I Don't Know How You Do It
Meet the people who stretch the limits of what we think is possible and hear "I don't know how you do it" every single day. Each week we talk with a guest whose life seems unimaginable from the outside. Some of our guests were thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Others chose them voluntarily.
People like:
The athlete who learned to walk again and became a paralympic gold medalist after being in a coma for four years…
The woman who left the security of her job and home to live full-time on a small sailboat...
The child-welfare advocate who grew up homeless and turned his gut-wrenching childhood into a lifetime of making a difference...
The mother who worked with scientists to develop a custom treatment for her daughter’s rare disease…
They share their stories of challenge and success and dive into what makes them able to do things that look undoable. Where do they find their drive? Their resilience? Their purpose and passion?
You'll leave each candid conversation with new insights, ideas, and the inspiration to say, "I can do it too," whatever your "it" is.
I Don't Know How You Do It
The Making of a Literary Rock Star, with Zibby Owens
In this inspiring conversation, we dive into how Zibby built a universe of readers and writers—dubbed the "Zibbyverse"—while also raising four kids.
Hear Zibby's advice for marketing creative work and how she's building engaged communities around books.
- Why it makes sense to do the next right thing even if you don’t have the whole path mapped out yet
- The kind of sharing that resonates with readers
- How to reframe failures
- The magic in saying, "Yes"
- The origins of the funniest character around: "deodorant guy!"
- And so much more...
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Music credit: Limitless by Bells
Transcript
Jessica Fein: Welcome. I'm Jessica Fein, and this is the “I Don't Know How You Do It” podcast, where we talk to people whose lives seem unimaginable from the outside and dive into how they're able to do things that look undoable. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey, and I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Welcome back to the show. If you are a reader or a writer, chances are you know today's guest, Zibby Owens. Zibby is a force in the publishing world. She's the author of Blank, a novel, Bookends: a memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, and the children's book Princess Charming.
She's also the editor of two anthologies. A frequent contributor to Good Morning [00:01:00] America and other outlets, she's been called New York City's “most powerful bookfluencer." Zibby's also the creator and host of the award winning daily podcast, "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books,” co-founder and CEO of publishing house Zibby Books, owner of Zibby's Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica, California, and creator of the Zibby-verse, a community of book lovers for which she offers retreats, classes, special events, a book club, a writing group, and more. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Zibby currently lives in New York with her four children, ages 9 to 16, and her husband, Kyle Owens, co-president and founder of Morning Moon Productions.
It's a lot to say, let alone do, and Zibby and I dive in to how she does it all. Without further ado, I bring you Zibby Owens.
Jessica Fein: Welcome, Zibby. I am so excited for this conversation. [00:02:00]
Zibby Owens: Me too. Thank you so much for having me.
Jessica Fein: We just need to jump right in, and I need to ask, how in the world do you do it? Between writing, running a publishing company, and a bookstore, hosting a daily podcast, holding events, and mothering four children. Do you ever sleep?
Zibby Owens: Not too much. Not enough. I don't know how I do it. I'm going to slow down the pace of the podcast, I've decided recently. So that has become untenable because I'm going to continue writing books more.
Jessica Fein: Excellent for all of us who love to read your books.
Zibby Owens: Thank you. I don't know. I'm just always busy. I'm always doing something.
I try to use every minute. I involve my kids and family in everything. I don't have four kids at home, so I don't want to mislead people that I have like four kids underfoot. I have two kids at boarding school who are in high school. I have two very independent lower schoolers, and I am divorced and remarried, so they [00:03:00] do go to their dads every other weekend for a long weekend.
Most weeks, I have two kids. Most of the week, but not all. So that helps. Although, of course, I'm constantly texting and calling and, you know, I'm never off. Moms are never off duty. And I don't know. I work really quickly. I read quickly. I write quickly. I have a great team on all fronts. Great team in my husband, in my marriage.
I have a great caregiver for my kids. I have fabulous people on all divisions of my company. So, I don't know, I'm just, I'm doing it.
Jessica Fein: You are doing it. It is true. And it seems from the outside, like the Zibby-verse, which is what your ecosystem is called, came to be somewhat quickly. But of course, what we see on the outside is never, you know, the real picture.
