Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Sunday Nice Things： Totally Booked with Zibby

00:00:00.000 Hey all, Jo here and welcome to Sunday Nice Things. Today we're sharing my recent interview

00:00:05.240 on the Webby Award-winning daily podcast Totally Booked with Zibi. It's hosted by Zibi Owens,

00:00:11.620 the powerhouse bookstore owner and best-selling author, and this one is a lot of fun. In my

00:00:18.000 conversation with Zibi, we dive into the tradwife influencer phenomenon that you and I are so

00:00:23.840 familiar with. But I also share how motherhood, friendship breakups, modern identity, and the

00:00:30.100 glossy but unsettling world of social media shaped my novel Everyone is Lying To. I think you're

00:00:37.520 really gonna like the show. If you're sick of me, which you might be, I'm kind of sick of me at this

00:00:42.440 point, go into the Totally Booked feed and find another wonderful author to listen to. Happy

00:00:48.300 listening. Hi, this is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly,

00:00:57.140 moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling,

00:01:02.580 buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time.

00:01:08.600 As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look

00:01:14.420 at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to.

00:01:20.260 Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.

00:01:26.300 For more information, go to zibbymedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibbyowens.

00:01:34.580 Joe Piazza is the author of Everyone is Lying to You, a thriller. This is a Zibby's book club pick.

00:01:40.500 Joe Piazza is the international bestselling author of 12 books, including the Good Morning

00:01:44.220 America book club pick, We Are Not Like Them, with Christine Pride. She is also host of the

00:01:48.840 critically acclaimed Under the Influence podcast. Her work has been featured in the New York Times

00:01:53.040 and the Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She lives in Philadelphia

00:01:56.680 with her husband and three feral children. Welcome, Jo. Thanks so much for coming back 0.98

00:02:01.380 on my show, this time to talk about Everyone is Lying to You. Congratulations.

00:02:06.440 Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I always love talking to you. This was the highlight of my week.

00:02:09.900 Oh, you too. And by the way, I think this might be my one of my favorite books of yours. So good.

00:02:16.720 Could not put down. No, seriously. I mean, not only is the plot fun and all that, and I am

00:02:21.660 deep in the influencer world. So I feel like very interested in all of this stuff, but also just

00:02:27.960 all the ways you talk about marriage and the day to day life of like motherhood and just the things

00:02:34.160 that you don't necessarily talk about. I don't know. You scatter that about in such a way that

00:02:38.600 I feel immediately understood. Anyway, I really loved it. It's really great. Thank you. Thank

00:02:43.620 you. Yeah. I, uh, you know, this was so fun to write. I gotta say, and I told myself going into

00:02:49.380 this cause I wrote it really fast. I was like, you're just going to have a blast. Okay. You

00:02:53.360 were just going to, you were going to write the most bananas influencer thriller you can think of

00:02:57.280 go that's your, that that's your project. And I, I wrote it in about four months, I think.

00:03:03.020 Oh my gosh. Well, it's really, it's really good. And I think there's that sense of listening to

00:03:09.940 you talk, like you're just talking, like you're just explaining what it was like to go to mom

00:03:13.760 bomb or whatever it's called. And like, you're just explaining, you know, how embarrassed you

00:03:17.700 are to be scrolling Instagram and like spying on someone and wondering if they're spying on you.

00:03:23.160 Like this whole thing, we just, we all are doing it alone. And so the expose of it all is really

00:03:29.060 kind of funny. Okay, back up. Tell everybody what Everyone is Lying to You is about.

