The Difficulty: Creativity, Meaning & the Hard Work of a Life

Dr. Chad Prevost
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  • Self-Improvement
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The Difficulty is a podcast about creativity, meaning, and the hard choices that shape a life. Each week, writer and publisher Chad Prevost works through the questions underneath the creative process and the examined life—how we make work that matters, sit with life's difficulties instead of rushing past them, and keep going. Expect arguments, reflections, and the occasional witness to something worth seeing. Slower, more contemplative episodes land on Saturdays. It's also the voice of Crossroads Publishing Group, a press built on a single idea: books are occasions for community. If you're a creative, a thinker, a maker, or anyone navigating the difficulty of doing meaningful work—pull up a chair. chadprevost.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    What If a Whole City Read the Same Book The Same Month?

    Hello, friends. This one is an announcement, and I’ve been sitting on it for a good part of 2026. When I started reaching out to people around town who I knew had a book in them even if they weren’t an author, David Littlejohn’s first answer was, more or less, “nobody’s got time to write a book or read a book.” For most busy professionals, he wasn’t wrong. So over a few coffees we started asking a different question: What would busy people read (or write)? What if a book were as short as 10,000 words, hardbound, readable in an hour, and good enough that you’d hand it to a friend? And what if it came from someone here, someone whose idea actually changed this city? That’s Local Genius Books. There are nine titles a year, one a month starting in March 2027. Each one is built around a phrase a remarkable Chattanoogan has lived by. They’re sold through local shops rather than Amazon, and each month starts with a conversation with the author. David’s picture is a citywide book club: you run into someone downtown and ask, “Have you read it?” In this episode we talk about where the idea came from, what we mean by “genius” (it’s closer to the Greek daemon than to an IQ score), the first five people we’re working with, and the nominations coming in, which honestly have us a little overwhelmed in the best way. Two ways in: nominate someone, or pre-order at localgeniusbooks.com. Pre-orders run through December 31. * David Littlejohn is co-founder of Local Genius Books and owner of Humanaut, a Chattanooga video production and ad agency. His own Local Genius concept is Follow Your Fun. * Chad Prevost is co-founder of Local Genius Books and owner of Narrows Press, a Chattanooga-based publisher releasing books in three nonfiction lanes. * Local Genius Books: localgeniusbooks.com. Nominations are on the wall at localgeniusbooks.com/nominations. Instagram: @localgeniusbooks (tag them as a collaborator on a nomination post). * Pre-orders: 1, 3, 6, or all 9 books, through December 31. Books ship by mail monthly from March 2027. Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Show page: narrowspress.com/the-difficulty. The Difficulty is produced by Narrows Press, a Chattanooga press for nonfiction with a message. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    What If a Whole City Read the Same Book The Same Month?

  2. Oct 12

    Stop Chasing and Start Building with Justin Jones-Fosu

    At 33, Justin Jones-Fosu pulled his car over to the side of the road and wept about a father who was never around. For years he’d lived by a rule that sounds a lot like fairness: if I didn’t cause it, I shouldn’t have to carry it. This conversation is about what he did next. Justin runs a firm called Work Meaningful, and his new book is Stop Chasing, Start Creating. It’s a fable. The tortoise and the hare, retold inside a modern company, with a tortoise named Tano who keeps a notebook called Almost Said for everything he swallowed in meetings. I’d argue the notebook alone is worth the price. We talk about: * why he put the truest story of his life inside a tortoise instead of a memoir * what it looks like to step off a race you’re winning * the difference between working for impact and working for applause * how you tell quitting from being finished * whether meaning is found or made And you gotta hear the part about the research he did leading up to the publication of this book, and how he convinced his publisher to push it to the top of the list. One more thing: we’re reading A lot of the people who listen to this show have a book they’ve been carrying around. Maybe it’s finished and sitting in a drawer. Maybe it’s half a manuscript and a pile of notes. So we’re opening a door. From October 13 through December 15, Crossroads is holding the Soundings Reading Period. We’re reading books of the inner life, from any tradition or none. If your manuscript is finished, send the whole thing. If it isn’t, send a simple proposal: a one-page overview, an outline, a sample chapter or two. It costs $25, and I’ll tell you what that buys. I read it myself, and within 21 days you get a one-page letter from me that says where your book stands: Ready, Nearly, or Not Yet. If I’m late, you get your $25 back. It’s not a deposit on anything, and nobody’s going to call you afterward to sell you something. It’s all on one page: crossroadspublishing.group/submit. And if it’s not you, I’d guess you know the person it is. The book: Stop Chasing, Start Creating by Justin Jones-Fosu, wherever books are sold or just click the link. Don’t forget to leave him a review! Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More at crossroadspublishing.group and chadprevost.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Stop Chasing and Start Building with Justin Jones-Fosu