We don't see all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it. Did you always have this vision in mind, or did one thing lead to the next?
Zibby Owens: I wish I could say I was this, uh, prophetic. Is that the right word? Uh, no. I [00:04:00] did not see this becoming what it became, but each step on the path revealed more. I feel like I'm, like, playing one of those games where, like, I don't know, like, I get the next clue when I go forward, and then I go towards that, and then I open up that clue, and then I run to the next one, and I'm just like scurrying along this path.
I don't even know where it's leading, but I'm having a lot of fun.
Jessica Fein: That's so great. It's like a scavenger hunt. You're on a mission to treat authors and readers like rock stars, which, by the way, as an author and a reader, I love that because I will never be a legit rock star. But what does that mean? What does that look like?
Zibby Owens: I will also never be a legit rock star. I'm like, constantly surprised when my kids can sing. And anyway, uh, what does it look like? I want people to be celebrated. I want the act of reading to be celebrated and made more glamorous and not be sort of something you do alone on the couch because you're wasting time and just sitting around eating bonbons.
Like I [00:05:00] want reading to be fun, exciting, the way it is when you all watch the same great show and talk about it the next day. I want it to be uniting and fun, not just if you read, like, the three books from Massive Book Clubs. I want all reading to feel like that. And I want authors to be recognized if they want.
You know, I mean, a lot of authors don't want to be rock stars. They're perfectly happy alone in their rooms and are like, thank you very much. No, thank you. But I want authors to be acknowledged, whether they sell two copies of their book or two million copies of their book. I want them to feel great. I want when their books to come out, I want them to get the attention that they deserve for this massive accomplishment.
I want it to be fun and festive. I want there to be some glamour and I just, I want there to be more joy in an industry that had felt slightly downtrodden. And I just [00:06:00] want to bring back the joy because there is so much joy in every book that comes out.
Jessica Fein: I love that so much. And I have to say, Zibby, you radiate joy.
And I've had the privilege and pleasure of being at readings or panels that you've moderated. And it is infectious, the joy that you feel for reading and writing. It just carries through to everybody who gets to be in your ecosystem. So thank you. One of the things that's really striking is the way you're lifting up other authors, and it's so interesting because I do think that a lot of creatives are just head down, laser focused on what they're doing, and you are creating your own works.
You know, you're prolific writer. So how do you navigate pursuing your own projects while also devoting so much time and energy to lifting others?
Zibby Owens: I don't probably allocate enough time to my own writing. Um, I do make time every week to write an [00:07:00] essay for my Substack. Like, I really love writing personal essays and I like having a, basically, a self created deadline.
Writing books is harder. Today, for instance, I'm taking a flight to my bookstore in California, and I'm like, I'm going to work on a novel on this plane. I'm going to work on a novel tomorrow morning in L. A. I'm going to do this. And I've like, told my husband ten times, I've put it in my calendar, I'm like, I have to do this.
But it is hard. It's hard for me to gear up for that. My calendar is my biggest weapon in this whole sort of fight for efficiency. I book it all in. I book my podcasts. And then when I have a podcast on the schedule, then I read for the podcast and I'm preparing. And I spend tons of time in this huge library cart next to me, going through all the new releases and just trying to curate for everyone else given my vantage point and trying to help people find what they should read, but read widely.
So, I don't know. It's sort of unsustainable at this moment, it's a little much, I must admit, but it's always changing. I mean, everything about this [00:08:00] whole thing continues to change and every time it's set. It changes again.
So it feels to me like raising kids in a way, like as soon as you feel like you have one thing down, then it changes, right? Like, okay, I've got this stage now they're out of that stage. So I feel like that with the Zibby-verse, I feel like that with my own writing, with my scheduling, with everything. So I'm always keeping an eye.
And fine tuning and allowing the space to adapt and make changes and be flexible when things aren't working. So, I don't know. I'll just say I'm trying. But lifting up other authors, I mean, I've been doing that my entire life. I love to read. Any reader does that, whether they think about it or not, the second they recommend a book.
