Most podcasting books teach you about microphones, hosting platforms, and how to get listed in directories. Out on the Wire teaches you the much harder thing: how to build a story people refuse to stop listening to. That is a far better use of twenty dollars.
Jessica Abel spent about a year sitting in the rooms where This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, The Moth Radio Hour, Radio Diaries, and 99% Invisible get made, then drew the whole thing as a comic with a foreword by Ira Glass. I pulled the publisher's specs, the professional reviews, and several hundred reader ratings before writing this, so the numbers below are real instead of guessed.
Quick answer: if you make audio, video, or written narrative for a living, this is one of the highest-value craft books you can buy right now. If you were expecting a prose manual with templates and checklists, the comic format will irritate you. Here is exactly what you are getting.
What this review covers
- Out on the Wire at a glance
- Quick verdict: should you buy it?
- What is actually inside the book
- The good stuff
- Where it falls short
- Price, formats, and what else that money could buy
- Why this book earns its shelf space
- Out on the Wire vs other storytelling books
- Final verdict
- Questions people ask before buying
Out on the Wire at a glance
Everything below is confirmed on the publisher's product page and cross-checked against retailer listings and review archives. Read this table first, then decide whether the rest of the review is worth your time.
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| Detail | What you should know |
|---|---|
| Full title | Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio |
| Author | Jessica Abel, cartoonist and teacher, with a foreword by Ira Glass |
| Publisher | Broadway Books, an imprint of Crown / Penguin Random House |
| Released | August 25, 2015, and still in print a decade later |
| Length | 240 pages, trimmed 7-1/8 x 9-1/8 inches |
| Format | Graphic nonfiction, meaning the whole book is drawn as comics. Paperback and Kindle. |
| Typical price | $20 print list price, with the Kindle edition listed around $7.99 and used paperbacks from roughly $2 |
| Shows covered | This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, The Moth Radio Hour, Radio Diaries, 99% Invisible |
| Reader ratings | 4.5 out of 5 from 445 Amazon ratings, and 4.22 out of 5 from 1,572 Goodreads ratings |
| Press recognition | Starred reviews from both Kirkus and Library Journal, and named a best book of 2015 by each |
| Best for | Podcasters, audio producers, documentary makers, video storytellers, and anyone who teaches narrative |
| Skip it if | You want a plain-text playbook with scripts, gear lists, or launch checklists |
Quick verdict: should you buy it?
Yes, if you make stories for a living. This is not a book about podcasting as a business. It is a book about the craft decisions that separate an episode people finish from one they abandon at minute four.
What makes it unusual is the access. Abel did not interview these producers for thirty minutes over Zoom. She sat in on real story meetings, watched Snap Judgment tear a piece apart in front of eight people, and followed Planet Money reporters cramming into a tiny office to run an edit.
The comics format is the thing people argue about, and it is worth taking seriously before you spend money. Some Amazon reviewers admit they would have skipped the purchase if they had known it was drawn. Others say the pictures are exactly why the ideas stuck.
Here is the honest read: the art is not decoration. Abel uses panels to show an abstract idea, like story structure or an unanswered question creating suspense, as something you can literally look at. Readers who resisted the format at first often say they changed their mind within a chapter.
Test it free before you spend anything
You do not have to gamble on whether the format works for you. Abel published a full chapter called "Keep or Kill: Story Structure" free on Literary Hub, and a separate free excerpt on framing big-idea stories ran in Nieman Reports.
There is also a companion Out on the Wire podcast where she walks through the same material episode by episode and hands listeners a small project each week. If you like the free chapter and the show, the book is a safe buy.
If you read the free chapter and feel nothing, you have your answer for about zero dollars. That is a much better test than any review, including this one.
Who should buy it today
Buy it now if you already publish audio or video and your retention numbers feel flat. The book explains why a six-minute segment can eat four full days of an editor's time, which reframes what "done" should mean for you.
Buy it if you teach. Abel built her own comics textbooks for classrooms, and several reviewers specifically mention using this one in storytelling and journalism courses.
Wait if you have not launched anything yet and are still choosing a microphone. Solve the shipping problem first, then come back to craft. A book like Podcast Launch will get you out of the gate faster, and Out on the Wire will still be waiting when you are ready to get good.
Skip it entirely if you only want distribution tactics, sponsorships, or gear. There is almost none of that here, and pretending otherwise would be unfair to you.
Get started with Out on the WireAt under the cost of one hour of a freelance editor, this is one of the cheapest skill upgrades available in audio. The next section breaks down exactly what those 240 pages contain, chapter by chapter, so you know precisely what you are paying for.
What you actually get inside the book
Abel does not give you a checklist of gear to buy or a guide to setting up an RSS feed. You get a front-row seat to the actual edit meetings of shows like This American Life, Radiolab, and Snap Judgment.
She literally draws the moment Ira Glass gets furious over a bad edit, which makes the abstract concept of story structure feel incredibly real. You also get a specific formula that the top producers use to pitch ideas, often boiling down to "I'm doing a story about X, and what's interesting about it is Y."
You do not have to gamble twenty bucks to see if the comic format works for your brain. Abel published a full chapter called "Keep or Kill" for free on Literary Hub.
