INTERVIEW | Make Money Building an Audience and Surviving the Attention Economy with Jo Piazza

Jo Piazza, bestselling author and podcast creator, reveals how she built a sustainable career in the fractured attention economy by embracing constant reinvention—starting as a gossip columnist, pivoting to fiction, and leveraging platforms like Substack and podcasts to build her audience. She argues that the traditional path to publishing is dead, replaced by a new reality where writers must self-publish, build platforms, and monetize directly. Her advice? Stop scrolling, start writing, and treat your creative work like a business. Despite the flood of AI-generated content, she believes quality still wins—but only if creators are relentless in building trust and visibility. Her latest novel, The Parisian Heist, is a feminist art heist thriller that doubles as a masterclass in storytelling and audience-building. Piazza’s journey underscores a radical truth: success now isn’t about waiting for permission—it’s about showing up consistently, owning your IP, and treating every platform as a launchpad. She’s bullish on self-publishing not as a fallback, but as a strategic advantage, especially when paired with a loyal audience. And while film adaptations remain a lottery, she’s not waiting—she’s already writing the next book, pitching new series, and building her brand one post, one episode, one pre-order at a time.