Here’s a thing nobody prints on the back of a book: How people actually get book deals is one of the great mysteries of modern life, right up there with where all your socks go.
We see the shiny headline (“Signed with Hachette!” “Out March 2027!”) and assume it happened the way lightning happens: random, rare, and definitely not coming for you.
But nobody shows you the boring, beautiful, page-a-day middle. Which is exactly the part you need.
So I sat down with Jeremy Ney who’s driven by the desire to make the American dream a reality for millions of underserved families and made him show his work.
☀️ Limited-time only: Join the Club as an annual member + get FREE access to the Substack for Beginners Course 2026 this summer!
On-demand trainings + live classes.
Next live class is today, Friday June 26, 2pm CEST · 1pm BST · 8am ET · 5am PT
Who is Jeremy Ney?
Jeremy is a Columbia Business School professor, a former Federal Reserve numbers person, and the human behind the Substack American Inequality, yep, the one with those weirdly addictive maps you’ve definitely seen and definitely sent to one friend with the caption “look at our state.”
He’s also the author of The Opportunity Map (Hachette, March 2027). That’s a deal with one of the Big Five, the publishing equivalent of getting seated at the grown-ups’ table.
And here’s what’s so important for you:
He had no audience when he started. And he wasn’t even trying to write a book.
He started exactly where you’re sitting right now
Jeremy launched American Inequality in 2021 for the least glamorous reason imaginable: he had a pile of cool maps and data just sitting there, and figured someone might enjoy them. That was the entire master plan.
“For the first probably two, maybe even three years, I was really just writing for friends and family. My mom was one of my biggest commenters on my posts…”
I love this so much. Because right now somebody reading this is sitting on their version of the maps, the memoir, the niche obsession, the thing they know cold, waiting for permission to hit publish.
💡 TIP: You don’t need the permission. All you need the publish button. Jeremy’s whole career is what happens when “I’ll start someday” becomes “I started, and my mom commented.”
So join one of the biggest Online Writing Clubs on the internet and get FREE access to the Substack for Beginners class to kickstart your list and publication this summer.
Maps became his “thing” and thumbprint
As I always say, every writer who breaks through has a thing, the signature move you can spot from across the room. Jeremy’s was turning intimidating government data (EPA, FBI, HUD… basically the alphabet) into county-level maps that actually make you feel something.
“People love the maps. They know where they were born, where their parents live, where they went to college…”
👀 REMEMBER: Your “thing” is also your moat against AI. As my friend Karen Salmansohn says: The YOU-ier the better! Or as Jeremy puts it, robots are pretty good at facts and pretty bad at you. (We get deep into the “staying original when ChatGPT exists” question in the episode, don’t skip it.)
Jeremey wasn’t trying to write a book at all
“Strangely enough, I was not planning to write a book. Like when I started the Substack, I did not intend for it to turn into a book deal.”
So how’d it happen? An old college friend (who was writing his own book) opened a door. A few weeks later, Jeremy had an agent, Dan Greenberg.
Three months after that, he had a book deal.
That’s what Jeremy called in his guest post increasing your surface of luck, a phrase he borrowed from poker champ-turned-founder Cate Hall:
“The more times you interact with the outside world, the more chances you have to get lucky, to find collaborators, friends, and projects that, together, provide the right soil for you to bloom in.”
In other words: luck is gardening. You plant a lot of stuff, you water it weekly, and eventually something pops up.
The “I’m too small” excuse is sneaky
This is the part I want tattooed on the inside of your eyelids.
When Jeremy pitched his book, here’s the audience he had:
“I had… 12,000, I think.”
Twelve. Thousand. That’s not “famous influencer” numbers. That’s “respectable turnout at a regional event with decent parking” numbers. And it was enough.
Meanwhile, half the internet swears you need 50,000 subscribers and an orange or purple checkmark before you’re allowed to dream. You don’t. 10,000 is genuinely impressive.
Online Writing Club member Colette Jane Fehr, LMFT, LMHC signed with Penguin Random House at ZERO and gre her list to 5,000 later.
⚠️ WARNING: The “I’m too small” excuse is sneaky, comfortable, and completely fake. Do not let it tuck you in at night.
Listen to our podcast NOW to dream big!
Why your Substack is secretly your best negotiator
“What I realized is that Substack turned my writing into a market test.”
Publishing houses are, in their hearts, venture capitalists in cardigans. They place a bunch of small bets praying one becomes Harry Potter. Every bet is risky.
So when you stroll in with open rates, comments, and an audience that actually shows up, you’re not a gamble anymore, you’re closer to a sure thing. Your stats do the convincing while you sit there looking modest.
Jeremy’s best moves for you
1. Treat your Substack like proof
Those stats and comments? That’s your evidence locker. It’s literally how Jeremy ended up in TIME, Business Insider, and Harvard Magazine.
2. Hold your best stuff back
Plot armor for your book. Every story in it is brand-new on purpose, so readers can’t just Google their way out of buying it.
“I kept the big picture in mind and held some stories back so that way when someone read it in my book, it would be the first time that insight was out in the world.”
3. Write one boring, unsexy page a day
“I wrote a page every single day basically for a little over a year.”
💡 TIP: Do the math and that’s a 300-ish-page book in under a year. His final manuscript clocked in at 95,097 words. One page at a time.
Listen to our conversation to learn from Jeremy!
4. Give first. Ask later (way later)
The #1 thing that grew his newsletter was recommending other writers in the dashboard and being recommended back. He linked, quoted, hyped, and cold-emailed generously before he ever needed anything. Karma with a recommendation button.
Want to plant your own writing garden of luck?
Jeremy’s whole story is living proof that Substack is where the stories, the collaborations, and yes, the actual book deals, tend to start.
And you put yourself in luck’s path the moment you stop reading from the sidelines and start publishing.
If you want to learn Substack the fun, fast, hand-held, “wait, that wasn’t scary at all” way, come join the Substack for Beginners Course 2026 inside your annual Club membership:
✅ On-demand lessons + weekly live sessions (hop in anytime!)
✅ Masterclasses + Q&As with people building real newsletters right now
✅ Every future update, automatically yours
👉 YAY, let me join — just upgrade to an annual Club membership. That’s the whole checkout process.
You’re in!
Keep going (more from the Club)
Jeremy’s guest post: How to Become a Published Author With Substack (and Increase Your Surface of Luck)
Running superstar Raziq Rauf : What Raz Did With 0 Readers That Changed Everything
Colette Jane Fehr, LMFT, LMHC who listened to her publisher Penguin Random House and started an email list on Substack and grew it from zero to 5,000
Hey you! 💓 Would you do me a tiny favor and share Jeremy’s story with someone who needs it today? And I genuinely want to hear yours:
What’s your big writing dream for 2026?
And what’s one small thing you could plant in your garden this week?
Every like and restack ♻️ helps these ideas travel farther and keeps the light on in this lovely little corner of the internet. We’re one of the biggest active online writing communities in the world now 😃😃😃