I'm recommending books I love, and that's so easy. I mean, that's fun. I mean, doing a 30 minute podcast and prepping for that every single day is probably not the easiest. But I am looking for other ways to continue to do that, that take less time, but make as much of an impact. I don't know. I'll continue to do that forever.
As will everybody else who [00:09:00] loves to read. You do it naturally, because you're moved by a book, or you love the reading experience, or you stayed up late and you tell someone about it. That's just like part of the communal nature of reading, and part of what makes it so special.
Jessica Fein: Well, you have been at the writing for a really long time, if I'm not mistaken, your first article was published in 1993 in Seventeen Magazine. Yeah. How did that happen?
Zibby Owens: So I had gained a bunch of weight the year my parents got divorced when I was 14. And since I could write, I've been writing to work through my own feelings and not necessarily always sharing them, but always writing them.
And I kind of think in essay format for whatever reason. So when I sat down that day, when I was really upset, I just pounded out this essay for myself about how I felt and how I felt. Some people were treating me differently, having gained weight, mind you, like gained weight. Like I weigh more than that now, but it's fine.
And I wrote all about it, and then I printed it out, [00:10:00] and between printing it and getting it, my mother intercepted it somehow, and read it, because those are the boundaries in my house, and sorry for another podcast, and she found it, but she said, you know, I think this piece could really help other girls your age, or other girls in general, you should send it in somewhere, and I was like, what do you mean, so she's like, why don't we try it, so I give her all the credit, we sent it in blind to Seventeen Magazine, and they bought it.
And it was like such a joy, and I think about that moment because I'm still in touch with that editor, her name's Rory Evans, and she's still editing and writing and everything, um, but she changed my life because I had that article come out, and it was before Instagram and all that, so the magazine told me that they got more letters in response to that article than they had gotten in like a year or something, and so many articles, they republished some of the articles in subsequent magazines, issues, and I realized that if I am open and honest and I share Sort of my deepest, darkest stuff in a way that is not, you know, exploitative or exhibitionist, [00:11:00] but sincere and authentic, that it resonates and it helps other people.
And that just kept me going. So I've been doing that ever since.
Jessica Fein: Well, kudos to your mom for urging you to do that. And I want our listeners to really hear this and take it in because so many people will say, You know, Oh, I've been writing for so long, but I, you know, I don't want to share it. I couldn't, I'm not there yet.
I'm not good enough. And you just kind of went for it and you sent it in and look what happened. So I think that's amazing. And I love that your mom did that. As somebody who writes nonfiction, I cannot imagine. Switching to fiction. It seems to me like a totally different skill. And now here you've done just that.
You've written essays, you've written so much, so prolific, as I said, in your memoir, and now here's Blank. How did you switch to fiction?
Zibby Owens: Well, I didn't switch to fiction in that I've been writing fiction forever. So my 10, and it had two short stories. So I've been writing fiction. forever. I just have not [00:12:00] been publishing fiction.
I have not been writing maybe good fiction. I don't know. I wrote a full length novel when I graduated from business school. I took a year off after my, I had lost my best friend on 9/11 and then went through four other losses that year and it was just, it was one of those points in time where I was like, if not now, when I could be killed any second.
So I took a year off and wrote a novel and it ultimately didn't sell. I had an agent. I was devastated. But I wrote that book sort of four times over, the way you do with books, and I wrote it as a memoir, and then I deleted all that, and then I wrote it as a novel, and then I deleted that, I wrote another novel.
So I've been doing this for a while, I have a couple in my cabinets back there, uh, that didn't sell. I've experimented with different styles, I wrote like a full length prose poem, I wrote a novella, I've written all types of things. But it wasn't until recently when I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna write something that is fun for me to write.
And something I'm going to enjoy, and I'm not going to try to be literary, or I'm not going to try to be [00:13:00] this or that. And if I'm going to take the time that I really don't have away from other things like my family or anybody else, I have to be having fun while I do it. It can't be a chore, because it's not like anyone's sitting around waiting for me to write a novel.
Jessica Fein: They will be now, after the first one.