00:03:33.620 Yes, yes, absolutely. So I've been covering influencers for five years now on my podcast,

00:03:39.920 Under the Influence. I never thought I was going to become some kind of weird influencer expert,

00:03:43.240 but here we are. Here we are. And I became fascinated with the trad wife phenomenon,

00:03:49.520 you know, the kind of domestic goddesses whose lives always look perfect. And they've got the 1.00

00:03:54.580 gorgeous white flowing dresses and white houses and nothing is covered in dirt, even though their

00:03:59.540 kids are running barefoot through a yard filled with chickens all of the time. And a three-legged

00:04:05.180 goat and whatever. Yeah, I did include a three-legged goat. Like I said, with this book,

00:04:09.340 I was like, can you just make it crazier? And I'm like, there's a three-legged goat and there's an

00:04:14.560 AI baby at one point. Yes. You never know what you're going to get. Well, kind of like with the 0.59

00:04:19.320 world of influencers, you never know what you're going to get. It just seems to get crazier and

00:04:23.660 crazier. And I truly believe that influencers are our new celebrities. I mean, our attention is so

00:04:29.000 focused on this small screen in our hand that it is just a perfect world for a thriller. And I

00:04:35.920 wanted to pull back the curtain on this beautiful life and show what's really behind it. Like, who

00:04:41.880 is lying to you? And what do we believe about people's lives? So we have two best friends from

00:04:47.740 college. One of them has grown up to be a journalist, Lizzie. The other one, Bex, Rebecca,

00:04:53.620 has grown up to be a very beautiful, very famous, like multi-million follower, trad wife,

00:05:01.440 influencer. And she lives on this gorgeous ranch somewhere out west. We are very, it's very hazy.

00:05:07.640 They're out west somewhere. And with her husband, Gray, and her many, many...

00:05:12.320 Says someone from the East Coast.

00:05:14.060 Yes. Yes. Somewhere out west.

00:05:16.140 Well, because also it's not any one influencer.

00:05:19.640 I mean, it's kind of a combination of so many different influencers that this could be Wyoming

00:05:23.900 or Idaho or Utah.

00:05:25.180 We don't know where it is.

00:05:26.480 But Rebecca is living on this ranch with her very handsome, but, you know, we never really

00:05:33.400 see him, cowboy husband, Gray, and her many, many children, raising chickens, raising kids,

00:05:39.980 homeschooling, homesteading, all of the things that we see on our Instagram feeds all the

00:05:43.420 time.

00:05:43.600 and she writes to Lizzie and they had, they've been estranged. They haven't talked in 15 years.

00:05:48.620 They had a big falling out. She writes to Lizzie and says, Hey, I want to give you this big

00:05:52.160 interview, this big exclusive. And Lizzie writes for a women's magazine. She's kind of struggling 0.99

00:05:56.560 like a lot of people in media. And Bex invites Lizzie out to a mom influencer conference called

00:06:01.680 Mom Bomb. And the two of them reconnect. They have this great night together. And then suddenly the

00:06:07.160 next morning, Rebecca's husband ends up dead and Rebecca is missing. And Lizzie has to solve the

00:06:14.260 murder to perhaps, you know, save her best friend and her friend's kids. And also to figure out what

00:06:22.220 the hell is happening in this bananas influencer world. And I got to say, you and I were at mom 0.65

00:06:27.120 together. I was going to say that is the last time we were together in person was at mom 2.0.

00:06:33.840 And now here we are with Mom Bomb in your book.

00:06:37.460 Yes, yes.

00:06:38.260 And so we were on that panel at Mom 2.0.

00:06:40.620 And I actually, I love influencers and influencer culture. 1.00

00:06:44.220 I respect the hell out of female influencers. 1.00

00:06:47.340 They've created a multi-billion dollar business for women, by women, that is completely disrespected 1.00

00:06:52.080 by most of the world because it's by women, for women. 0.96

00:06:55.540 But there's also a lot of hilarity in it.

00:06:57.940 And there are some things that end up in the book.

00:07:00.560 Like, I literally saw or overheard and then maybe enhanced for Everyone is Lying to You.

00:07:06.740 Oh, my gosh.

00:07:07.300 Well, we might need an offline debrief of who said what and all of that.

00:07:12.520 Oh, my gosh.

00:07:13.520 So the two of them are estranged in a way that Bex had sort of abandoned this best friend, best friendship.

00:07:21.640 And those are kind of the wounds when you have such a close friend, especially in the college years.

00:07:25.660 And that is your whole life where it's hard to just get over, right?

00:07:28.700 And so not only is she in her trying to cover this for the magazine, which she feels is

00:07:36.620 like sort of on its last legs anyway, but she has to get over her past hurt, which is

00:07:41.720 so hard.