You can read it right now and decide if her style clicks with you before you ever open your wallet. There is also a free companion podcast where she breaks these exact concepts down with audio examples.
The good stuff that makes it worth the money
The biggest payoff here is understanding how much time goes into a "short" segment. Abel shows how a six-minute story can eat four full days of an editor's life just removing the "ums" and breaths.
That realization alone changes how you treat your own editing timeline. You also get to see the massive philosophical divide between shows that explain the moral of the story and shows that let the listener figure it out alone.
Ira Glass insists every segment needs a neat narrative bow at the end, while Snap Judgment explicitly forbids producers from telling the audience what to think. This debate is drawn out visually, making it much easier to decide where your own show falls on the spectrum.
The graphic format actually solves a problem that regular prose books struggle with. When Abel wants to explain how a story engine works, she draws a literal engine.
When she talks about the "German forest" of creative doubt, she draws Jad Abumrad from Radiolab wandering through one. It forces abstract narrative concepts into physical spaces you can point at, which is why teachers use this book in university classrooms.
Pricing and what else that twenty dollars could buy
The paperback has a list price of $20, and the Kindle edition usually sits around $8. If you are patient, used paperback copies regularly drop below $3 on Amazon, which is an absolute steal for the amount of research packed inside.
The Kindle version is perfect if you want to quickly search for specific terms like "story engine" or "signposts" while you are actively editing an episode. But if you only have twenty bucks to spend right now, you need to know if this is the right book for your current stage.
Here is how it stacks up against a few other popular options you might be considering.
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| Book | Best for | Main strength | Best choice when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Out on the Wire | Audio and narrative craft | Real edit-room access to top shows | You already have a show and want better stories |
| Podcast Launch | Getting off the ground | Step-by-step setup and release plan | You have not published your first episode yet |
| Podcast Growth | Scaling an existing audience | Tactics for getting more downloads | Your stories are solid but your numbers are flat |
| Video Marketing For Dummies | Visual content creators | Broad overview of YouTube and video strategy | You are building a visual brand instead of a podcast |
Why you need to read it now instead of later
Waiting to fix your storytelling until your show gets bigger is the exact backward approach most beginners take. You end up practicing bad habits for a hundred episodes before you realize nobody is listening past the five-minute mark.
Reading this now forces you to respect the editing process before you build a massive backlog of mediocre audio. At twenty bucks, this is the cheapest shortcut to thinking like a professional producer.
You can always buy the launch and growth guides later when your audience actually needs scaling. Getting your narrative foundation right today is what makes those future growth strategies actually work.
Out on the Wire vs other storytelling books
You do not have to buy a graphic novel to learn how to hold an audience. Plenty of other books tackle storytelling from different angles, and some of them might actually fit your current project better.
The right choice depends entirely on whether you need technical templates, philosophical inspiration, or pure narrative theory. Here is how the top options stack up against each other for different types of creators.
Swipe horizontally to compare every column →
| Book | Best for | Main strength | Main drawback | Best choice when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Out on the Wire | Audio and narrative craft | Real edit-room access to top shows | Heavy on theory, light on gear | You already have a show and want better stories |
| The Creative Act | Broad creative inspiration | Deep mindset shifts from a legendary producer | Very abstract, no step-by-step templates | You feel stuck and need a mental reset |
| Vlog Like a Boss | Visual video creators | Practical YouTube setup and growth tactics | Outdated quickly as algorithms change | You are building a visual channel from scratch |
Choose Out on the Wire if you are already recording audio and need to fix your narrative structure. Grab The Creative Act if you are battling burnout and need philosophical inspiration rather than technical advice.
Pick Vlog Like a Boss if your main focus is YouTube and you need camera angles and lighting setups instead of story engines. You can always buy the other two later once your core storytelling foundation is completely solid.
Final verdict
If you make audio, video, or written narrative for a living, this is one of the highest-value craft books you can buy right now. The twenty-dollar price tag gets you a decade of research compressed into a format that actually sticks in your brain.
You will stop guessing why your episodes feel flat and start applying the exact structural rules that top-tier producers use every single week. Skip it if you just want a gear guide or a launch checklist.
But if you want to build stories that people refuse to turn off, grab a copy and read it this weekend. Delaying this purchase usually just means you spend another six months practicing bad editing habits that you will eventually have to unlearn.
Questions people ask before buying
Is this book good for beginners?
It is perfect for beginners who already understand they need to tell a story, but it will not teach you how to plug in a microphone. If you have not recorded your first episode yet, start with a basic launch guide first and come back to this when you are ready to edit.
Do I need to like comic books to enjoy it?
No. The graphic novel format is just a vehicle to make abstract storytelling concepts visual and memorable. Most readers who initially worry about the comic format end up saying it is exactly why the lessons stuck with them long after finishing the book.
Will this help me if I make YouTube videos instead of podcasts?
Absolutely. The story structures, pacing rules, and editing philosophies covered here apply to any narrative medium. Video creators frequently cite this book as a secret weapon for scripting better hooks and keeping viewer retention high past the three-minute mark.
Check the official Amazon page for Out on the Wire