Zibby Owens: Oh, so, I had fun with it, and I wrote differently, and I had also, and this is the hugest part, really, is that I had an editor, Carmen Johnson, who bought my memoir, who took a total chance on me, and I thank her for it, all the time. My agent, Joe Veltre, took a chance on me.
I kept telling him, like, I know I can do this. I have so many books in me, like, just trust me. And he did. He took a chance on me. And then Carmen bought my memoir and she took a chance on me. I was like, I know I can write a great memoir. Just, you know, I need a little more guidance and a little more help and just like point me in the right direction and I can do it.
And I'll do it over and over until it's right. And she was on the path with me to fiction because I told her I always had wanted to publish a novel. I sent her countless ideas for novels along the way [00:14:00] and we worked together to make Blank into what it was. And having her by my side and as a sounding board and all of that has really made all the difference.
Jessica Fein: Well, I will tell you I read it over two days, and the only reason it took me two days was because I needed to sleep at night. And it was so fun and engrossing. Now, your main character, Pippa, is a wife, a mother, and a writer. So I have to ask, how much of Pippa is Zibby?
Zibby Owens: There is definitely a lot of me in Pippa.
We are not the same person. Uh, I intentionally made stuff up, uh, but there's a lot of me in there. There's a lot of my mothering. There's a lot of what I might say in the same situation or think and not say. So yeah, there are a lot of parallels for sure. But it's not the same person.
Jessica Fein: Can you share with us a bit about the story of Blank?
Zibby Owens: Sure. Blank takes place over six days in L. A. and it's about Pippa Jones, who you referenced. She is a mother of [00:15:00] two and a best selling author who is three years late turning in her next book. She Is up against a deadline, her publisher says she has until Friday to get it in, or she'll have her advance taken back, which of course she spent, turning her pantry into an office, and her son suggests like, well, if you just keep staring at the blank page why don't you just hand it in blank.
And she's like, Oh my gosh, that's genius. I'll hand it in blank and it'll be a whole commentary on the publishing industry and the way that a blank canvas is on the art world. And I'll make such a statement, blah, blah, blah. So she hands it in and that one decision upends her life in so many different ways and tests loyalties and relationships and turns everything upside down, which is what the rest of the book is really about.
Jessica Fein: What would you do as a publisher if somebody handed their book into you and it was blank?
Zibby Owens: That's a great question. Uh, I would not be happy. Um, [00:16:00] I mean, I would not be happy. It would be funny though.
Jessica Fein: Okay, so there is a scene in the book at summer camp where Pippa is dancing to “Stairway to Heaven.” Now, I have to tell you, this brought me back to the socials at Camp Young Judea because it was always like this shuffling when you heard the beginnings of “Stairway to Heaven,” because it's like a hundred minutes, you know, it's the longest song in the world.
And you really had to be careful about who you chose to dance with to that. That scene is where we meet. Deodorant guy. I love deodorant guy. He had me laughing out loud. So can you tell us about him? And also I have to know, is he based on somebody real? Did that really happen?
Zibby Owens: That really happened.
That really happened. Yeah.
Jessica Fein: Do you want to tell people or do they have to read the book to find out what the deal is with deodorant guy?
Zibby Owens: No, this is just a snippet from a camp dance flashback that she's sharing with her kids, which actually I was doing one day. We were on this [00:17:00] drive and I was sort of telling kids about the people I used to date and they were sort of fascinated and horrified all at the same time.
Yeah, a boy I danced with at summer camp. Told me that he had put deodorant on his face so that he wouldn't sweat and I was like, okay And he really did look like how I described in the book. He had two polo shirts on one over.
Jessica Fein: Yes. That look was in I can envision that.
Zibby Owens: Yeah, so I can like smell the barn where this dance was still You know, I can feel myself.
I can feel my hands. I was so nervous. And you know, just that time of life, it just took me right back there. So anyway, yeah, that was him.
Jessica Fein: Your memoir, which was your previous book, Bookends, was so powerful and so raw and on such serious topics, and this one is just fun. How has the process of bringing it into the world been different for you with this one?
