The Truth Is: I Don't Love Books. There, I Said It.

It's even possible I actively dislike books.

I’ve given hundreds of interviews during my publishing career, and most people ask an innocent enough question about my origin story.

Did you always want to be a writer? Why do you love books? Why publishing?

I hate these questions. I complain about them to my husband. Still, I try to be polite and answer anyway. Sometimes I even tell the truth: I fell into reading, writing, and publishing due to circumstance and lack of options—not because of any lifelong dream or childhood obsession.

I grew up in a farming and coal-mining community of 2,000. My mom read a lot, and probably because of her I ended up reading a lot, too. We had a handful of books at home—books were expensive and hard to get—so we read what was available at the town’s one-room library. That means I read countless volumes of Sweet Valley High and Encyclopedia Brown, Beverly Cleary, and Anne of Green Gables.

My role models were my teachers, and my mom was a teacher and librarian. I excelled in most subjects. In middle school I gravitated toward English and literature because those teachers were better. In high school I liked the sciences and foreign languages because those teachers were better. While I absolutely loved computers, there were no opportunities to pursue that interest. No A/V club either.

But there were school newspapers, and the cheapest and easiest thing for me to pursue during my youth was writing and reading. Frankly, my writing skills were average at best. My reading skills: also average. My first SAT verbal score was 400.

When it came time to consider college and what to study, I’d already been stereotyped by everyone as a bookworm. If you’re shy, introverted, terrible at sports and allergic to being outdoors, well, what do you major in but English? (Or, in my case—since my chosen college offered it—creative writing.)

Once upon a time, I wore shirts like this:

If I found this in my closet today, I’d burn it (with apologies to cats). I don’t care about books for their own sake. I think the vast majority of books shouldn’t be published in the first place. I scoff at arguments that books foster great empathy. Even if true, it’s a tiny number of books, and many other things foster empathy just as well. Books are not that special or wholesome. People today use books as therapy, self-care, identity tools, status symbols, fame vehicles, authority markers—all sorts of reasons that make me want to distance myself from the whole operation of book publishing.

While I might have honestly been a bookworm at one time, that chapter of my life ended long ago.

This causes some obvious problems.

I’m given books all the time. It’s the first thing that most writers and clients want to send me. I continuously accept books from people at conferences. I buy books when I attend events out of respect to the author and/or venue. I answer endless questions about what books I’m (not) reading and my favorite books and what books changed my life and the last, best book I read.

There was a five-year period where I talked about the same book over and over again in interviews hoping no one would notice because I wasn’t reading books. (That book was What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly.)

Even family and close friends gift me books at holidays and birthdays. People naturally assume a book is the safest and most desired gift.

In 2010, I had dinner with a dear high school friend whom I hadn’t seen since graduation in 1994. When I made a joke that expressed cynicism about books, my friend immediately corrected me: “That’s not bookworm Jane.” The great dissonance of my life was already in full swing.

As far as average Americans go, I’m in the majority: only 20% of US consumers are book consumers¹—people who regularly buy books and consider it an important part of their lives.

One of the great ironies of my work is delivering exhortations to authors to read more books to understand their genre and write a better book. Great writers read, but at the start of my career, I discovered a shocking number of aspiring authors don’t read books, not even in their own genre. For me it begs the question of why write and publish books then? Often it’s an effort to gain validation, status, prestige, fame, or life beyond death—all valid reasons of course.

I consider myself a writer, but the last thing I want to do is write a book. It’s a hellishly complex task with few rewards (especially monetary). It requires a mixture of delusion, ambition, and determination that defies good sense. I’d rather write anything else and most days you’ll find me reading anything else—mostly long-form journalism, essays, and countless newsletters.²

So why do I educate writers about books? If you’re paying close attention, you know I personally avoid that. I teach about the business of writing. I focus on the mechanics of the industry surrounding books. And I have a keynote talk I’ve been giving for years, “Thinking Beyond the Book.” Yes, I’m trying to talk writers out of the book, to shake them out of this belief that the book is something sacred or the best way to reach their goals. In fact, it’s one of the worst.

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1. According to Peter Hildick-Smith of The Codex Group, who cited the figure at the 2023 US Book Show.

2. I will admit to having three books in progress right now: Warhol by Blake Gopnik, Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung, and The History of the World in Two Hundred and Forty Pages by René Sédillot.