Wait But Why - What’s Our Problem? in PRINT!

Hey readers,

While I work my way through the new book, exciting update about the old book!

In 2023, I published What’s Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. The book was my take on what was going on in many of our societies—my answer to the question: “Why do our countries seem to be getting more childish, politically and socially, with every passing year?” The book begins by introducing an original framework to help clarify our thinking and improve our conversations, and then we use that framework to take an up-close look at the past 50 years of American politics, media, and culture.

Since then, three things have happened:

First, people really liked the book. I’ve heard from hundreds of people that the book changed the way they think and communicate. The book also made the rounds in Silicon Valley, and a number of CEOs have told me the book has influenced their decision-making (a few have even made it required reading at their company). After spending so long on the book, this was all very gratifying.

Second, the problems I talked about in the book have persisted, many of which were on bright display during America’s hideous election season. I sense that large portions of the US, as well as Europe, are currently in a reflective mood, trying to figure out how we got here and how we can get to somewhere better. This is all to say that the book seems even more relevant now than when it was released.

Third, literally 1,000+ people have emailed me, commented on X, or asked me in person about whether there will be a print version of the book.

Quick no-background: The original plan was for the book to be published by a traditional big publishing house, but after some conversations in the heat of the cancel-culture madness of 2020/2021, it was clear that in order to go that route, I would have to compromise on some of the points I wanted to make in the book. Since one of the major points in the book was “it’s really bad that so many people are being forced to self-censor right now,” it felt pretty important to not be one of the people self-censoring. So we self-published. The problem here is that without the relationships big publishing houses have with printers, printing the book was going to take forever, and it would also end up at a crazy high price point, which felt icky. We ultimately decided to just publish it as an ebook and audiobook.

But when we revisited the question this year and considered points 1, 2, and 3 above, we decided to pull the trigger on printing. It’s available today.

The book is really nice. We went the full distance, with super nice paper, which makes the full-color drawings look amazing. The hardcover is 596 pages long, which includes 100 pages of endnotes. The paperback is 496, with the endnotes accessible online using a QR code (the book isn’t as long as these page counts make it sound, because there are around 300 drawings.)

Where to buy the book

Printing a thick, full-color book is already expensive and, frustratingly, self-publishing makes it even more expensive. On Amazon, the hardcover and paperback are $55.99 and $37.99, respectively (click the drop-down below the higher listed price for these prices (Amazon is annoying)).

To make the price more reasonable, for a limited time US buyers can purchase the book directly from our distributor here:

​Hardcover: $35 | Paperback: $25 (Shipping time excludes two weeks of processing time)

Unfortunately, our distributor doesn’t ship internationally, so the only current options for international buyers are at higher prices on Amazon. We have plans to do a bulk print run (this first round is print-on-demand), which should lower Amazon prices (and improve shipping speeds), down the road.

And for anyone who prefers ebook, audiobook, or to read the book on Wait But Why, see here for all other options. (For anyone who buys any version of the book, we’d really appreciate it if you’d leave a review on Amazon!)

– Tim

P.S. The next book is being published by Random House and everything will be easier and more normal.