Zibby Owens: Oh, this is, this is so much easier. This is so much easier. My memoir, I really wanted [00:18:00] to get out there. I was really proud of it. I am proud of it, but it had been a long road in coming and it was complicated for many reasons. And. You know, it dealt with loss and turbulent times and ultimately ended on a hopeful note, but you know, it's life.
And I was worried because it was so me, you know, it was me, I mean, you know, so it was just very raw in the way that, you know, I just wrote this article for Vogue and I had the same feeling, like it came out and I literally said to my husband, I was like, this might have been a mistake. This, I might've gone too far this time.
Jessica Fein: But I will just tell you, I read it, and I don't think you went too far. I actually really, really liked it, and I think it goes back to what you did for Seventeen, which is you are telling your truth, and it resonates with people when you tell your truth.
Zibby Owens: Thank you.
Anyway, with Blank, just like the writing was sort of fun, this is fun.
And I get to put my marketing hat on, which, you know, I've learned a lot. This is actually the fifth book I have coming out. I had two anthologies that I edited. I had a children's book and I had a memoir. So [00:19:00] it's my debut novel, but it's actually my fifth book. So I've had time to figure this out. And not that I know all the answers and I've published 14 books as a publisher.
So, I know a lot more now than if my book had actually been accepted when I was, what, 27, 28, and that had been published. I would have had a completely different experience than now at 47, where I have enough experience to not be going into this blind. It's still blind in that you never know what's gonna work, you don't know what's gonna hit, you don't know if any publicity makes a difference, you don't know if, is it one post here, you know, I just keep trying everything, cause that is all I've learned about publishing, is like, since you don't know, you just have to throw everything against the wall, every time, and not give up, I am constantly like, you Oh, should I send her a book?
Should I, should I do this? Like, could I do this? Did we pitch this? Like, I'm doing that this morning, like constant nonstop. What can I do? What else is there? And you have to be that relentless when you're marketing a [00:20:00] book. So I have that hat on, but in my head, this is so much more of a product to sort of get out there.
I mean, it is still my heart and soul, but I can view it more as a product than I could my memoir, which was just, hi, do you want to like read about my entire personal life? Like it was just a little bit harder. Now I've just taken that out and my early feedback has been positive enough that I feel relief and, like, justified in continuing to try to sell it.
Ultimately, when books hit, they are not discovered by the author working super hard to do it. It hits or it doesn't hit and people start telling each other. That is how a book ends up being successful. But, since that's out of my control. I just keep doing everything to, to try to push it along, even if what I do has absolutely no impact.
But I, I like to believe it does.
Jessica Fein: Okay. As somebody who, my book is coming out just in a couple of months. So now you said you've learned so much about things that work and you have to be relentless. But is there like one thing that you learned that it's like, Oh, you got to do this? [00:21:00]
Zibby Owens: No, honestly, no. I wish, I wish it was that simple.
I wish too. I mean. No. I guess if there's one thing, it is always say yes. I try to say yes to basically everything. There is no audience too small. You know, I think people are like, I'm only going to show up here if it's this many people or people are asking us at the bookstore, you know, how many people do you get for your events?
And to me, it's not about how many people are doing things at a given time. One person loving your book can change your life. It's not about how many. Having anybody deeply connect is what you want, and if that can scale, that's even better. But you need to find the readers who will connect the most to your book, and sometimes that is hard.
That's why you have to just keep getting out there. You have to go on podcasts. You have to go to book events where maybe not a lot of people show up, and you have to sign books in places, and you have to pop in and tell people, and If there [00:22:00] is no lottery ticket out there to a book success, but you also don't know where it is, that's a bad analogy.
But you just have to keep throwing the pixie dust and see what turns into something. And you have to like that. Like, if this is not your jam, that's fine. But you're leaving stuff on the table if you're not willing to just pound the pavement. Because some people are harder to find, and they're still out there, and they might really need your book.
And it's your job, I think, to try to find them.
Jessica Fein: I love that advice. And you do never know. A friend of mine was having a reading and she showed up and nobody else did. Nobody showed up for her reading. And you would think this would be like, you know, soul crushing. She actually put that on social. The picture of, you know, the totally empty room.
