Jimmy Soni's Advice on Writing with AI: The Author Who Actually Uses It

Jimmy Soni wrote The Founders (the story of PayPal), A Mind at Play (a biography of Claude Shannon), and a coffee table book about a hand-restored 1922 carousel in Brooklyn. He is currently writing a book about Kobe Bryant. He also co-founded Infinite Books, a publisher built on the premise that the traditional publishing model is broken.

His writing advice comes from David Perell's "How I Write" podcast, No Film School, and Daniel Scrivner's interview.

The Sharp Knife

Soni compares AI to a very sharp knife in a kitchen. The knife does not cook the meal. You still have to cook. But a sharp knife makes you faster, more precise, and more willing to attempt dishes you would have avoided with a dull blade.

He has been using every AI tool that comes out for years. Not casually. Aggressively. He calls it "the most unbelievable tool" he has ever encountered for improving his work. But his framing is specific: it improves the work. It does not replace the worker.

The Three Uses

Research and fact-checking. Soni uses AI as "Google on steroids." While editing a grief memoir, he asked Claude to source information about Jewish burial practices. He wanted sources, quotes, context, and explanations. The speed allowed him to verify details that would have taken hours to track down through traditional research.

The critical caveat: always double-check. AI provides leads. It does not provide truth. Soni treats AI-generated research the way a journalist treats a tip - it tells you where to look, not what to believe.

24/7 editorial feedback. Soni asks Claude to argue the opposing position on his essays and op-eds. "Please criticize in 700 words this op-ed." He dials the intensity up or down. He gets pushback at midnight that no human editor would provide on that timeline.

This does not replace human feedback. He still does table reads. He still reads his work aloud. But between human sessions, AI fills the gap. A writer working on a book at 2 a.m. no longer has to wait until morning to test whether a paragraph holds up.

Overcoming the blank page. Soni identifies the biggest obstacle for most writers as self-consciousness. The fear that what you write will be bad. AI is an "anxiety antidote." It helps you get to a draft faster - not because the AI writes the draft, but because having a tool that can respond to your attempts reduces the paralysis of starting.

This stands in contrast to Ezra Klein's position that AI shortcuts destroy the struggle that precedes breakthroughs. Soni would likely agree that the struggle matters. His argument is that AI can reduce unproductive anxiety without eliminating productive struggle.

Blend Research and Writing

Soni's research method: do not finish researching before you start writing. Blend them.

"If I'm in the middle of a section and I need to make a point, I will just go dig up the fact I need and put it in the thing that I'm writing. Is that research? Yeah. Is it writing? Yeah."

He has seen writers spend decades on books they never finish. One acquaintance has spent twenty years working on a book about Plato. The research becomes a hiding place. It feels productive. It avoids the anxiety of creating new material.

Soni's antidote: turn all free time into research time. Walking to get groceries, listen to a podcast about the thing you are writing. In the evenings when he was working on the PayPal book, he watched YouTube interviews with the people he was writing about. "Where somebody else might be watching Netflix, I was watching interviews with Peter Thiel."

The quantity of research stays huge. The separation between research and writing disappears.

The Model Book

For The Founders, Soni read Brad Stone's The Everything Store more than twenty times. Not to imitate it. To reverse-engineer it. To understand what made it work at the structural level. To see where the scenes were placed, how the pacing shifted, which details were included and which were cut.

He calls this the "model book" approach. Find a book that does what you want your book to do. Study it obsessively. Not once. Not twice. Twenty times. Until you can see through it to the architecture underneath.

Kobe Bryant, Writer

Soni says that if Kobe Bryant had lived, he would have been on a writing podcast. This sounds absurd until you hear the details.

During the pandemic, Soni was struggling - a parent of young kids locked down with no relief. His escape was Kobe. He dove into everything Kobe had done after basketball. What he found was a man who wanted to become the Walt Disney of the 21st century.

Kobe studied writing. He studied storytelling. He won an Oscar for the animated short Dear Basketball. He created a media company. He did not dabble. He obsessed at the level of Kobe obsession - which is a level most people cannot imagine.

The connection to writing: Soni is drawn to people who are obsessed. Jane Walentas, who spent thirty years hand-restoring a carousel using X-Acto knives to file away paint layer by layer to find the original colors. Robert Caro, who spent ten years on a single book. "The greatest things I get to encounter in my life as an author is when I meet somebody that is that obsessed with something."

What AI Cannot Replace

Soni identifies what AI currently cannot emulate: emotion, empathy, and the authority of lived experience.

He uses a children's TV analogy. Daniel Tiger teaches kids to share. But children think: he is a tiger, I am a boy. Maybe tigers have to share. The lesson does not stick. Show a boy a video of another boy his age, and it sticks better. "If I am reading about a human experience from a human and I know it's a human, it'll actually stick with me in a way that a beautiful piece of writing from a different provenance wouldn't."

This is the argument for writing from experience. Not just because it is more authentic. Because the reader's brain processes it differently when they know the source is human. Tyler Cowen embraces AI as a thinking partner. Klein warns against using it as a crutch. Soni splits the difference: use it for everything except the thing that makes your writing yours.

Publishing Is Broken

Soni co-founded Infinite Books because he saw the same problems from the inside. Editors are overloaded. Projects get rejected without good reasons. Contracts have not changed since, in his words, "the Paleolithic era."

He gives specific examples. Standard publishing contracts give authors 10 to 15 percent royalties after earning back an advance. Many authors would prefer a straight 70/30 split with no advance. That deal never existed. If you asked about it, you were called a problem author.

He AB tests cover art. Traditional publishers resist this because their designers might be upset. Soni finds that absurd. "In the digital world, people are making snap decisions on Amazon based on the way a cover looks." Tools exist to cheaply test what works. Not using them is not tradition. It is negligence.

His sharpest point: in the age of AI, there should never be another plagiarism scandal. Publishers can upload a manuscript and check it against existing works. The technology exists. Using it is not cheating. It is responsible publishing. The industry's allergic reaction to AI tools is costing authors their careers.

The Long Tail

Soni's books sell years after publication. Someone discovering Claude Shannon for the first time does not care when the book came out. But traditional publishing gives up on a book two weeks after launch. If it is not a hit immediately, support evaporates.

Boys in the Boat debuted to crickets. Months later, rowers picked it up and passed it around. Eight or nine months after publication, it hit the New York Times bestseller list. Ten years later, it became a movie. The publisher had moved on long before the book found its audience.

Soni wants a publishing model with longer time horizons. Not every book is a sprint. Some are marathons that need sustained, patient support.

Key Takeaways

• AI is a sharp knife, not a chef. Use it for research, editing, and overcoming the blank page. The cooking is still yours.
• Blend research and writing. Do not finish one before starting the other.
• Turn free time into research time. Podcasts, interviews, YouTube. Always be absorbing material.
• Find a model book. Read it twenty times until you see the architecture.
• Write from experience. Human readers process human experience differently.
• AI cannot replicate emotion, empathy, or the authority of lived experience. Lean into those.
• Test everything. AB test covers. Check for plagiarism. Use the tools that exist.

Soni represents a practical middle ground in the AI writing debate. Not hype. Not fear. Specific workflows that make a working author more productive without replacing what makes the work human. Athens is built on this principle: AI that helps you write better, not AI that writes for you.

This post draws from Soni's appearance on How I Write, No Film School, and Daniel Scrivner.