00:07:42.840 And you have a line early on where you say, I'm wounded in ways I can't possibly explain,

00:07:49.940 which I love because aren't we all like, isn't, isn't that like the most universal

00:07:54.900 line in the book, right?

00:07:56.460 So talk about how to get over all those past hurts, because in this case, it has to be both

00:08:03.380 personally and professionally and kind of all at once. Well, I don't think that we have enough

00:08:09.040 language to talk about friend breakups, to be honest. And my friends are the backbone of my

00:08:15.800 life. And I've had many friend breakups that I still think about more than I think about

00:08:21.220 the breakups, my romantic breakups. They haunt you and they wound you and they stay inside your soul

00:08:28.020 because I think most of the time, I mean, for the majority of our relationships, our friends mean

00:08:32.460 more to us than those romantic attachments. And yet we live in a culture that talks about

00:08:37.420 romantic breakups constantly. And I don't know about you, but I have been ghosted by a friend

00:08:43.940 before. And that also, I mean, it just sticks with you. It sticks in your gut in a really

00:08:49.680 particular way and so this friend that ghosted lizzie isn't just any friend she's someone that

00:08:56.240 she can watch her life on the small screen because she is an influencer now so she like sneaks peeks

00:09:02.400 at this she doesn't know how she feels about it and then all of a sudden when she reappears in

00:09:06.960 real life lizzie wants to do this for professional reasons but also to heal really and so she has

00:09:14.120 all of these confusing motives going out out west uh to mom bomb but then they also fall into a very

00:09:22.260 particular very comfortable pattern because even with old friends i think they are almost always

00:09:28.540 a soft place to land even if we've had really difficult issues with them and you and i are

00:09:33.860 recording this a little bit early but the white lotus finale just happened with the very toxic

00:09:39.820 friendship. I did not see the finale yet. Okay. No spoilers. No spoilers. But we've watched this

00:09:46.700 friendship all season and watched the ups and downs, how they love each other, how they hate

00:09:51.660 each other. And yet in a lot of ways, they fall back immediately back into their own patterns and

00:09:56.900 they are very comfortable with those patterns. So we see something really similar with Lizzie and

00:10:01.640 Bex. And by the time that Bex disappears and Lizzie finds out that she may have actually

00:10:07.160 murdered her husband, who might not be as perfect as the internet has lead us to seem.

00:10:13.360 She's very invested in both saving her friend and saving this friendship. And I think that we can

00:10:19.800 all relate. I think we've all had a friend like that, a friend that we've lost, or a friend who's

00:10:24.740 just kind of changed over time. Because the friends that we make in college, I say this all

00:10:29.640 the time. I love my friends from college so much. Most of them I would not have chosen now.

00:10:34.540 because we're very different kinds of people. And yet when I see them, they are almost like

00:10:40.460 my siblings because we came up in such a formative time together.

00:10:45.460 Even younger. I mean, I just reconnected with somebody I went to grade school with who I hadn't

00:10:49.280 seen. Like you have to like fast forward, I don't know, almost 40 years or so. And now she's like

00:10:54.400 all over the, and I just keep like looking and I'm like, oh my gosh, how can I reconcile this

00:10:58.320 person with the one who like, I totally remember like hanging out in this part of my house with

00:11:02.260 I don't know. It's just, it is crazy that we get these time warp views of people.

00:11:07.540 But well, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's almost like time folds in on itself,

00:11:11.200 right? And I had a similar thing recently. We're cleaning out my mom's house because,

00:11:14.880 you know, we're squarely in the sandwich generation. So much fun to move her closer 1.00

00:11:19.020 to us. And I found all of my pictures from grade school and middle school. And it feels like it's

00:11:25.780 yesterday. And I look at these people, I'm like, I haven't spoken to you in 40 years. I have no

00:11:29.480 idea what you're even doing now. And yet it still feels so visceral and feels like it's yesterday.

00:11:35.600 And I thought about that a lot when I was writing Lizzie and Bucks.

