Tech entrepreneur-turned-author Thomas R. Weaver went from indie publishing to a six-figure, two-book deal with Del Rey, thanks in large part to the viral success of his debut, Artificial Wisdom. The book follows a journalist who is caught in the center of a murder investigation while chasing the biggest story of his career. Given the setting in the not-so-distant future, readers will see traces of our own moment in the climate-change-ravaged setting, where AI threatens to become all-powerful.

The novel gained massive traction on TikTok. Weaver leveraged this momentum to secure top-tier representation and a major publishing deal, including a forthcoming sequel to Artificial Wisdom, titled Infinite Wisdom, coming out in fall 2026.

Did you always want to be an author?

Somewhere around age 10, I read and reread The BFG by Roald Dahl. Sophie, the protagonist, gets to experience a dream where she has written a book no one can put down, to the point that people are bumping into each other on the street and crashing cars because they can’t stop reading. I think something in this story triggered something primal in me. Sharing stories is, after all, one of our oldest pastimes as a species. We’re wired to do so. And so I knew I wanted to become a writer, but, as I got older, this was tempered by an idea that most writers and artists struggle to make a living. I decided that I needed to make a living first.

Your background is in tech. How did you move into writing fiction?

For most of the 2010s, I was the CEO of a tech startup in the restaurant hospitality space. Being the CEO of a tech startup is to be something of an evangelist, because your main job is to keep the company well capitalized as well as to win big clients and convince people to come and work for you. That means you are telling stories constantly: the story of how you started and the story of what the world could become if you are successful.

We eventually sold the business to one of the biggest [food] delivery giants in the world, and a year later I was able to exit things completely. For a while, I didn’t want to even open a laptop again. Then when the pandemic locked us in our houses, I decided I no longer had any excuses to stop me from doing what I always wanted to do. It was time to write.

Technology played a big part in how you’ve taken this book from self-published to a major deal. What was this process like?

For me, being a writer trying to get published is similar to being an entrepreneur trying to raise money. You’re a risk. No one knows if your book, or product, is going to work. My view when I started out was that there was nothing to distinguish me from others bidding to be published, and Artificial Wisdom was unusual enough that it might be seen as an even greater risk. Technology provided traction: getting it to enough people within the same community on TikTok to create momentum, being an active part of that community and getting to know the readers who became fans personally, an incredible Goodreads giveaway organised by my PR team, and hands-on participation with a Fable book club. I pinpointed an amazing agent with a track record in the space and queried him, careful to highlight the traction in reviews, TikTok posts, and sales that I’d had in the past months. Forty-eight hours later, we’d signed.

Have you experienced any surprises moving from self-publishing to working with a major publishing house?

I’ve been surprised by how many people work on the book across all the different teams. Building my own indie press, I had to essentially pay people personally to do anything—a structural edit, copy edit, proofread, press release, sales call. And so, when I get, for example, new copy edits that are incredibly detailed, I feel extremely honored by the effort.

What advice do you have for fellow writers who are looking to break out, especially those who may be struggling despite active self-promotion?

First, have a relentless focus on things that will move the needle of success that are also within your control. I recommend focusing on reviews and ratings before doing anything like advertising. My strategy for getting those early reviews was asking to send out ARCs of the book to as many people as possible. I found affordable book tours, did events, anything that could lead to a review. And I prioritized someone reading the book and reviewing it over a sale.

I think that the main job of an author is to make book influencers successful. Help them discover something cool to share and build their own followings and make viral content.

Finally, measure success in indie terms, not traditional. New indie authors often find their sales numbers demotivating, as I did at the start. You simply don’t have any name recognition, nor the ability to market and sell like a traditional publisher does. But you can continue marketing and pushing a book for far longer. I think of it like this: traditionally published authors are sprinting the 100 meters in the Olympics. Indie and self-published authors are running the steeplechase.