The Memory Palace Book

On the day of its publication

They wanted me to write Seabiscuit.

 It was the same thing, nearly every time: I would get an email from an editor at a publishing house who had heard my podcast and wanted to meet about maybe doing a book. I would be thrilled. A book! I have always wanted to write a book and see it in a bookstore window, on a blanket on a beach by a sleeping stranger, on the shelf of a junk shop next to a faded Windows 95 manual, anywhere. But on some real, kind of embarrassing, probably pathological level, I didn’t necessarily believe that could be a real thing for a very long time. So, as my podcast audience grew, I would be thrilled to get an email and a breakfast with a real editor or agent who was in the business of making books. The people would be lovely — they’d like the show, they’d like the writing, they’d like the platform, and then they’d want me to write Seabiscuit. Or The Devil in the White City, or Hidden Figures, or Cod, or some other history book for general readers in which a deep-dive into a single subject somehow explains America. I couldn’t blame them. Those books were big hits. But they were also big. The Memory Palace, hit-potential aside, is small. And it is what I do. It’s how my brain works. I don’t know if I have it in me to write Seabiscuit, but, either way, I knew I didn’t want to. . But, there hadn’t been a book like the one I wanted to write, not really. As a kid, I had these books that collected short pieces — old paperback collections of Ripley’s Believe it or Not stories, The Book of Lists, Where the Sidewalk Ends, so many of them. They had a kind of magic. I would read them now and then. Pull them off the shelf. And each time, a new piece would hit me. Maybe I was that little bit older since last I’d picked it up. Maybe I’d changed. I wanted to make that kind of book but for adults. A book that might have that magic. It was a hard sell.

True short stories isn’t a thing. How do you market that? Plus, the show was never that big. A beloved cult-object at best. It was going to be a tough sell, the editors and agents would tell me. Was I sure there wasn’t a story I wanted to go long on? Was I sure there wasn’t a horse I wanted to write about? An old-timey serial killer? A horse that was an old-timey serial killer? The idea of a book of stories like the ones I write just never quite added up. But now the good folks at Random House is giving it a shot.

I don’t know if this book is going to sell. All of those people may have been right all along. But I am extraordinarily happy that it is a book at all.

It hasn’t been all that easy to get it to this point, here on publishing day. The writing and editing and pairing down and building up and working with the illustrator and the photo editor and any number of highly trained professionals for whom, unlike me, hanging on to the horn of the saddle for dear life at times, this book was not their first rodeo — it was a lot of work. But it was work I’d always anticipated. But what I hadn’t anticipated was just how hard it is to get a book in front of readers.

The publishing industry is currently trying to rebuild the plane in midair as it navigates a radically changed landscape where book-media is dying, where all the usual strategies and tactics they’ve employed since, I don’t know, Leon Uris topped the best-seller list, have all stopped working. And when it comes to non-fiction books, the plane is essentially crashing. And so don’t expect many articles about this book, don’t even expect many reviews. The marketplace hasn’t rushed to embrace this book so far. But I’ve managed to hustle and bootstrap enough to give this book a fighting chance. It will be in stores. It’s gaining a foothold through pre-sales. And now the book itself will live in the world and see what it can do there. It’s there to be picked up off the shelf, flipped through while the reader waits for her friend, maybe she’ll get sucked in. Maybe she’ll take it home. Maybe it’ll become a part of her life.

Whether this book finds readers, will ultimately be up, it seems, to readers. Readers like you. In lieu of some big review in the New York Times or the like, it will be readers sharing this book with other readers. I’d love your help in helping this book. Pass it along to a friend. Give it a review. A social media post. Tell the cute guy that works behind the counter of your local book store that he should check it out, maybe put it on that shelf right near the front. Maybe someone will pick it up there, flip through it, decide to take it home.

I can’t wait to see where this book winds up.