And it went viral. And her numbers shot up on Amazon. And it became this huge, huge success. this fact that nobody showed up for the book reading. So it's true that you never know.
Zibby Owens: I'm actually totally annoyed that I did not do that myself because I have been in that [00:23:00] situation. And now I'm like, shoot, if I had just posted, you know, and I did post, I posted about different things that have happened, but I did one event in LA and Culver city at this new bookstore and three people showed up.
One of whom was my husband. Then there was a couple, one of the women had been on my podcast. She brought her husband. And those were the audience. Then I saw a fourth person and I was like, Oh look, great, someone else showed up. And they were like, That's our videographer. Gonna be streaming this on social.
But you know what happened is, I was like, Okay, well, it's on social. We're just gonna have a great time. And I was there with two other authors. And I ended up acquiring two books now from one of the other authors. And she's a Zibby Books author. And I never would have met her otherwise. So that's why I was there that night.
That's what you have to do, like, there's a reason I'm here, there's a reason I'm doing this, I don't know it yet, but I'll figure it out, or I won't figure it out, but there's a reason. Nothing is a waste, just like when you're writing and you end up maybe not using a couple paragraphs or I don't know, whatever.
Everything leads to something else, [00:24:00] it's all part of the process, it's not linear, it's not straightforward, it's It's maddeningly frustrating. It's really, really tough and can feel like nothing you're doing is working. And I have been there. I just had an event canceled yesterday. And I'm like, gosh, that makes me feel like such a failure.
And I was about to go down this whole thing where I was feeling depressed. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, see it as an opportunity. What does this mean? Okay, what are you going to do with that time instead? You know, how can you do it? What if you put this on a different day, and you make it a whole big day of signings?
And maybe you could go to other stores. And so I think you just have to not feel like such a failure when the failures come because they will. And it doesn't mean you're a failure. As a bookstore owner, by the way, like if three people came to an event, I feel like a failure. That's my fault too. And that has happened.
It was like this rainy day and like two people showed up for this big deal author and I was mortified. You know, that's on me as well. So don't take all the blame as the author.
Jessica Fein: I love that advice. And I think use that for [00:25:00] so many other things. It doesn't only have to be in the book journey, right? But when the thing doesn't happen, maybe look for what the opportunity is that it's bringing to light instead.
What is next for the Zibby-verse?
Zibby Owens: What is next for the Zibby-verse? We are getting a new logo. That's what I'm focused on now, is like, actually creating this Zibby-verse thing and making it more of a thing. Because it's really come about recently. The LA Times called what I'm doing the Zibby-verse and recently I'm like, that's so funny.
Like, let's turn that into a thing. So I really want to make people feel good about being Zibby-versers and, you know, have this whole fun, tongue in cheek thing about this community that we're building and really, really grow the community with live events and meeting people, and that's part of why I'm going on this ridiculous book tour to so many places.
I'm going to like 20 plus cities and it's crazy, but I'm doing it more as like a road show to get people excited and tell people what we're doing and get them involved. So growing the Zibby-verse community, letting people know about it and all of that is [00:26:00] first up on the list. And that comes with continuing the book club and doing more retreats and doing more smaller events like the one that we did in January in New York City.
Doing more things for more different types, segmenting the community a little more. Maybe this is for aspiring authors. Maybe this is for, you know, this type of reader. I don't know. So that from the Zibby-verse is coming next. Blank is coming out. I'll have news very soon about my next project on the writing front.
Let's see, Zibby Books, we continue to have one book a month. We have fabulous books I'm so proud of coming out soon. Hereafter comes out March 5th. It's so good by Amy Lin, one of the best books on grief I've ever read. And I have to say, I have to send it to you. It's so good. So that's coming out. We have a fun book called Wedding Issues coming out in April, takes place in Nashville, like very fun read and then great books all summer.
So the summer reading I Want You More by Swan Huntley, who's actually the woman who did that event with me at that bookstore. Her book I Want You More is coming out. In June, we have this [00:27:00] gorgeous book that was just blurbed by Alice McDermott called Pearce Oysters coming out in July. The Matriarch by Pamela Redmond in August.