00:11:38.480 My gosh. Well, the clues that you give us, even early on, so I feel like I'm not spoiling things

00:11:43.120 too much, when we see like a makeup covered black eye, or we see like a text that she happens to

00:11:49.480 see and she's like, who could this possibly be from? And maybe it's from the husband, right?

00:11:53.300 we're getting little glimpses into what can be something quite sinister. And when you start

00:12:00.100 feeling that, what do you do with that information? Like at first, ignore? I don't know.

00:12:06.640 I don't know. Well, and you know, this is a question that I think comes up a lot in influencer

00:12:11.100 culture. We actually, we see people have become obsessed with influencers. There's entire Reddit

00:12:15.720 threads devoted to dissecting their actual lives to saying, oh my gosh, I actually think

00:12:22.100 that this relationship isn't going as well as they're saying it is like what is happening

00:12:27.000 beneath the surface we all like have that desire to see these things and so I really I wanted to

00:12:33.360 play with that to be like what do you what if you see something do you say something do you

00:12:38.320 do something what do you do with that information and also to play with the perfection that not just

00:12:45.900 influencers present but that we all put forward I think a lot about what I put on my own social

00:12:50.620 media feeds. And I try to, I hate the word authentic. It's like the worst word in the

00:12:55.900 world right now. And I talk about that in the book, but I try to put out real life. But at the

00:13:01.300 same time, you're not putting out the fight you had with your husband or the fact that your two

00:13:06.300 year old this morning had to be wrestled to the ground like a crocodile because she wouldn't take

00:13:11.840 off the bathing suit she slept in before she went to school, which is a thing I'm still getting over 1.00

00:13:17.120 from a half an hour ago.

00:13:19.560 On the other hand,

00:13:20.440 is it really so bad

00:13:21.180 to wear a bathing suit to school?

00:13:22.720 It is 30 degrees today.

00:13:26.740 And actually,

00:13:27.960 here's the thing.

00:13:28.500 I would have allowed it,

00:13:29.660 except the bathing suit

00:13:30.700 doesn't have diaper snaps.

00:13:32.820 So it would have been hard, 0.85

00:13:34.360 hard for diaper changers.

00:13:35.440 Otherwise, it would have been like,

00:13:36.280 you go.

00:13:37.060 You walk to school 0.99

00:13:37.660 in that bathing suit.

00:13:38.240 I honestly, Joe,

00:13:39.220 cannot believe you have diapers.

00:13:42.180 I still have diapers.

00:13:42.880 I can't believe you still have diapers.

00:13:44.320 Oh my gosh.

00:13:45.020 I know.

00:13:45.360 They're so little.

00:13:46.160 They're so little.

00:13:46.560 But yeah, you know, I think about what we present to the world on Instagram and social

00:13:50.880 media and how we see other people's lives. 0.60

00:13:52.980 And I think it's a big kind of, you know, mindfuck for moms because we think we're seeing people's

00:13:59.780 perfect lives all the time, but they're just curating it. 0.86

00:14:02.580 They're just putting a glossy filter on everything.

00:14:04.780 Well, I guess the question is like, is it entertainment?

00:14:07.740 And do you have to show, I mean, if this was a TV show, you wouldn't say, oh, this isn't

00:14:13.340 fair on, you know, three's company or like one of these shows that we used to watch growing up,

00:14:18.820 like we wouldn't expect to see, I know when the influencers are not actors and actresses,

00:14:23.740 right. It's like reality TV in a way, but it's also complete entertainment. And who says you

00:14:30.220 have to like, maybe people don't want that. Like if I were to put all the like annoying moments

00:14:35.460 with my family, like, I don't know who that, like, what is that giving the world? Why do we need to

00:14:40.260 put that out there to begin with. True. I don't know. It is entertainment, but I think the big

00:14:46.140 but here is that it doesn't always feel like it because the scroll of social media is social

00:14:53.440 media. It's also right next to pictures of your friend's new baby or their poodle. It seems like

00:15:00.080 this is often real life. And like that is kind of the fun house mirror situation of this. If we were

00:15:05.780 able to view it just as like pure media. Like we're looking at a digital magazine. We are looking

