Siri Carpenter on Why She Self-Published First — and How It Led to a Traditional Book Deal

**Siri Carpenter** (0:00)
So sure, you have to be able to, you know, write grammatical sentences and make smooth transitions. But a huge core part underlying all of it is being able to imagine what it's like to be your reader. What does that person care about? What do they not care about? What do they know and not know and need to know? Being able to think about those things makes you a better writer because you're an advocate for your reader and understanding where they're coming from.

**Sarah Russo** (0:29)
Welcome to The Publishing Playbook, the podcast that goes behind the scenes of the book publishing world. Our goal is to help you understand publishing better, collaborate with the team behind your book and find your readers. I'm your host, Sarah Russo, the founder and CEO of Page One Media and Page One Education.
In this episode, I sit down with science writer, Siri Carpenter.
Siri is the executive director of The Open Notebook, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2010 to help science journalists learn from one another. We discuss Siri's path to self-publishing her first book, The Craft of Science Writing, and how she landed a deal with the University of Chicago Press for a second expanded edition. Siri also tells us about her latest project, The Best Science Stories and How They Work, which pairs fascinating articles with detailed annotations and features journalists like Mary Roach and Ed Yong. We also dig into course adoption, book design and why empathy for your reader is a non-negotiable writing skill. Siri, you've worn so many hats during the course of your career. You're a science writer, you're an editor, you're an educator, you are also the executive director of The Open Notebook. Will you tell me a little bit about all of these various roles and how they've led you to where you are now?

**Siri Carpenter** (1:53)
I started out in science. I was getting my PhD in social psychology when I realized that science writing was a job, and that I wanted that job.
For a long time in my career, I was mostly freelance. I was writing for a variety of magazines and newspapers and websites, and learning on the job. I started having in my sites the idea of turning this little labor of love side project, The Open Notebook, into something bigger and something that could eventually be my job.

**Sarah Russo** (2:28)
Can you tell us a little bit about The Open Notebook and the impetus for founding it and why it's so important, not only to you, but to science journalism and journalism more broadly?

**Siri Carpenter** (2:39)
As I was moving along in my freelance career, sometimes I just kind of felt, one, I felt lonely. I just didn't feel like I had a real community of people around me who were doing what I did and who I could compare notes with and troubleshoot with and so on. But I got to be friends with a woman named Jeannie Erdman, who is a health and medical journalist based in Missouri.
A lot of times we found ourselves talking about stories that we had just read that we liked.
And we'd say, I wonder how that person got that idea for that story, or I wonder how they began to report it. And somewhere along the way, we had the idea of just kind of for our own edification to interview a bunch of science writers about specific stories that we had read and liked and admired. And then we were like, you know, these are really interesting. Maybe some other people would think they're interesting too. Maybe we should put them up on the Internet somewhere. But it was just really a little side project for us. And that's something that we ever intended to grow into a major non-profit organization.

**Sarah Russo** (3:49)
What it is today. When was this? What year was this?

**Siri Carpenter** (3:53)
That was 2010 We just celebrated our 15th anniversary.

**Sarah Russo** (3:57)
We first met when you were preparing to self-publish The Craft of Science Writing. I have it here for folks to see. This is the original one. There's now a second edition. I want to talk a little bit about that process. I had big reservations for you and self-publishing at the time. And ultimately it all worked out brilliantly in the end.
Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about why you chose to self-publish? Why was that the route you took?

**Siri Carpenter** (4:28)
Well, it was really the route that I took because I didn't see any other route. I wanted that book to exist, but these articles had already been published and were freely available at the Open Notebook. And so I wasn't able to interest an agent in even trying to sell a book like that to a traditional publisher. I think the major concern was that if these things are already freely available and published, why would anyone buy that book? And I remember kind of thinking, well, I'll just self-publish it. And that word just was incredibly naive, as I learned. I'm kind of glad that I didn't understand how much work it is to publish a book to professional standards, to self-publish a book to professional standards, and that at least half that work comes after the book itself is actually done.