You Should Write a Sports Book
I'd just rather not
I was interviewed by Jordan Teicher of Esquire for a story titled, “What Happened to All the Sports Books?” Teicher goes into detail about the relative demise of these works and charts how their presence seems to be declining even faster than beleaguered publishing writ large.
The article mentions how I backed out of a plan to do another book after Victory Machine, due to my love of money and/or consistently entertaining you good people:
The next year, Strauss and his publisher began discussing what his second book would look like. At the time, Strauss had left The Athletic to venture out on his own on Substack, a newsletter platform that helps individual writers monetize their work. “It became very clear to me there was no way I'd have enough bandwidth to do both capably,” Strauss said. “I had to choose. And the economics of Substack beat out the economics of writing a book.”
This economics aspect is true, but as I reflect, I’m still in favor of writing a sports book. Just not personally, not now at least. I also believe there’s a great future for this genre if and when the industry aligns with consumer preference. Let me explain.