00:15:11.140 at a TV show. I think there would be a lot less mom guilt and shame involved in it, but we still

00:15:18.960 haven't evolved to look at it like that. Interesting. I feel like I kind of, I mean,

00:15:23.500 maybe because there's a lot about influencer culture in this book that when I first started

00:15:28.580 like getting on Instagram, I was shocked by, and I'm wondering if your readers are going to be

00:15:32.340 surprised by. Like I consulted a social media person really, really early on, like, I don't

00:15:36.960 know, 10, seven years ago, I don't know, something. And she's like, okay, the first thing you have to

00:15:40.780 do is you have to do a photo shoot and you have to bring like 10 different outfits and you have

00:15:45.380 to pretend that you're filming this all throughout the day. And I'm like, what? So I did this one

00:15:50.500 photo shoot. Turns out I ended up using those photos for years. In fact, sometimes I still use

00:15:53.960 them. I'm like, that was actually kind of a good idea. Yeah, of course it was. In the book, you

00:15:57.980 You know, Bex says every Thursday is her time

00:16:00.880 to have the kids put on all their beige clothes

00:16:03.820 and, like, appear in all these different scenes.

00:16:06.640 And is that real?

00:16:09.140 I mean, because that is patently not real, right?

00:16:12.000 Presenting as if it's...

00:16:13.780 I mean, I don't know.

00:16:14.340 I don't know where the line is of what you have to say is true or not.

00:16:18.340 Like, would it be better if Bex was like this?

00:16:21.500 Well, I don't know.

00:16:22.320 You know what I mean?

00:16:22.700 Like, where is the line?

00:16:25.120 There is no line.

00:16:26.460 That's the thing.

00:16:26.860 it is all a gray area. And we're all kind of grappling with that. And that's what I discovered

00:16:30.540 about influencers five years ago, too, when I first started reporting on them, that they do

00:16:35.060 hire professional photographers and videographers to shoot a ton of content in a single day. I was

00:16:40.860 fascinated by it. I tried to do it. My whole family ended up crying and screaming by hour

00:16:45.160 two, like it was done. I was that was the moment I'm like, you can't be an influencer girl,

00:16:48.720 your family will hate you. But I also still use those pictures to this day. Right? I really do.

00:16:55.280 It was a really nice photo shoot.

00:16:57.780 But I talked to a lot of the big influencers, and this is how they live their life.

00:17:02.660 It's like, okay, one day a week, two days a month, you're going to shoot all of your

00:17:06.740 reels, all of your content.

00:17:08.800 And maybe you don't have to disclose that, but there are a lot of your followers and

00:17:15.260 fans who think you're just shooting this in the moment, that this is your real life.

00:17:21.360 And I think they feel very betrayed by that.

00:17:23.280 I mean, I have interviewed a lot of the people who run like the Reddit threads, kind of trying

00:17:29.160 to dissect all of these influencer accounts. And they're obsessed with finding out what is real

00:17:33.920 and what is fake. And so I think there is so much curiosity about it. And I get that.

00:17:39.840 One of the things that I only learned at an influencing conference last year before I wrote

00:17:45.540 this book was that you can actually rent influencer spaces, influencer houses in order

00:17:52.140 to film your content you don't have to own the perfect kitchen wait you're kidding so it's like

00:17:57.080 a film like a film set and you pretend it's an airbnb that you pretend is your house i rented

00:18:01.860 one when we were in cleveland for the eclipse too because we looked around and we're like

00:18:06.020 there's all these inspirational quotes on the walls we're like oh it's an influencer rental

00:18:11.400 house you rent it by the hour oh my god so it doesn't have to be your space and it's not just

00:18:17.060 kitchens it's also like bathrooms for like get ready with me routines you'll never see a toilet

00:18:21.240 They don't have toilets in there. Whereas if I were to put a phone in my bathroom,

00:18:25.560 like the mirror would reflect a toilet at some point probably. And like bedrooms for like,

00:18:30.880 you know, wake up with me and even kids nurseries. So I decided to take that a step

