Local Author Spotlight: Kevin Ashton in Austin, Texas
Local author Kevin Ashton talks with us about his upcoming book
The Story of Stories, in which he outlines the history and development of human storytelling from night fires to the contemporary digital age. Look out for the release of Ashton’s book on March 3, 2026. Visit our
Bookshop or
Libro sites to pre-order
The Story of Stories.
AS: Can you start by introducing yourself and telling us about your background?
KA: “I’m from London. I moved to the US in 1999 to start a research lab at MIT to develop what I called the Internet of Things, an internet-connected sensor network to span the world. The research was a success and the Internet of Things is everywhere now. I moved to Austin in 2013 and my first book, How to Fly a Horse, about innovation, creation, and discovery, was published in 2015. My second book, The Story of Stories, will be published in 2026. I did some solo kid-raising in between.”
AS: Tell us about your upcoming book, The Story of Stories. What was the initial inspiration for it?
KA: “Around 2018 it became clear to me that almost everyone in the world was going to have their own smartphone around 2026. Almost no one had a phone of any kind in 2000—phones were for the few people in advanced economies only. The same was true of computers and television sets. I wanted to write a book about what it would mean when suddenly, because everyone had a smartphone, everyone could tell stories to everyone, and realized the only way to explain that properly would be to start at the beginning, when there were no stories. That’s why
The Story of Stories starts in a time before stories, before the evolution of our storytelling instinct around our first nightfires and ends in the present day.”
AS: How can readers help local authors like you?
KA: “A reader is the most powerful person in publishing. Not en masse, but individually. In most other industries, a customer is one among millions. But that’s not true for books. If one reader pre-orders a book, whether from a bookseller or a library, it makes a big difference to how booksellers and libraries stock that title, which makes a big difference to how the publisher prints and promotes it, which makes a big difference to how many people hear about it in the crucial first few weeks when it is published. Even more important, if you read a book and like it, and actively recommend it to people, you start a chain reaction. If four people buy a book because you recommended it, and then
they recommend it, and so on, that means a thousand people read the book who wouldn’t have read it otherwise. A single reader is a mighty force.”
Lioness Books supports local authors. Uplifting local authors is crucial to not only the growth and strength of the greater literary community, but free expression and democracy. Ordering from independent booksellers helps us move away from monopolies like Amazon and keeps our economy local. Pre-order The Story of Stories on our
Bookshop and
Libro sites.
