Reach out to people who publish

If someone’s writing connects with you, you should reach out to them! A person that cares enough about a topic to write a blog post, article, or book on a topic wants to talk with other people about that idea.

Two months ago I did something I’ve never done before: I sent an email to an author of a book. I had recently finished Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education, and while the book made many compelling points there were also areas where my decade-plus working in K12 education gave me a different perspective. On a whim I decided to send Bryan an email with a write-up of my thoughts and to my great surprise he responded:

This felt amazing! While Bryan isn’t a celebrity, he’s written several popular books and is well-known and well-regarded in the online communities I frequent. I figured that I’d get a perfunctory response or none at all; instead, we had a nice dialog and Bryan eventually ran my write-up as a guest post on his substack. It was a great experience.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised when Bryan responded positively - I love receiving emails about something I’ve written. If I spend a few hours working on a blog post it’s because I want to engage with other people around these ideas. Hearing people’s responses helps me sharpen my thinking and my writing as well as introducing me to new ideas, people, and perspectives. As Henrik Karlsson wrote, “a blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.” A published book is that times a thousand.

So if something you read evokes a reaction - praise, critique, corollary, correction - I’d encourage you to reach out and share your thoughts with the person who published it. You might not hear back, but there’s a chance that it blossoms into a rewarding experience for both of you. And should you ever need it, my email is right down below 😉.