00:18:35.020 further in this book. And I'm like, what if there's a whole shadow house, which is a very

00:18:40.680 fun thing. But again, like the book just kind of teeters on the edge of satire because everything

00:18:45.740 in it really is influenced by something very, very real. That's crazy. I feel like we need to

00:18:52.380 do a field trip to an influencer house or influencer ranch out West so we can feel

00:18:58.880 like we're not milking the cows or whatever. Well, I got to say, I just ordered one of those

00:19:05.100 influencer dresses. I ordered the Evie magazine milkmaid dress in order to, I'm going to wear it

00:19:10.420 to all of my book events. I'll wear it to your party. If you have a party in June at your house

00:19:13.920 and I'm going to go milk a cow in it. You are not. You sure am. I'm all in. I'm all in on this

00:19:21.020 promotion. Oh my gosh. Well, back to what you were saying for a second about the masks that

00:19:28.020 we all wear. I mean, to get through the day, we have to pretend that we're fine, right? Just to

00:19:33.500 get through drop-off or whatever. Nobody wants to necessarily air the dirty laundry,

00:19:39.020 like hear about all the innermost things until later so how do we marry staying close to people

00:19:46.260 being authentic and yet not just like constantly sort of purging like what is with the masks and

00:19:53.320 do they actually serve us well or do they do us all a disservice and we should all just throw

00:19:58.240 them out you know again it's a gray area i gotta say there is something to faking it until you make

00:20:04.680 it, right? Especially when you're a parent, because it's like, okay, I can't let my kids know

00:20:09.700 when I'm totally falling apart. So there is something to having to put on a mask. What I do

00:20:15.340 truly believe, though, is that we need to take those masks off a little bit more often with

00:20:19.720 friends and also acquaintances. I've tried to get a lot better with when someone asks me, like,

00:20:25.260 how are you doing? Being really honest about it. Being like, you know what? Not great. I just

00:20:29.540 wrestled a child to the ground and was terrified their like shoulder was going to get dislocated 1.00

00:20:35.120 from trying to get this ballerina bathing suit off of her which it was very cute she could be

00:20:39.580 like it's my ballerina and I'm like god you're so cute when you're so terrible but I do I do

00:20:46.600 think that there is something to admitting the highs and the lows and and talking about what's

00:20:52.940 working and what's not working because when we believe that everyone else's life is perfect then

00:20:58.080 our expectation gap gets really uncomfortable and we feel like we're doing something wrong

00:21:03.420 and that's not right because we are all struggling you're I mean you're so good at talking about it

00:21:07.940 you've been talking about it for so long and in your books with mom moms don't have time right

00:21:12.660 being a mom is and I keep thinking about what travel chapel round said about about being a mom

00:21:19.220 on the caller daddy podcast recently that all of her friends are in hell and it's just a very narrow

00:21:24.680 view because being a mom is terrible in literally one moment and amazing 30 seconds later. And I

00:21:34.200 think we could talk about, you know, that, that dichotomy that it's constantly changing. And I

00:21:38.700 wanted, I wanted to talk about this in, in everyone is lying to you, which is, I mean,

00:21:43.480 it's a thriller. It's so fun. You can read it if you don't have kids, but I wanted to inject some

00:21:47.860 of this motherhood stuff. Like her kid is literally under the covers in the morning and wakes her up

00:21:52.860 by biting her big toe which is something that has also happened to me i was like that is too

00:21:57.420 specific to be fiction like highly highly specific highly specific and she thinks it's their like

00:22:02.600 dying basset hound named because i've always thought that it'd be really funny to have a dog

00:22:06.860 named after like a 90s teenager like bethany or kimberly and so i didn't appreciate all the

00:22:14.340 90s references yeah and then and then a second later she's like hugging and kissing this baby's

00:22:19.960 belly because he's so cute and you just can't can't not do that or she loves her husband and

00:22:24.440 he's awesome but also he's not working and that's freaking hard yes right full disclosure my husband

00:22:30.900 got laid off last April and so we've been dealing with that switch to who is the primary parent

00:22:36.640 and what does that look like in your household which I actually think a lot of women are going 0.89

00:22:41.560 through right now as we see the rise of the woman breadwinner and you know trying to co-parent 0.99

00:22:48.000 through, you know, the world being so crazy. So I wanted to get all of that stuff in there. 0.97

00:22:52.600 But then, you know, on the next page, someone gets murdered in a really grisly way.

