Books are selling better than ever. So why are publishers so scared? — When Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was outed as Robert Galbraith, the pseudonymous author of the crime novel The Cuckoo’s Calling, my first thought was of the novel I just published, Part of Your World by Gabrielle Chavela, also a pseudonym. …

On growing up with a serial entrepreneur — My father, Morgan Johnson, has all the elements of the wildly successful entrepreneur: a concoction of exuberance, irreverence, cockiness, and brilliance. All his life he’s angered and annoyed people with his eccentric, impulsive behavior, yet kept them hooked by his talent, and even more so, by his brazen optimism. He…

You probably shouldn’t, but if you must… — Write an outline, then stick it away where you can’t see it. The only helpful thing about an outline is the act of writing it, because it gets you to set down—and set aside—all of your bad ideas. The good ones are mostly subconscious at this stage. Once you’ve ceremonially…

The actress Hedy Lamarr was once widely considered the most beautiful girl in the world — did she also invent wifi and cell phones? — I first heard the story of Hedy Lamarr at a microwave electronics convention in Anaheim, tagging along after my inventor father. Microwave technologists are some hardcore geeks, guys so smart they can barely comb their hair and button their shirts. If they could, they would live in Matrix pods and…

Social media survival skills for the disinclined — I got into publishing because I was tired of the way I was being published. I didn’t think the people running the show knew what they were doing anymore. Neither did I, but in a situation where no one has a clue, I would rather bet on myself. …

It’s time to do away with a lazy concept that does more harm than good — Imagine waking up tomorrow to find that your world has been divided into two camps, those who are “loving” and those who are not. This ability to love is a quality many admire, and few understand. Some say it can be learned, although most of those identified as “loving” don’t…

This is the story of my Chanel suit, and how it has changed my life (so far) — I bought the suit secondhand, at a little shop near the Los Angeles Farmers Market, for $125. It had the classic cardigan jacket, in a red-cream-and-blue bouclé, with braid trim and patch pockets. I was the suit’s third owner, the shopkeeper told me. The Beverly Hills woman who had owned…

I don’t know what to make of Arnold’s return to action movies, but he’s a figure I have thought about a lot over the years. I wrote this piece in 2003, on the eve of the gubernatorial recall election that put Arnold in office. At the time, I was the…

I wrote this piece for Worth Magazine in 1997, when the big question on tech journalists’ mind was: How will anyone ever make money off of the Internet? What is interesting here is that the now-defunct startup he was helming, Tribal Voice, was in effect a social network before its…