  3. Oct 7

    What If No One Comes

    There has never been an easier time to publish a book, so why are more people than ever afraid to write theirs? Are the two things related? Two fears keep a good book unpublished: that it’s hard, and that you’ll put it out there and no one will come. Chad takes both apart, with a reality check on what the traditional path actually costs in years, what’s changed, why promotion is the part everyone fears and how it builds on itself (one relationship, one event, one printing of 500 at a time), the honest case for the “calling card” book, and James Hollis’s three-word cure. And announcing the Soundings Reading Period, October 13 to December 15, 2026. Nonfiction of the inner life, any tradition. $25, and a one-page letter from the publisher within 21 days: Ready, Nearly, or Not Yet. Late, and the $25 comes back. crossroadspublishing.group/submit Mentioned: James Nestor, Breath; David Whyte; James Hollis; IF/THEN Books. Next episode: Justin Jones-Fosu on Stop Chasing, Start Creating. Timestamps: 0:00 Why publishing feels scary · 3:30 The traditional path, honestly · 7:30 It’s all available now · 10:30 The real fear is the marketing · 12:30 What I learned doing it myself · 16:30 Promotion builds its own momentum · 20:30 The calling-card book · 27:30 The new challenge is visibility · 31:30 The Soundings Reading Period · 35:30 Next time Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More at chadprevost.com. Everything’s on one page: crossroadspublishing.group/submit. If you know someone with a book they’ve resigned themselves to never putting out there, send them that. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    What If No One Comes

  4. Sep 14

    Four Million Books Published Last Year: What It Actually Costs to Publish One

    Last year 4.2 million books were published in the United States with an ISBN. Three and a half million of them were self-published. Traditional publishers put out 642,000. So for every book that came through the old machine, more than five came through the side door, and this year almost a third of new titles on Amazon’s platform arrive with a disclosure that a machine wrote some of it. I’m not here to tell you the sky is falling. I run a press and I’m betting my working life on people wanting books. But if you’re sitting on a manuscript and wondering what it costs to put it into the world, you’re asking in a year when the shelf got very crowded very fast. So this episode is the arithmetic, line by line: editing, cover, typesetting, audio, ISBNs, the roughly eighteen thousand dollars you can spend before anyone knows your book exists. And then the question underneath the numbers, which is what you’re actually buying when you work with a publisher, and whether you need one at all. The difficulty in life is the choice. In this episode: * Why 4.2 million ISBNs in a year is not the end of the world, and what it does change * The printer-and-ink problem: what “free to publish” leaves out * The three-year Amazon picture: catalog, sellers, and revenue growing at very different speeds * The line-by-line cost of a sixty-thousand-word nonfiction book, from developmental edit to ISBNs * Why print-on-demand hardcovers cost a self-publisher more than they cost a big house, and what to do about it * Audio: what it takes to record, edit, and upload your own audiobook, and why Crossroads is baking it in for the founding cohort * What a publisher is actually selling: representation, selection, and a partner in the room * The nonprofit-press volume play, the vanity-press TV commercial, and the difference between a book and a zine * Three questions before you decide: do you already have readers, could you hire every service separately, and do you want to run the account yourself * Why I’m in this at all If you’re an author with a fine nonfiction book and you’re wondering where to take it, send a submission inquiry through the press site and let’s have a conversation about whether this is a fit, for you and for us. Deciding against it is a real answer, and I’d rather you decide clearly than sign up for something you didn’t want. If you know a writer who’s sitting on a manuscript and doing this arithmetic right now, forward them this episode. That helps more than anything I can do on my own. Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. Show page: crossroadspublishing.group/the-difficulty. More at chadprevost.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Four Million Books Published Last Year: What It Actually Costs to Publish One