00:22:57.980 Well, there is a line when you talk about that, that you say about the husband's layoff, like,

00:23:04.440 we're not going to acknowledge that the power that this has all shifted. And yet it has,

00:23:09.260 right? Because there's something about like airing it and saying, like, okay, well, I do have to go

00:23:13.460 to this conference because I am supporting our family. In fact, I feel like in the book,

00:23:17.480 like money is a big through line, right? Cause, cause both girls in college were working in the 0.99

00:23:23.420 cafeteria and they, you said that, I think you said something like adding street cred to the

00:23:27.980 sorority, like to the tri-delt or something like that. In fact, so much so that Lizzie like asks

00:23:33.700 Specs when she's talking about like how she's so rich now, she's like, okay, like, what are we

00:23:37.380 talking? You know, like how, like how much are you getting paid? Like they can ask each other this.

00:23:41.600 And so like money is something that I feel like they're both wrestling with, whether struggling

00:23:47.040 or just seeing the effects of like, what can money get you?

00:23:51.000 And then actually, since it's Bex who has gotten all this money,

00:23:54.400 but is not necessarily so happy,

00:23:57.200 like it doesn't bring happiness, so to speak.

00:23:59.320 Like you can get what you've been missing

00:24:01.240 and yet it can destroy everything as well.

00:24:04.380 Yeah, exactly.

00:24:06.320 Well, no, it's not rambling at all

00:24:07.940 because I think that what we also don't talk about

00:24:10.200 when we talk about influencers,

00:24:11.800 or I don't think that we talk about this nearly enough,

00:24:14.560 is class and money generally.

00:24:17.040 And so what I have learned about influencers over the years is that it is a very, very rare thing for an influencer to be making Gonzo Bananas money.

00:24:25.480 Okay.

00:24:25.680 I mean, that is like, it's almost like comparing it to the top 1% in the country.

00:24:29.860 The majority of influencers or people aspiring to be influencers are kind of just getting by.

00:24:35.040 And then you have a group of kind of like upper middle class influencers who are doing really well and have turned this into a media business.

00:24:42.580 And then you have the Gonzo Bananas ones who are like celebrities.

00:24:46.060 but we just don't we don't talk enough about actually how they make their income what are

00:24:50.580 they actually getting paid or even amongst our friends like what do you what do you make and

00:24:54.840 how do you make your money life work there's a great sub stack out there called the purse

00:25:00.320 where they dissect people's just their savings accounts their income like what they spend

00:25:06.080 and I'm so obsessed with it because I'm just dying to know how other people live and how like how

00:25:11.920 much makes someone else's life move and work. And that's what I wanted to express with Bex and

00:25:19.580 Lizzie because also, even though they've been estranged for so long, they do fall right back

00:25:23.700 into that pattern where they're very comfortable. It's like, I'm going to ask you the uncomfortable

00:25:26.800 thing. How much money are you making? And what does that feel like? There was a book because I

00:25:30.340 had this author on my podcast and because it's early in the morning and my brain is not working,

00:25:34.600 right now I can't bring it back. But there were receipts every day of how the fictitious character

00:25:40.820 was like spending all her money. And okay. I'll think of it and I'll share it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:45.840 I want to know. I want to know because I'm fascinated by money. My friends and I actually,

00:25:50.060 in the past, this is something that's changed in the past, like two years, we're very open about

00:25:52.900 money. It's like, what are you, what is your, what is your new salary? Like how much are you

00:25:55.900 spending on this? Um, and I think that's really healthy because I don't think that money should

00:26:01.500 be a taboo topic, especially among women. Well, part of author life essentially is also becoming

00:26:08.800 sort of mini influencers, right? All authors now are required to quote, have a platform,

00:26:15.000 you know, talk about other people's books, you know, post about their own books, figure out how

