This week on Keep Going, I talked with Benjamin Wallace — author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar and, more recently, The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto. We didn’t focus on plot or spoilers. Instead, we talked about what it means to write for a living right now, in a world that’s drowning in content and racing toward automation.
Wallace is one of those writers who makes it look easy. But he’s honest: it’s not. The platforms to publish are wide open — Substack, blogs, self-publishing — but the traditional paths are narrower than ever. “It’s never been easier to publish whatever you want at any length and have worldwide distribution,” he said. “But the establishment publishing industry has never been more challenging.”
We talked about the current game: you need a platform, a built-in audience, or a topic that breaks through the noise. Wallace started the Bitcoin book in 2022, when the crypto boom made it look like a broader audience was finally ready for it. Then AI exploded and sucked all the air out of the room.
So why keep going? “You get a book deal,” he said, half-joking but mostly not. That deal lets you take the risk. It lets you focus. Without it, the economics just don’t work. Still, Wallace emphasized that anyone can start. His advice for new writers: don’t wait. Don’t be precious. Start a Substack, write the thing in public, and test what lands.
And don’t use AI to write your pitch. “The book proposal is where you need to show what you can do,” he said. “If your pitch is written by AI, the assumption is the book will be too.”
We dug into the question of AI and authorship. Could a bot have written The Billionaire’s Vinegar or Mr. Nakamoto? Probably not. “Weird books get written because someone has a weird obsession,” Wallace said. That human weirdness — that accident — is what makes good work good. AI can mimic quirks. It can’t originate obsession.
This was a good conversation about what it means to write for a living right now. No hype. No hustle culture. Just a working writer telling the truth about the process.
The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto is out now. If you’ve ever wondered who Satoshi was — or what it takes to chase a mystery that might not want to be solved — it’s worth a read.
Share this post