She wrote Younger, which became that TV show. It's called The Matriarch, a feminist succession type of book. So lots of great books from Zibby Books. More events. We have our first year anniversary at the bookstore happening this weekend. So always more events there. Podcast, I am gonna change up this year.
Um, working on it, you know, a revamp after doing it for so many years. I've had 1800 episodes and I'm tired and . It's great. And, um, my goodness, I know my, I just had a call with my podcast network and they're like, literally people cannot keep up. You're doing too many. So I'm gonna rethink the format of that a bit.
But continue on with “Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books” and all the writing and the sub stack and Instagram and the things I write. Like I'm still writing Good Morning America round ups most months and writing for other publications and spending time laughing with my kids and trying to spend every so often with my husband.
And, [00:28:00] uh, I don't know, maybe I'll get to the gym this year. We'll see. So, um, I don't know, I guess muddling through somehow. Following my gut, throwing it out there, trying things, and always saying yes.
Jessica Fein: Always say yes. I love that. What are you reading right now?
Zibby Owens: What am I reading right now? I'm about to start Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan.
I loved Nora Goes Off Script so much, it was one of my favorite reads, so her new book just is coming out, and I think I'm going to bring that on the plane with me. But I have so many books coming up for the podcast, including yours. Which when I looked at my calendar, I was like, Oh my gosh, that's this morning.
I'm interviewing you. And I was like, I have to go home and read. I was like dropping off my kids. So thank God now I have time to really read it. I started it though, as you know, and loved it. And what else? I don't know. So many books. There's always something good. Oh, I'll be reading Behind the Shoulder Pads by Joan Collins, because she is doing a live podcast with me in my bookstore this weekend.
Jessica Fein: Oh my gosh. I just have to ask, so you've done 1,800 episodes, does that mean you've read 1,800 [00:29:00] books in preparation for your podcast episodes?
Zibby Owens: I obviously can't read them all start to finish, but I delve into them, I prep them, I skim them. Some of them are repeats, about, probably, maybe 50 of the 1, 800 I had guest hosted.
maybe 60. A couple were re releases, so let's say maybe 30. So let's say, except for about 100, yeah, I've probably had 1, 700. 1, 700, that is amazing. Let's say about 1, 700 authors. Yeah, it's great.
Jessica Fein: It's crazy. Amazing. All right, here's my last question. I am going on vacation next week. And I need to know what books I should be reading on the beach.
Zibby Owens: That is a great question. If you haven't read Julie Chavez's Everyone But Myself, that is a great read, published by Zibby Books. I have to recommend some of our own. If you haven't read The Last Love Note by Emma Grey, that is a great beach read. In fact, a lot of it takes place on a beach in Australia.
Start with those two.
Jessica Fein: I will start with those two. And I am so looking forward to seeing you on your tour in Boston. Yay! And for everybody listening, check out the [00:30:00] Zibby-verse and where Zibby’s going to be. Read Blank. You will have so much fun with it. And Zibby, thank you. With all the things you're saying yes to, I'm so glad you said yes to being on this show.
So thank you so much.
Zibby Owens: It's my pleasure. Thank you. Great questions. You're a really great interviewer.
Jessica Fein: Here are my takeaways from the conversation with Zibby. Number one. You don't have to have your whole path mapped out. Sometimes following the next clue or the next right thing can lead to the greatest adventure and success.
Number two, when we're sincere and authentic, not in a way that's exploitative or exhibitionist, but just real, that's what resonates with people. Number three, much of what's successful when we're working on a project is out of our control. In the meantime, be relentless about what is in your control, which leads to number four, say yes.
No opportunity is too small. Number five, the failures are going to happen. Sometimes though, the failures can turn into opportunities if we're open to it. As you heard in the interview, I'm going to be on Zibby’s podcast around my book release, which is May 7th. [00:31:00] You can order my book, Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes, now on Amazon.
com, bookshop. org, Barnes Noble, wherever you like to get your books, and you'll have it hot off the press when it comes out. It's also a great Mother's Day gift, so if you order it now, You won't have to worry about shopping last minute. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Have a great day. Talk to you next time.
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