00:26:18.880 to make content. It's not so easy. I feel like a lot of authors feel very intimidated by this new

00:26:23.660 demand because of course this is a different skillset than writing, which is completely

00:26:28.900 different. And yet it's now part of the job. It's fully required. I mean, I don't, I hustle

00:26:35.040 my butt off on social media to promote these books and through a sub stack and through my

00:26:39.740 own podcast. And if I didn't do it, I don't think I'd sell books, to be honest. I don't think that

00:26:45.400 there is enough tradition, except for very few rare books that are kind of anointed by the

00:26:50.980 publishing world. There is not enough marketing and publicity space out there. It's just not

00:26:56.200 going to happen unless you are shouting from the goddamn rooftops. I mean, we talked about 0.99

00:26:59.900 Sicilian Inheritance last year and it just came out in paperback. Congratulations. Thank you. And

00:27:06.100 we've sold a hundred thousand copies of that book. Oh my God. Good for you. That's amazing.

00:27:10.580 Thank you. That's amazing. We just, we just hit that number, but it is because I have been a

00:27:16.980 massive media whore hustle machine for it. And like, I just, I, I want to share that with other

00:27:22.340 writers and other authors who are like, this is so exhausting. This is really hard. And I'm like,

00:27:26.500 I know I see you and I am you and I'm doing this on a daily basis and I don't necessarily like it

00:27:31.400 either. But if I want my book in reader's hands, I know this is what I have to do. Okay. But that

00:27:36.500 is a lot of copies to sell. That is not normal. Just because you get on social media to anyone

00:27:41.460 listening, you will not sell a hundred thousand copies necessarily of your book. That is like

00:27:45.300 wildly successful. So you, and you are uniquely great at this and have a lifetime of media

00:27:51.520 connections and whatever. So I just don't want people comparing and feeling like a total failure.

00:27:54.660 No, no, no, no, no, no, no one should, no one should compare. Also, I mean, I'm totally burnt

00:27:58.020 out from it too. Uh, but I've also been like, I've been a journalist for 25 years. I, I can

00:28:04.200 play stories myself. I can get podcast guests. I know how this machine works. And still I do more

00:28:11.020 on marketing and publicity than I do actually writing my books. And I wish that I wish that

00:28:16.340 it were the opposite, but I think it is a rare, rare, small group of authors that it can be the

00:28:21.120 opposite for. Sad. Sad. Sad. But I mean, that's why what you do, I think, is so remarkable with

00:28:27.140 your books. You are a massive marketing and publicity machine for your authors. And that

00:28:32.940 means so much. And I think the traditional publishing houses do try, right? But there's

00:28:37.940 so many books. You're publishing so many books. There's only so much space. I know. If only they

00:28:43.260 weren't all so good. There's so many good books. There's so many good books. There's also so many

00:28:46.980 good books out there, right? So it's really, it's really hard to find books, which is why I love

00:28:51.380 promoting books that I love, even on my, on my platforms, just to help people find them.

00:28:56.920 Yep. Agreed. Well, I really enjoyed this book. I truly did. It's again, one of my favorites and

00:29:02.700 I've read, I think almost every book of yours. Have I read every book? I think so. I think so.

00:29:06.280 Well, and I get to see you in July. I'm coming to the bookstore. Oh, amazing. Oh, I hope. Oh yeah.

00:29:11.200 Okay. Yeah. My, my, my, my, my big LA event is with you.

00:29:14.920 Oh, yay. Oh, I'm so excited to have you. Joe, congratulations. I can't stop thinking about

00:29:20.420 this. I love these characters and I really want this to be a movie. So I'm hoping that that is

00:29:25.980 in the works. We're working on it right now. Okay, good. Good, good, good. Okay. All right.

00:29:30.260 Thank you so much, Joe. Okay. Bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby,

00:29:36.140 formerly Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

00:29:38.840 If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,

00:29:42.260 follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens,

00:29:44.740 and spread the word.

00:29:46.400 Thanks so much.

00:29:47.400 Oh, and buy the books.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - August 31, 2025

Sunday Nice Things： Totally Booked with Zibby

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