usually, not always, but usually.
Well, you have a taste, but I also do think it's a pretty open show, author wise. I think one of the things I've always appreciated is I can put it on and be like, I don't know who this person is, but I'll listen because I think Brad has a grasp of their work and is open to whatever they're bringing to the table.
I try to have a wide purview, but within a certain framework. It's literary fiction, literary nonfiction, occasionally poetry, and I try to curate well in a way that is representative of a wide variety of perspectives, but with a focus on quality. I want people to feel like the books and the authors that are being featured on my show are worth at least pondering. I guess you can't bat a thousand, but I like to think that the authors that I'm featuring on my show are doing excellent work. It might not be for you as an individual — it might not be to your taste — but I like to think I'm good at featuring authors who are doing it for the right reasons and in the right way.
And you've focused a lot on smaller presses too.
I've done a lot of that over the course of the show's history. I don't want to be too definitive about it, but in general, the audience wants to hear from the big authors who are getting published by the big presses in the publication cycle. Those episodes tend to do well. But, that said, there can be indie press books that generate even more buzz like you talked about Blake's book earlier. I mean, that book generated a lot of buzz. That was an indie press book, wasn't it? Archway Editions?
Yeah, it was Archway Editions.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's no rules to it, but I just think that any kind of name author for obvious reasons tends to generate excitement.
Well, I think that happens partially because Apple and all these have their algorithms and it will push certain things up and out to some sort of search engine or whatever system that is being played on.
If you pay attention to this stuff, which I have to do because of what I do, you realize that the Big Five publishers, in particular, tend to prioritize certain titles every cycle. They do prioritize titles every cycle, and when it comes to the literary fiction, literary nonfiction, there aren't that many. And they put all their resources behind these books and there's this ecosystem — this media ecosystem in New York — and you can just see it. At this point, I can practically do it in my sleep. I can look at a catalog and be like, okay, this is going to be the book that New York magazine covers that The New Yorker covers. There's clearly some sort of game of phone tag that happens when a certain book that's gotten a certain advance that a publisher has decided is going to be a lead title. It's going to get a ton of media coverage and when you have an author like that on a show like mine, people tend to respond because the author usually has a pretty big readership or a growing or a dedicated and enthusiastic readership. And I think it just doesn't matter of human nature: when a book and an author are appearing all over the internet and being written about in The New York Times and all of these big places, people get curious.
Is there anything that you have never really talked about that you've learned from doing this podcast for your own life and career as a writer? Is there anything you've taken away from it?
I've taken away so many different things: how to be a creative person in the world, how to be a human in the world. I think some of the best moments are the most human moments that have nothing to do with the commerce of art or the art of commerce. I think it's oftentimes just me talking to a person about their life and finding something out that's really meaningful or moving or functions as a kind of Rosetta Stone for them — creatively formative stuff like the loss of somebody very important in their life or dealing with illness or anything like that where you kind of find out who a person really is and what they care most deeply about. That sort of stuff leaves a mark.
I think that it's a great privilege to be able to talk to people who do this kind of work at a high level and who live their lives working hard to make meaning out of life, and to engage with the minds of others through literature in a way that can't be replicated by any other art form.
I don't know. When you talk to people who do that regularly, you tend to have different conversations than you would have with people who live their lives ingesting only screen entertainment or scrolling on their phones. It's kind of an obvious point, but I love being able to talk to people who are trying to live deeply despite the world that we're living in, which is sort of designed at this point to prevent us from doing that.
That's really well said. I had that conversation with my wife the other day. I just don't know what a lot of people do anymore.
I do think there's an increasing number of people who are hungry to live more deeply and who know, and can sense, that screen culture and social media and phones and all of the stuff that goes along with that technology and social media platforms, can sense the toxicity of it or know it all too well. Hopefully, books can provide a refuge to people and a show mine can provide a bit of a refuge to people who are trying to find an alternative.