Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to John William Law. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, John William thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think success comes in many forms and we have to decide how we choose to define it. As a writer, I could paper my walls in rejection letters from publishers who didn’t think my ideas would sell. My goal in writing a book is not just to complete it, but to get it into the hands of a reader. So, if your a writer that goal can be finding one other reader who’s interested in your topic. I never tried to put a monetary value on the work, but I realize that publishers have a goal to sell books to stay in business. However, for me, it’s never been about numbers, but rather to find readers interested in a topic I’m interested in. I once approached a publisher about a book on a little known film director. They declined my submission, but asked if I would write them a biography on Alfred Hitchcock. I told them there were a number of great biographies on Hitchcock and I wouldn’t improve upon them. I suggested a few ideas on other Hitchcock books on different topics and they said that wasn’t what they were interested in. I declined their offer because I didnt feel as a writer I could bring anything new to the table and would rather spend time on subjects where I feel I have something new to say.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a writer who researches and writes about film history. I’ve written books on a number of different people like Montgomery Clift, Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Alfred Hitchcock and John Wayne. I started my career in journalism, working as a newspaper reporter and editor. Researching and writing about film history for 25 years, my first book, Curse of the Silver Screen was published in 1999. My 2014 book, Who Nuked the Duke? was named the best general non-fiction title at the San Francisco Book Festival and in 2024 it was an inspiration behind the feature film documentary, “Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout”. I got the chance to talk about the story in the film. I’ve authored two books on Alfred Hitchcock – Alfred Hitchcock: The Icon Years in 2010 and The Lost Hitchcocks in 2018 and appeared in the 2012 Universal Pictures documentary Hitchcock’s Monster Movie for the Blu-Ray release of The Birds. My 2016 book, Movie Star and the Mobster was named best performing arts title in the Hollywood, New York, and London Book Festivals and his 2021 book The Longest Suicide in Hollywood – The Death of Montgomery Clift was a finalist in the International Book Awards. My current book on Bette Davis is called Wicked Becomes Her.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As a newspaper reporter you are taught to write news that puts all the facts and important elements at the beginning. That way, when editors put your story onto a news page it would fill the allotted space. Often the column space was shorter than the story, so they cut from the bottom, lopping off parts of your story. If the important parts were further down there was a chance your story would lose important facts and no longer make sense, So, you are often trained to write brief and get your points in right away, When you write books you have to teach yourself to write in depth and the detail the story. You no longer have to get all your facts up front but to tell the story as it needs to unfold. It can be hard to retrain yourself. For my book Movie Star and the Mobster, the story was told largely through court transcripts and I had to build the story to lead up to a homicide and then unravel the events that followed. If I had been writing the story as a newpaper reporter it would have been a very different approach from how I tackled the book.

The same goes for book to film efforts. It was interesting to see how a film based on the same topic as a book I wrote required a different approach. For a historic book I write about real people who are no longer living and readers use their imagination to paint the picture. For a film, the director and producer don’t have that luxury unless actual footage exists to tell that story. In the film “The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout”, the producers used animation and actor recreations to tell part of the story. In addition they interviewed subjects like myself to visually paint that story for viewers. However, I also found it interesting that they looked to make the story current by finding people still impacted by an event that happened more than 70 years ago. It was a diffent approach from writing my book “Who Nuked The Duke?”

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

As a writer, I’ve had numerous times in my life where other work helped me pay my bills. Oftentimes people don’t realize that books and other forms of writing are not always profitable. As an author you get paid in royalties and you need to sell a lot of books to make a good living. Or you need to produce a lot of books to continue earning more royalties. Having another job is often a requirement to being able to fund your ability to do something you love. If you are writing about topics that millions of others might not be interested in, you have to do it for the love of what you do and not for the monetary reward. While the reward may come – it’s not guaranteed, so I’ve found finding the reward in the work makes it even better when you find a profit from what you do. My first book, many years ago, sold a few thousand copies, but it enabled me to get started and lead to the next book – and the next book. While some books do well, others do not. Having the discipline to keep at it – while working a day job – can be hard, but that’s why I’ve found it’s easier if the subject you are writing about is one that interests you. I’ve written and ghost written books about topics I am not intereted in as well, to pay the bills, but I’ve always found it more rewarding to work on topics I’m passionate about.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.aplombpublishing.com
• Instagram: @jacklawsf