Sustainable Media Center Substack

Book publishing, it turns out, is a lot like democracy.

Everyone tells you the system works. Everyone insists there are processes, protections, checks and balances. And then one day you wake up and realize most of it runs on hope, relationships, momentum, and panic.

This was my pub week.

After years writing The Future of Truth: How AI Reshapes Reality, after hundreds of interviews, late nights, rewrites, transcripts, TED conversations, research rabbit holes, and existential spirals about whether truth itself is becoming infrastructure instead of fact, the book finally came out into the world.

The public-facing version of the week looked glamorous. There were LinkedIn Lives with journalists and communications leaders. Upcoming conversations at the The New York Public Library with Marty Baron. A book event with Richard Stengel at the National Arts Club. Conversations connected to The Sway Effect and the changing future of earned media. There were salons overlooking Bryant Park, media calls, Zooms, text chains, outreach, dinners, panels, and press strategy conversations that somehow blended optimism, desperation, and caffeine into a single emotional state.

From the outside, it probably looked exciting. From the inside, it felt like running a startup during a power outage.