Books are my business: Journalist, author and podcast co-host Simon Akam

The 'Always Take Notes' podcast has featured more than 200 guests, from Anne Enright to Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth

Simon Akam: 'We talk to writers of all stripes, across all genres, and treat them with the same seriousness and rigour, and also to book industry people, editors, agents and so on.'

Simon Akam is a journalist, author, and co-host of Always Take Notes, a podcast for and about writers, along with Rachel Lloyd.

The podcast has featured more than 200 guests, from Anne Enright to Lee Child and Frederick Forsyth.

The accompanying book Always Take Notes: Advice From Some Of The World’s Greatest Writers is out now.

How did the podcast come about?

I launched it in 2017, along with Kassia St Clair. I had been listening to a lot of American writing podcasts, and it seemed that there was a gap in the market. 

We did it together for a year and a half, then Kassia stepped back when she published a book, and I did it with Eleanor Halls for about a year or so.

Rachel and I have been doing the podcast together for almost six years now.

We talk to writers of all stripes, across all genres, and treat them with the same seriousness and rigour, and also to book industry people, editors, agents and so on.

In a sense, it’s a selfish endeavour because these are people we’re interested in. 

I hope that we’ve created something of value, particularly for people who have writing ambitions and are not in that milieu; there is a huge archive of material there that is helpful.

Why writers?

Rachel is deputy culture editor at The Economist, so she is seeped in books, but also in film and TV and all of that. 

I’m an author and a magazine journalist by background, and I write long features for British and US publications.

So we are both practising writers, but I think what is valuable is that Rachel and I have different interests and tastes which means we cover things from differing perspectives.

What’s the secret to keeping a podcast going for so long?

Some people just do a series, say eight episodes, but I was always of the view that if we didn’t keep it going at the beginning, it would have died, so we’ve had to keep going.

We’ve never missed an episode in seven years, and it’s now a pretty smooth machine.

So there’s Rachel and I, and our producer Artemis Irvine.

Rachel and I handle all the guest booking, although that’s actually fairly self-sustaining now, because we get pitched a lot by publishers and by publicists.

We had a few lucky breaks with guests early on, but we’ve just kept plugging away. The calibre of guests that we get now is astonishing.

Any particular highlights?

It’s difficult to say, because we have done a lot.

I have had the opportunity to speak to writers that I have idolised from when I was a teenager — including William Boyd and Anthony Beevor.

You just learn a huge amount from these conversations, particularly from the industry professionals.

In terms of a wish list, is there anyone that you would like to get?

We have perennial white whales. It’s a lingering regret that we never got John le Carré before he died.

We’d also like to get Sally Rooney — we’ve tried.

What do you like most about what you do?

A lot of my work as a magazine journalist is very solitary, and I really like doing something as part of a team. 

Also, perhaps this is slightly high-minded, but there is an element of public service to this. Writing is often a closed world and voices from some communities don’t get through.

We have a kind of hypothetical listener who loves books, but knows no-one in the industry and nothing about how it works.

This is something that you can access and there’s a wealth of knowledge there.

What do you like least about it?

I always feel with a podcast, there’s two things: The individual episodes, and to keep it going out. We always try and have five episodes in the can, so that we never have to scramble.

It has been a side hustle and now we really want to turn it into more of a business, so we have looked into sponsorship, crowdfunding, partners, that kind of thing.

Three desert island books

One would be Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov, which I read years ago and it left me in absolute, sheer awe.

Another would be Possession by AS Byatt, for its intellectual heft and wit, and the way it is all pulled together. 

The third one would be Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, which was a book that I really loved as a teenager.

With all of these books I do have a terrible fear of going back to them, that it won’t the same.

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