Paul Jarvis

Meet Paul Jarvis, a designer and writer of the book Company of One. He's also the guy behind Sunday Dispatches and Fathom and has grown his email list to 40,000+ subscribers. 

Q: When did you first start writing? And why?

A: I've always toyed with writing. In grade school I (self) published a series about books about my pet hamster who had adventures. I've blogged on and off since the mid-90s. It wasn't until about five or six years ago that I started taking my writing seriously. And by "seriously", I just mean that I was writing with the intent to make money from it.

My first book, a vegan cookbook, grew out of an early following I had on Instagram where I posted photos of meals I made. When enough folks asked me when the book was coming out, I stopped answering: "What book?!" and just wrote one instead. I like to think I write books out of laziness, because I didn't want to keep writing super-long emails with recipes in them to individual people. Instead, I put them all into a book and let folks buy it (or not buy it).

The Sunday Dispatches is definitely my longest running bit of writing though. I named it purposefully to contain a day of the week so I could force myself to publish regularly.

Q: You're a designer by trade, but you also identify as a writer. Did you ever struggle to feel like a "writer writer"? If so, how'd you get over it?

A: I struggle with that still, definitely. I didn't go to school for writing—I actually didn't go to school for anything—I dropped out of university pretty quickly. I also don't even think I'm that good of a writer technically.

The only reason I call myself a writer, when pressed, is because that's how I make my living now: writing pays the bills more than design does at this point. In a perfectly labelled world, I'd still say that I'm a designer who writes.

Q: Follow up: Do you ever hire help with your writing to ensure it's top-notch?

A: 100% I do this. In fact, I need to do this. As I mentioned, I suck at the technical part of writing.  I routinely hire a copyeditor to edit every single piece of writing that leaves my computer for the world. They make sure every single sentence is perfectly formed and that I didn't miss any important words. And that I put commas in the right place (damn you commas!)

For bigger pieces, like books or courses, I also hire an editor to basically question everything and ensure the logic is sound. Then, after that's done, I get my copyeditor to go through things with a fine-toothed comb or some sort of stylish hairbrush.

I've always felt that critique and feedback is what forces anyone to grow in skill and understanding. My editors and copy editors make me a better writer. They point out my writing's shortcomings privately, so the public doesn't point them out, well, publicly.

Q: What's one piece of advice you have for writers who don't think of themselves as writers first?

A: If you want to be a writer, just write. That's the only prerequisite. A lot of people think they want to write a book but have no intention of sitting down every day to chip away at it. Instead, if you want to write, you just have to put words onto a page or screen with some consistency. Luckily there are no credentials required to be a writer.

Q: Okay, so tell us about your new book. What's it about?

A: Company of One's main idea is that bigger in business doesn't always mean better. The thesis is really just to question whether or not your business needs things like exponential increases in acquisitions, customers and revenue to succeed. Maybe growth isn't the only bi-product of success.

It's published by Houghton MifflinHarcourt, and was released January 15, 2019. It's also my first traditionally published book, yay!

Q: Last question: Your approach to getting a book deal was kind of unique--tell us a bit about that.

A: My first thought was, "How the heck does traditional publishing work...and what would happen if I wanted to traditionally publish a book?"

I had already published four books, but they had all been self-published and I had figured that out as I went. Then I asked my mailing list if anyone knew any agents—because I had heard from author friends that getting a good literary agent was as important as getting a publisher. A lot of folks offered to make intros to ones they knew, which I took them up on.

From there I talked to several agents and ended up picking the one that I felt understood my idea the best. She is awesome, and a few publishers were interested in the book proposal we wrote together. Again, I ended up choosing the publisher who I felt "got" my idea the best. That said, if no agents, no publishers, no one was interested in the book idea—I would have self-published it instead.