  5. Sep 7

    Ready, Nearly, Not Yet

    Last week I mentioned an agent who read 6,152 queries and signed two writers. This week I want to talk about the other 6,150. Every one of them got a letter—or possibly just a long and unreturned response—but one way or another the message said some version of: thank you, but this isn’t the right fit for our list. That sentence contains no information. It doesn’t tell you whether your book was almost there or nowhere close, whether to revise for a year or send it out again Tuesday. I read every manuscript that comes to my press myself, and everyone who sends pages gets one of three answers in writing, with the reasons. Ready. Nearly. Not yet. This episode is what those three words actually mean, why nobody upstream in the industry is checking readiness at all, and then the question I get at dinner parties: can’t I just edit my own book? The honest answer has a wall in it that has nothing to do with how good a writer you are. Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More also at chadprevost.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Ready, Nearly, Not Yet

  6. Sep 4

    Nobody Knows Anything, Except Maybe Your Editor

    In 1983 the screenwriter William Goldman wrote three words that people in Hollywood have been quoting ever since. Nobody knows anything. About twenty years later a psychologist spent two decades testing whether that's true about everything, collecting somewhere near twenty-eight thousand predictions from the experts we put on television. It did not go well for the experts. There's a second finding buried in that study that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Crossroads Publishing Group is my press. If you're sitting on a manuscript, a proposal, or an idea you can't shake loose, take a look at crossroadspublishing.group. And if you decide it isn't for you, that's a real answer and a good one. The difficulty in life is the choice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Nobody Knows Anything, Except Maybe Your Editor

  7. Sep 1

    Random House Told You the Truth

    In the summer of 2022 the federal government sued to stop the biggest publisher in the world from buying the fourth biggest, and for two weeks the people who run American publishing had to explain their business under oath. Asked how publishing decides what succeeds, the CEO of Penguin Random House said this: “Everything is random in publishing. Success is random. Bestsellers are random. So that is why we are the Random House.” That isn’t a critic. It isn’t a bitter writer with a drawer full of rejections. That’s the man running the largest publishing company on earth, telling you the system doesn’t know. This is the first of a series of weeks on what’s actually happening in publishing right now, and what I think a publisher is for. Today: the real numbers, including the viral one that’s false. Why an indie musician gets romance and an indie author still gets an asterisk. And what the word hybrid actually means, which turns out to be a story about Mendel’s peas. Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More at chadprevost.com. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Random House Told You the Truth

  8. Aug 28

    Nobody Is Watching You That Closely, Especially Not Your Successes

    Forty-six and twenty-three. Then forty-eight and eight. Those four numbers come from an experiment where college students had to wear a Barry Manilow t-shirt into a room full of strangers, and I think the second pair might be the most freeing finding in social psychology. Especially if you have something finished sitting on your desk that you haven't published yet. Crossroads Publishing Group is my press. If you’re sitting on a manuscript, a proposal, or an idea you can’t shake loose, take a look at crossroadspublishing.group. And if you decide it isn’t for you, that’s a real answer and a good one. The difficulty in life is the choice. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com

    Nobody Is Watching You That Closely, Especially Not Your Successes
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The Difficulty is a podcast about creativity, meaning, and the hard choices that shape a life. Each week, writer and publisher Chad Prevost works through the questions underneath the creative process and the examined life—how we make work that matters, sit with life's difficulties instead of rushing past them, and keep going. Expect arguments, reflections, and the occasional witness to something worth seeing. Slower, more contemplative episodes land on Saturdays. It's also the voice of Crossroads Publishing Group, a press built on a single idea: books are occasions for community. If you're a creative, a thinker, a maker, or anyone navigating the difficulty of doing meaningful work—pull up a chair. chadprevost.substack.com

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