One Down

and many more to go.

Yesterday, the first episode of First Edition went live. There are three segments to this episode. In the first, Book Riot’s Chief of Staff and my long-time co-host of the Book Riot podcast joins me to talk about what the “it” book of April is. In the second segment, Senior Editor Yahdon Israel of Simon & Schuster comes on for a wide-ranging conversation about getting books into the world. And in the last spot, Sarah Bakewell talks about humanism and her new book, Humanly Possible.

So if you haven’t listened yet, that’s what you’re in for. Early reactions have been really supportive, and I have all the segments lined up for the next episode, which will be publishing on April 19th.

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So that’s the “hey it’s up and go listen to it!” part of this email. I thought, though, those of you who have signed up to receive an email about the show might be interested in a little more. So for this send, I am going to walk through why I like the structure of the first segment (which is already the part of the show I am getting the most feedback on. The interviews were good, but people know what an interview is)

Chapter 1: The Knockout

Rebecca and I have been talking about books together for a long time. And one thing we have learned is this: books are hard to cover. A single book, or even a handful, isn’t hard. People might not be interested in that specific book or group of books, but it’s wieldy.

The world of books is not. There are just too many. The only way is to somehow narrow the field. Enter the list, the ranking, the roundup, and the best-of. These put a of bunch of books that have some shared quality together to say a little about each. And these are tried and true. But they do not of and in themselves make for a good podcast discussion.

The knockout idea forces us to talk about two books in relation to each other and evaluate them along some criteria. For the “it” book structure, we get to look at each pairing through the qualities we think can make for an it book. And since each book has these qualities for various degrees (hence their inclusion in the initial list), there’s a lot to talk about.

The second benefit is that for people that are likely to sign up to listen to a book podcast, hearing about what the “it” books might be is interesting, even if they are not interested in many (or all!) of the books selected.

This gets to my central hypothesis of what I want to do with First Edition: people want to know about books, even if they don’t have plans to read most of them. Because they can’t. Because there are so many books.

And it doesn’t even really matter if we ever get it right. We likely won’t know since the category itself is unquantifiable, and since the higher target is not the selection but the discussion, assessing our hit rate is beside the point. Though I do think coming back to our picks from time to time would be entertainingly humbling.

So that’s The Knockout. Expect to hear it monthly.

Please do let me know what you think of the show (and this email!) by replying.

Check out First Edition on Twitter, on Substack, and on Instagram. And if you have a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, please and thank you!