Bluebird swoops in for ‘life-changing’ guide to social confidence from the Sunday Times’ chief interviewer
Bluebird, an imprint of Pan Macmillan, has acquired the “life-changing” new book from multi-award-winning journalist Decca Aitkenhead.
Your Social Superpower: How to Make Anyone Interesting, and Everyone Interested in You is Aitkenhead’s first practical non-fiction title.
UK and Commonwealth rights to Your Social Superpower went to Lizzy Gray, publisher at Bluebird and One Boat, from Amanda Harris at Maven Literary Management. World Spanish rights were pre-empted by Planeta México.
Aitkenhead has had a decades-long career in which she’s interviewed global icons like Oprah Winfrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billie Eilish and Robin Williams. Now, as chief interviewer at the Sunday Times and five-time Broadsheet Interviewer of the Year, she is showing readers how they can learn social confidence themselves.
From finding yourself in the lift with the CEO to parents at the school gate, a business lunch with strangers, to entering a party where you know absolutely no one, Your Social Superpower arms readers with a toolkit to find confidence, strike up conversations and form new friendships in an age of loneliness and disconnection.
Aitkenhead’s actionable methodology includes her three golden rules of asking questions, real-life examples that work for anyone and specific question prompts, as well as engaging anecdotes and examples from her experience mastering successful conversations around the world.
Described by the publisher as “a groundbreaking guide”, the book aims to deliver a simple yet powerful promise: by learning to ask good questions, anyone can shed social dread, overcome awkward silences and become the most interesting and interested person in any room.
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Aitkenhead said: “I couldn’t be more excited to work with Lizzy Gray and the Bluebird team to bring Your Social Superpower to the world. Writing this book was very different from my day job as chief interviewer at the Sunday Times, but I genuinely believe it will transform lives, and am thrilled to be working with a publisher who shares my vision.”
Gray said: “We loved Decca’s proposal from the minute it landed. Many of us find IRL social interactions increasingly anxiety-inducing, especially with those outside our immediate circle. Few people are as perfectly placed as Decca to teach how to cut through anxiety by asking really good questions. Her book gives readers the confidence to talk to anyone and be the most interesting, and interested, person in the room.”
Your Social Superpower: How to Make Anyone Interesting, and Everyone Interested in You will be published in April 2027.
